U.S. Fossil Fuel Environmentalism: EPA Air Quality Statistics

By Robert Bradley Jr.

A tweet from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) shared the latest from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with the comment:

From 1970 to 2023, U.S. emissions of six criteria air pollutants declined 78% while GDP grew 321% and energy consumption rose 42%—consistent with the Environmental Kuznets Curve and driven by wealth creation and market incentives rather than central planning.

This progress can be traced back to 1970:

——————–

[1] The 1970 Clean Air Act required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for common pollutants, known as criteria pollutants, to protect public health. The original list of six, finalized by 1971, are Carbon Monoxide; Lead; Nitrogen Dioxide; Ozone; Particulate Matter; Sulfur Dioxide.

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Rud Istvan

May 8, 2026 10:43 am

Part of the reason Zeldin wants to halve the EPA budget. Declare victory and withdraw is not something bureaucrats do willingly.

Tom Halla

May 8, 2026 11:14 am

I blame Nixon for establishing EPA as a separate agency, thus resulting in a “Special Prosecutor” mindset at EPA. When does one ease off on pollution?

Rick C

Reply to Tom Halla

May 9, 2026 3:24 pm

Perhaps Lee Zeldin will be able to explain the law of diminishing returns to the zealots at NRDC, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc. who continually push for ever more strict emissions limits. We’re now at a point where ambient levels of many criteria pollutants are not much above natural levels. The costs of even minimal reductions to industry and consumers have become unjustifiably expensive for the minor possible gains and questionable benefits. Of course, doing legitimate cost/benefit analysis has not been a concept EPA has been familiar with since the Regan administration. Its not just the low hanging fruit that has resulted in the performance discussed in this post. Virtually all the fruit worth picking was harvested decades ago.

Paul Seward

May 8, 2026 12:54 pm

To quote Ronald Reagan on government,” If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

GeorgeInSanDiego

May 8, 2026 1:18 pm

Story tip:
Reform UK picks up at least a net 600 seats in local elections.

Rud Istvan

Reply to GeorgeInSanDiego

May 8, 2026 1:28 pm

Just checked. The count is not over, but as of now Labor lost 1100 local seats and Reform picked up over 1200. Richter 8+ political earthquake in the UK caused by illegal immigration, green daftness, and inflation. Farage got Brexit, and now he has broken the UK two party system.

Sweet Old Bob

Reply to Rud Istvan

May 8, 2026 3:30 pm

https://election.news.sky.com/

1415

😉

guidoLaMoto

May 8, 2026 2:55 pm

The bureaucrats at EPA can be proud of their results in “cleaning up” our air!….OTOH- over the last 30 years, incidence of and deaths from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease INCREASED…so what exactly did they actually accomplish?https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(24)03752-8/fulltext

Sweet Old Bob

Reply to guidoLaMoto

May 8, 2026 3:34 pm

Vaping ??

pflashgordon

Reply to guidoLaMoto

May 9, 2026 8:17 am

Not so in the U.S.according to a quick DuckAI check:

”Short answer No — in the U.S. overall diagnosed COPD prevalence and age‑standardized rates have been essentially stable since about 2011 (not rising substantially). Some subgroups (older adults, rural residents, current/former smokers, and a few states) show increases, while younger adults and several states show decreases. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Key evidence (U.S.-specific)

CDC analysis (2011–2021): age‑standardized COPD prevalence ~6.1% (2011) → 6.0% (2021); overall trend =stable. Significant increases occurred only in adults ≥75 years, those living in micropolitan/rural areas,and people who ever smoked; many groups and states were stable or declined. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CDC (summary page): from 2011–2022 COPD was stable among adults; COPD death rates overalldeclined 1999–2021. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Specialized analyses and surveys (NHANES, BRFSS) show underdiagnosis by spirometry historically, anddivergent trends by age, sex, geography and smoking history. lung.org

