[dylan604]

>became grudgingly acceptable because it reduced smog

as well as switching from leaded gasoline. within my lifetime we no longer hear about acid rain. it took a lot of convincing to make the switch to unleaded, but the results are obvious. CFCs from spray cans are also an example.

essentially, we've known for decades that emission controls can allow for the climate to repair itself. it just takes a lot of convincing to get people/industry to accept those changes. we didn't need a global pandemic. or did we? GenZ has no experience with the examples i mentioned, so maybe this was their version???

[marcosdumay]

Acid rain was stopped by controlling the amount of sulfur in the fuel and adding catalyzing converters at the engines output. It has no relation with lead.

[dylan604]

Okay, so I confused the cause of the acid rain with an entirely different man made climate atrocity. The point still stands if not even stronger as we've just provided a separate example

[tacotacotaco]

True, acid rain was not caused my lead but there was public and industry resistance to requiring all vehicles use catalytic converters. Lead had to be removed from fuel because it corroded the catalytic converter. It was chaotic for several years but the car industry was able to make it work. The market didn’t remediate acid rain, regulation did.