America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

Air quality improvements seem to have leveled off in the second Obama administration, and stayed more or less the same through the first Trump and the Biden administration: https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c2...

News media ran this exact story back in 2019. E.g. https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-air-quality-declines-years-impr.... This particular article is a gem, because it portrayed a 5.5% increase from 2016-2018 is a regression. There was no follow-up article when air pollution decreased more than 40% the next year. Nor was there an article when pollution spiked 76% from the Trump-administration low during the Biden administration.

Air pollution decreased the following year because of COVID and the fact that people were in lockdown and couldn't go anywhere. No one was driving and the number of flights were reduced. There were plenty of stories about how COVID was helping reduce pollution. Here's one as an example: https://www.businessinsider.com/before-after-photos-show-les....