How that fits with improving U.S. air quality

Latency and dominant causes: smoking remains the primary cause of COPD in the U.S.; reductions inambient air pollutants from the Clean Air Act help respiratory health but smoking history (including pasthigh smoking prevalence) and household/occupational exposures still drive most COPD cases.Improvements in ambient air take years to translate into lower chronic disease prevalence becauseCOPD develops over decades. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Aging population: the U.S. population is older now; COPD risk rises with age, so stable age‑standardized prevalence can mask increasing counts among older adults. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Uneven exposure reductions: national ambient measures (e.g., lower SO2/PM10) improved, but health‑relevant exposures persist in some places or settings — PM2.5, wildfire smoke, indoor biomass insome households, and occupational dusts/fumes.These uneven trends blunt the impact of average air‑quality gains. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Detection and coding: greater awareness and diagnostic practices (including more spirometry in somesettings) can increase diagnosed prevalence even if true incidence falls; conversely, under-diagnosis remains large when spirometry isn’t used. lung.org

Bottom line Ambient air quality in the U.S. has improved since the Clean Air Act and that helps respiratory health, but COPD prevalence has been roughly stable overall because tobacco exposure (past and current), an aging population, persistent/uneven nonambient exposures (occupational, indoor, wildfire), and detection/diagnostic factors largely determine COPD burden and produce subgroup‑specific increases despite better measured ambient air. “

B Zipperer

Reply to guidoLaMoto

May 9, 2026 2:45 pm

guido:
I read the Abstract [see your link] and used an AI [Copilot] to analyze their methodology.
They did account for growing & aging population (1990-2019) BUT
1- much of the data is modeled [Lol – ‘modeled’ can be a 4-letter word here on WUWT]
2- did not control for altered diagnosis criteria & ICD Coding changes over those years
3- did not address the marked decrease in smoking, which as the most common cause of COPD, should have caused a decrease in COPD incidence
4-did not discuss the decreasing levels of pollution (EPA’s 6 criteria pollutants), which like less smoking, would likely decrease COPD incidence and
5- “Did not compare its results to CDC/NHIS trends, which show stable or declining COPD prevalence in recent years.”

Bottom line: I don’t believe this study.

Bob

May 8, 2026 5:58 pm

Here is the question, is the air in the US clean and safe? Absolutely, there is no question about that. Is it absolutely free from all pollutants? No it’s not. Does it have to be? Absolutely not. We have done a good job, let’s celebrate it.

Edward Katz

May 8, 2026 6:03 pm

Once again, the alarmist organizations, left-leaning jurisdictions and mainstream media will be certain to quickly and carefully suppress such figures because they refute what they want the general public/taxpayers to believe. But just let some minor storm, heat wave or drought develop, and they’ll be falling over each other to tell us that this is what we can expect more of unless we start abandoning fossil fuels fast.

varg

May 8, 2026 8:44 pm

The EPA has achieved what with reason and economically feasable can be achieved, get rid of it for good. Halfing its budget won’t cut it, the next idiotic administration would simply ramp it up and you’re back again to ideological lunacy.

pflashgordon

Reply to varg

May 9, 2026 8:43 am

Agreed. My most intense professional interaction with the EPA was during the 1980s and early 1990s in the RCRA and Superfund programs. Like every other EPA program, these achieved early consequential gains and benefits, but the programs then quickly devolved into politics and self-serving bureaucratic power plays. When the law of diminishing returns kicks in, bureaucrats become busybodies, trying to squeeze out the last iota of pollution and protect their own jobs.

EPA air and water programs have clearly suffered from the same cycle. Witness the recent EPA and US Army Corps of Engineers defeat at the hands of the US Supreme Court over the issue of jurisdictional waters of the US. EPA and the states had reached the point where they were using the Clean Water Act to justify control over every piece of ground that ever receives rainfall (i.e., everywhere). This was based on the premise that every drop of water that falls at the top of a watershed can potentially affect interstate commerce and navigable waters.

