Trend Lines

Interesting chart from the EPA showing that air pollution has gone down a great deal since 1980 even while GDP has gone up by 145%. This doesn't prove that there is no economic cost to pollution control -- maybe without the EPA the economy would have grown even more. But it certainly shows that tight regulations on pollution are compatible with growth, and therefore that the doomsayers who say that new regulations on CO2 will kill the economy are silly.

The best number in the EPA data are for emissions of lead, which have gone down 99%.