Cuyahoga River Fire: 50 Years Ago Today

The evisceration of the Environmental Protection Agency continues to become even more extreme.  It doesn’t help that the EPA is run by a man who’s spent his entire career promoting coal, but it gets far, far worse.  Here is National Geographic’s running list of the current administrations assaults on the agency. You may want to open it when you have time on your hands, as it’s 22,278 words and 72 pages long.

This is a particularly good time for these thoughts, as it’s the 50th anniversary of the burning of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, where industrial pollution had risen to such a level that the water had become coated with a thick layer of hydrocarbons that ignited.   A set of ghastly photos is here.  The EPA was formed the following year, largely as a result.

Photos:

Above: An environmentalist holds a wine glass she’s filled with the river’s “water”

Below: What our air looked like in 1973