The necessary functions of the former EPA can be safely handed off as a minor oversight function of one or more government departments, such as Health, Interior and/or Agriculture. The vast majority of prescriptive regulations can be rescinded, leaving broad legal principles in place and letting the newly-minted oversight offices review state programs’ conformance with legislative principles. As long as we have a Federation of states, some will be more extreme, more aggressive, while others more realistic, but in this modern era, there is no risk that any state will abandon reasonable protections of the environment that have been achieved over the last half century.

pflashgordon

Reply to pflashgordon

May 9, 2026 9:30 am

Unfortunately, this can’t happen easily if at all to be realistic. Environmental legislation over the decades has become increasingly prescriptive and explicitly delegates the regulatory responsibility to the EPA and the EPA administrator. Legislative change would be legally required before EPA as an agency can be altered for any of the regulatory programs vacated. In addition, many or most states adopt EPA regulations by reference rather than promulgating their own parallel rules. This is largely necessary so that programs delegated to the states can obtain EPA authorization, as well as relieve individual states of the effort of writing extensive regulations.

wilpost

May 9, 2026 12:22 pm

Lee Zeldin, US EPA Administrator During Hearings Before the US Senate
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin calls out Democrat Senator Sheldon WhiteClub: “I’m not going to take morality lessons from people who join, you know, all‑white country clubs.”
Zeldin explained: “When predictions are made in the past… will have a range of the pessimistic to the optimistic. And to justify, for example, the 2009 endangerment finding, they were adopting the most pessimistic views of the science.
Now, when you get to 2026, great news, you’re able to rely on present day facts in 2026, rather than any bad assumptions from 2009.
And just because you take exception when a member of Congress says in January of 2019, in 12 years the world’s about to end, if we’re sitting here today saying, well, gosh, it’s only four years and nine months left, I don’t think the world is about to end, they want to vilify you as if you’re denying science.
I mean, I just saw a clip yesterday where Al Gore was talking about global freezing. I’m having trouble keeping up. I thought it was global warming, and now it’s global freezing.
And I don’t know what kind of money is made. You want to know how [they’re] making money from their climate grift.
Well, what won’t get referenced by your colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle, who bring up the greenhouse gas reduction fund is that the money was going to former Obama and Biden officials.
The money was going to Democratic donors. The conflicts of interests that we saw. The amount of self-dealing, the unqualified recipients.
The Climate United Fund CEO was a special assistant in OMB during the Obama–Biden administration. They received $6.9 billion dollars. And we could go down the list with that entity.
You go through the Coalition for Green Capital, about a Biden–Harris climate advisor serving on the board or joining the board in ’23 while the organization was applying for GGRF.
Power Forward Community CEO, CEO of Fannie Mae during the Obama–Biden administration.
By the way, if we had 10 more minutes, I could just go through conflicts of interest. They’re not offended by that.
So, we just want to stick to the truth. We want to stick to the to the science. And if you don’t agree with them, you don’t follow their logic, well, they’ll want to vilify you.
But hey, as long as we stay true to these facts, it’s good to go.
I told Senator Sheldon WhiteClub today that I won’t be listening to, or caring about, any of his lessons on morality knowing that he joined an all-white Rhode Island Country Club.
I’m also done with the likes of AOC, Al Gore, John Kerry, and the rest of the lying cabal that make stupid climate predictions, plunder tens of billions of tax dollars, enrich their well-connected allies, and are committed to strangulating out of existence entire sectors of our economy.
Climate alarmist AOC wants to be taken seriously while also insisting the world is imminently about to end due to climate change (Just under 5 years remain on her nutty Jan 2019 prediction that only 12 years of life are left on Earth).
Al Gore is now speaking publicly about his concern with global freezing after decades of grift-talking about global warming.
“Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro,” said Gore in 2006 (There’s still snow on Kilimanjaro year-round).
Gore also predicted in 2009 ice-free Arctic summers within 5-7 years.
John Kerry warned in 2009 that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.
All these people, and their followers, are dishonest, power-hungry hacks.
The GREEN NEW SCAM is DEAD!!!”

wpDiscuz

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