P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.

I'm old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now. You've probably never woken up early on a winter morning to the acid stink of coal smoke in the air, which was everywhere when I was a little kid. My grade school was heated with coal. Not only was coal used to generate electricity, it was without any scrubbers in the stacks.

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.

In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.

We look back at the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, where people screamed and hollered it's going to be too expensive, they couldn't afford it, and it wouldn't work. And it worked. It worked faster than people expected, at much less cost.

The U.S. has a proud history of cleaning up our air through technological innovation. We did it with leaded gas, acid rain and countless other pollutants, and we can do it with carbon pollution, too.

L.a. 's air pollution has turned an environmental issue into everybody's issue.

Our children should not have to draw the breath of life in a city awash in pollution.

The EPA issued the MATS rule in 2012, and it is the first national standard created to address power plant emissions of toxic air pollutants. Under MATS, power plants are required to install equipment to reduce emissions of specific pollutants, such as mercury and sulfur dioxide.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the ability to more stringently regulate dust. If the EPA determines more stringent standards are necessary, family farmers and ranchers, as well as rural economies, would be devastated.

We want people to tell us the possible steps that can be taken to save ourselves from the harmful effects of air pollution.

Critics play a dangerous game when they denounce the science and law EPA has used to defend clean air for more than 40 years. The American people know better.

Once every hundred years, the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clean as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won't have to look at it.

I spend a year at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, researching market approaches to air pollution control.

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.

We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?

Clean air is a basic right. The responsibility to ensure that falls to Congress and the president.

I live in Los Angeles, which is the second most polluted city in the world, and I wake up in the morning to dirt all over my window.

Like a tracer running through the veins of the city, networks of air quality sensors attached to bikes can help measure an individual's exposure to pollution and draw a dynamic map of the urban air on a human scale, as in the case of the Copenhagen Wheel developed by new startup Superpedestrian.

In my home state of Delaware, we've done our homework and worked hard and, as a result, we've made great strides in cleaning up our own air pollution. Unfortunately, a number of the upwind states to the west of us have not made the same commitment to reducing harmful pollution by investing in cleaner air.

I am not convinced the Clean Air Act was ever intended to regulate or classify as a dangerous pollutant something as basic and ubiquitous in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Rhode Island works hard to reduce air pollution in our communities. We passed laws to prohibit cars and buses from idling their engines and to retrofit school buses with diesel pollution controls. But there is only so much a single state can do, particularly against out-of-state pollution.

The American people have a right to know the air they breathe is safe.

Does your desire to smoke anywhere, at any time, trump the right of others to breathe clean air … ? … The need to breathe clean air is more important than the license to pollute it.

As with most politicians, it took a disaster for them to do something.