smoke stakes along new york's east river viewed from a car

This landmark law saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars

The U.S. Clean Air Act turns 50 on December 31. America's dramatically cleaner skies are evidence of what legislation and innovation can do.

The air in New York City looked like this in 1970, before the Clean Air Act took effect: Smoke from the stacks of a Consolidated Edison power plant on the East River mingles with the tailpipe emissions of gas guzzlers headed north on FDR Drive near 35th Street. The spire of the Chrysler Building is barely visible at left.

Photograph by Jim Wells, AP Photo

Fifty years ago, a group of Democratic and Republican senators spent months working together in Washington, D.C. to tackle a danger they all agreed was harming Americans’ health and lives. Huddled in committee rooms for hours on end, they listened to one another’s ideas, traded jokes across party lines and, in the end, produced a bill that won unanimous Senate approval and passed the House of Representatives with just one “no” vote.

The Clean Air Act, signed by President Richard Nixon on December 31, 1970, would become one of modern America’s most consequential laws. Translated into real-world rules by the newly established Environmental Protection Agency, the act has since reduced air pollution in the United States by 70 percent—even as

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