Shitstain Discovers Another Way To Make Murka Grate Again: Dismantling Air Pollution Rules Could Bring Back Acid Rain
The US could be plunged back into an era of toxic acid rain, an environmental problem thought to have been solved decades ago, due to the Donald Trump administration’s rollback of pollution protections, the scientist who discovered the existence of acid rain in North America has warned. A blitzkrieg launched by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on clean air and water regulations could revert the US to a time when cities were routinely shrouded in smog and even help usher back acid rain, according to Gene Likens, whose experiments helped identify acidic rainwater in the 1960s.
While drastic improvements in America’s air quality have seemingly consigned acid rain to a problem belonging to a bygone era, Likens said if rules curbing toxic emissions from power plants, cars and trucks are aggressively scaled back, the specter of acid rain could again haunt the US. “I’m very worried that might happen, it’s certainly not impossible that it could happen,” Likens, 90, told the Guardian. Likens is still involved in a long-term monitoring project, stretching back to 1976, to sample rainwater for acidity but this program has just had its funding cut by the Trump administration.
“I hope we don’t go back to the old days, so these rollbacks are very alarming,” Likens said. “I care about the health of my children and grandchildren, I want them to have clean air to breathe. I care about clean water and clean and healthy soil, I want them to have that too.”
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“I do think this administration will take us back to a pre-EPA world,” (Ed. - Former EPA Administrator William) Reilly said. “That will mean unbreathable air, places where there is pollution that you can see, rivers that burn. That is what it was like before and that is what it could be like again if enforcement is cut back.” Other scientists said a return of acid rain was possible, although it would be gradual rather than immediate. “It’s not like you’ll wake up tomorrow and it will be 1975 in terms of acid rain but we could move in that direction,” said Richard Peltier, an environmental scientist at the University of Massachusetts. “It would take a number of years but why would we want to do that? It’s frustrating because we know improved air quality is good for the public. There is a viewpoint now that scientists are the bad guys, that the science is corrupt – things that just aren’t true.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/27/acid-rain-trump-epa