It was the Worst of Times, it was the Worster of Times

After yet another conversation about whether the world is going to hell in a handbasket - the predominate opinion of most people, throughout time, seems to be yes and faster than ever before. For more than a year now, I have been fighting some of these sentiments by suggesting that things are actually looking up.

For instance, pollution has decreased dramatically (exempting greenhouse gases, which is hugely worrisome) even under the Bush Administration, which I believe has slowed the rate of improvement rather than actually move us backward.

So I finally looked up some data to see if my hunches were correct. Let's start nationally, the EPA has some data (but they have about a million miles to go before being as helpful as the Energy Information Administration). But it is fairly clear that we have made progress on reducing pollution targeted by the Clean Air Act.

So we are seeing some dramatic national improvements and I feel vindicated for claiming that the air is much cleaner now than at any other point in my life.

You can play around with local monitoring stations that report to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to check out pollution levels throughout Minnesota.

I found a monitoring station near my apartment and found that carbon monoxide levels have dramatically decreased over the years.

So if you are convinced that everything is messed up and getting worse, you may have to look to other areas than air pollution.