I think the current powers that be hold clean air and safe roads in the same esteem as they hold education and research.
Maybe "Support for education and research should be as fundamental as golf tournaments or Diet Coke" would be a better anology.
> A Grist review of records from 2019 to 2023 found that oil and gas producers submitted more than 3,000 reports of wastewater dumping to the state Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP. In total, they reported spraying nearly 2.4 million gallons of wastewater on Pennsylvania roads. This number is likely a vast undercount: About 86 percent of Pennsylvania’s smaller oil and gas drillers did not report how they disposed of their waste in 2023.
https://grist.org/regulation/roadspreading-pennsylvania-frac...