Acid Rain

In 1990, lakes in New York's Adirondack Mountains were the poster child for the surprising and unintended consequences of keeping the lights lit and refrigerator humming. Burning coal and other fossil fuels to make electricity was pumping so much sulfur and nitrogen into the air that rain was turning to acid, killing off fish and other life in remote wilderness far from industrialized society.

The science on the subject was complex, but clear. Congress acted, despite opposition from industry, and President H.W. Bush signed controversial amendments to the Clean Air Act. The “cap-and-trade” scheme that resulted was both capitalistic and environmentally conscious -- aimed at putting a price tag on a pound of smokestack pollution. It made companies pay if they polluted too much. And it worked. Seventeen years later, the acidity of rain -- and mountain streams and lakes -- has decreased in near lock-step with the reductions in smokestack pollution.

More recent pollution controls on power plants, approved by the younger President Bush in 2005, will result in further improvements. But the story isn't all roses. The increase in pollution from an increasingly large and widespread fleet of passenger vehicles -- all those SUVs burning gas on sprawling suburban roads -- has diminished the gains made by capping industrial pollution. And scientists have learned that decades of acid rain saps the health of soil -- meaning it will take decades for mountain ecosystems to fully recover.

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