Auto reviewer Dan Neil in his Rumble Seat column on page D8 in the Saturday Wall Street Journal has a similar article about air pollution decreasing in LA with before and after pictures, although the two pictures were obviously not taken from the same spot.

Dan Neil goes on to say he is thoroughly capitalist but believes that “bowl like” land areas that have high populations can improve their local air quality by “generating the pollution far away and sending the electricity to local electric car chargers.”

When I was 22 years old I was kinda stunned when I witnessed how government owned English coal mines near Newcastle were not piling up their waste rock in carefully designed landfills - they were just mixing it with sea water and pumping it straight into the North Sea. When I asked about this they smiled and said “Strong currents carry it toward Germany’s beaches, not ours.”

Actually coal seams were exposed under the sea near Newcastle and after strong storms nice shiny black lumps of coal would wash up on beaches there. People would go down and collect this “Sea Coal” and haul it away in donkey pulled carts.

When I visited coal mines in Wales my host made sure to take me to the town of Aberfan where the government owned coal mine had built a waste rock landfill that failed after heavy rains and avalanched down onto the local Kindergarten school where 113 children were killed. I had already visited Buffalo Creek WV where a similar accident had occured.