HitRed wrote:With all the climate change supports around why don’t they trumpet loudly dealing with acid rain? Nobody takes credit. Never seen a single tv ad saying me me me I saved the forests. Just think of all the credibility and support ($$$) that could be leveraged to the next goal.
You're right, we should celebrate environmental success stories like the elimination of acid rain more. I guess the reason we don't is because there is no "me, me, me" to take the credit.
Resolving the acid rain problem was broadly addressed by a multitude of different groups, both governmental and non-governmental. In Europe, they mostly stopped burning coal for power entirely. In American, emissions rules were tightened so that coal burners had to install better scrubbers and so on. It was done mainly during the Carter and Reagan years, but I don't think either Carter or Reagan was particularly involved on a personal level -- most of it would have been bureaucrats at the EPA whose names are mostly unknown to the public. (Wasn't entirely federal, either -- in my area the provincial government of Ontario negotiated directly with the state governments in Ohio and Michigan.) In Britain and in Canada, a lot of work was done developing sulfate-reducing bacteria to remediate lakes that had previously been ruined by acid rain.
So it wasn't any single person, or any single agency, or even any single nation, that could take the credit. It was a story of international, inter-party, inter-agency, interdisciplinary co-operation. The kind of success story that deserves to be celebrated, but isn't.