This is what America looked like before the EPA cleaned it up

[Generic Other]

https://www.popsci.com/america-before-epa-photos

[RKP5637]

1. And this is tRump's idea of let's bring back the good old times and MAGA. The damn fool. n/t

[flotsam]

15. Make America Gasp Again? N/T

[dalton99a]

2. .

https://www.alleghenyfront.org/how-a-burning-river-helped-create-the-clean-water-act/

[Generic Other]

9. That's horrible

I remember the "liberal" push to clean up the environment. From Ladybird Johnson's campaign to plant wildflowers on the nation's highways, to the push to stop air and water pollution across the country, all culminating in the first Earth Day when Americans vowed to do a better job protecting the environment. And we did make some progress. But not without constant struggle with wealthy polluters who outspent the rest of us.

That hasn't changed. Exxon in Valdez Alaska to Three Mile Island to BP Deepwater Horizon to Flint.

[appleannie1943]

3. Pittsburgh in my younger years

?downsize=700 &output-format=auto&output-quality=auto

[dsc]

6. Both my parents grew up on suburbs of Pittsburg

and my mom's parents still lived there until they died (81 and 86) and my aunt lived there until the mid 1990's. I remember visiting and my grandmother and later me hosing off the porch daily as the soot would grow on it if you didn't. I didn't have to hose it toward the mid 80's on.

[appleannie1943]

7. The rivers are now clean, fish have come back and eagles returned and nest and grow their young

along the banks of all 3 rivers.

[oberliner]

4. Richard Nixon's finest hour

[Stuart G]

10. Thank You for pointing that out...you are correct. EPA has saved a lot of lives.

[karynnj]

21. While Nixon signed it into law, it was activists pushing it and making it a political issue who

Did more to make it happen.

[cyclonefence]

5. Here's where I grew up

the Kanawha Valley, Charleston WV. Some days the air was thick with lime green fog, so thick you couldn't see more than a foot or two in front of you. Dupont, Westvaco, Monsanto, Union Carbide--we had them all.

?auto=compress&q=80&fit=crop&w=905&h=620&dpr=2

I have a chronic lung disease (diagnosed at age 18) and have had cancer three times.

[Brother Buzz]

8. Vacation spot with the orange anus' new and improved EPA

[Generic Other]

11. The Silent Highway Man: Your money or your life!

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. That is a hell of a pic......

Do you know when/who details?

[Brother Buzz]

14. Painted by one of the original members of R Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, Robert Armstrong

He's also an accomplished musician on the saw. When Jack Nitzsche was composing the music for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest he needed a saw and put out a call. Everyone told him the only player in Southern California under the age of eighty was Armstrong. He got the gig.

vimeo.com/125754833



https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/did-you-see-what-he-sawed/

http://armstrongartandnoveltyhut.com/

[panader0]

18. Thanks for this.

I still have some old Zap comix---love R Crumb but never knew about
the band.

[Brother Buzz]

20. Armstrong created Mickey Rat and has the unique distinction of NOT being sued by Disney.

A lot of us old fart comix enthusiasts got a real kick when Micky Rat made a cameo appearance in the film The Diary of a Teenage girl, and understood why she was wearing it (Armstrong dated Phoebe Gloeckner's mother).



This is quite possibly my favorite painting by Robert Armstrong:

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. Thank you for that enlightening background.

Gonna send this over to Mr. Dixie, he will love it!

[eleny]

22. Back in '69...

I was editor of my university literary mag. Deciding on the cover was giving me grief. My brother and I were reading the first Zap comic while walking down a street in Manhattan when he said, "Why don't you ask this guy to do it!".

So I contacted the EVO newspaper since they published his 'toons and they got us in touch. Bob was so down and out back then that he said he was sleeping on his publisher's sofa. He was happy for the paying job. We met a few times and he created this cover. I found this image of the front cover online.

[DBoon]

13. Downtown Los Angeles, before and after

[hunter]

16. When I was a kid in Los Angeles the smog was bad.

It was full of lead and other neurotoxins too.

It was not good for anyone's health.

I attribute some of my own lifelong health problems to growing up in a severely polluted environment.

People who complain of "too much regulation" don't know what they are talking about.

It's a lot like people who don't vaccinate their kids. Maybe they don't know how bad it was before vaccines. Maybe they are blinded by maladaptive ideologies.

I vividly remember trips to the hospital E.R. for asthma exacerbated by heavy smog. I vividly remember suffering severe life-threatening mumps and whooping cough.

Maybe I fight for a clean environment because I remember how bad it was. Maybe I made sure my kids got all their vaccinations because I remember when there were no vaccines for some of diseases I experienced.

But it's also the right thing to do.

[TrogL]

17. I grew up near North Tonawanda NY, home of the Love Canal

There was always a brown stream of pollution crossing the horizon.

[former9thward]

23. The picture in the OP is Steam not smoke.

Same steam you make in your kitchen. Coming from boilers in the plant. It is clean. If it was that much smoke the whole place would be burning down. People often confuse steam with smoke. People see steam coming from nuclear reactors and they think it is pollutants from the reactor. It isn't, Reactors are the cleanest major energy producers we have.

[TexasBushwhacker]

24. Visited NYC in 1969, when I was 12

I remember rubbing the soot off the tree leaves with my fingers. I scratched my head and my fingernails were black. To think people were breathing that shit.