Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30

In the councils of elders, where memory sits beside the fire and measures change by breaths and seasons, a quiet marvel is sometimes named: the world can grow gentler even as it grows busier. Thus Jared Diamond’s observation—“Take air quality in the United States today: it’s about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.”—speaks like a bell across the dusk. It is not a boast but a proof: wise rules, humble inventions, and stubborn civic will can bend the arc of the common air toward health, even while the roads thicken and the engines multiply.

Hear the paradox in his words. We were taught to think that more wheels must mean more smoke, more miles must mean more coughs. Yet the air—measured by the quiet arithmetic of monitors and lungs—has cleared in many places. This is the language of policy turned into breath: standards set, fuels cleaned, engines refined, smokestacks filtered, habits nudged. The lesson is old as the first village pact—when neighbors agree on limits, the harvest lasts. Here the harvest is blue sky, mountain views returning, children running without the sting in their chests.

Consider a parable from the city of angels and smog. Once, Los Angeles wore a yellow crown of haze; the noon sun dimmed like a coin seen through milk. Schoolyards posted “no running” days, and summer smelled of exhaust. Then came the long obedience: the Clean Air rules tightened; catalytic converters became the law of the road; refineries reworked their blends; transit gained allies; fleets turned over and over again. No single year brought miracle, but a thousand decisions braided into mercy. Today, while traffic still throbs, the mountains appear after rain like old gods returning—proof that design and discipline can make a metropolis breathe.

The elders would name the instruments behind such change: regulation that bites but does not break; technology that serves life as well as profit; enforcement that does not wink; public pressure that refuses to tire. A car can be a kinder thing—leaner engines, tighter seals, soot tamed at the tailpipe. A plant can be a truer neighbor—scrubbers catching ash, solvents captured instead of set loose. Even fuels learn new manners when asked: sulfur drained, ethanol blended, electrons standing in for fire where they can. The miracle is not magic; it is craft, spread across a nation’s wrists.

Yet Diamond’s point is not only to praise; it is to teach the shape of hope. If the air can clear while engines increase, then the tale we tell ourselves—“growth demands sacrifice”—is not the only tale. There is another, sterner story: “growth demands ingenuity and restraint.” The difference lies in whether we count cost honestly, whether we let the commons be the first line on every ledger. When we do, cleaner sky is not a luxury; it is a dividend paid to every throat.

Let us also remember the limits of this victory. Air quality can improve overall while pockets of burden remain—near freeways, ports, and refineries, where the least powerful often breathe the harshest mix. Justice asks for finer work: not averages, but neighborhoods; not headlines, but hospital logs; not “nationwide progress” alone, but the quiet emancipation of each zip code from preventable harm. A true feast is one where every guest eats.

From this saying, take a clear lesson: what we measure, we can mend; what we bind by law and skill, we can lift toward life. Therefore, let counsel become practice. For citizens: maintain the machine you drive; choose cleaner trips—combined errands, transit rides, shared wheels, or walking where feet suffice. For cities: shelter homes from exhaust with trees and setbacks; speed the adoption of zero-emission buses and last-mile delivery; guard children’s corridors with clean air zones. For states and the nation: keep standards forward-leaning, not backward-looking; reward innovation that cuts pollution at its source; aim the fiercest care at the places that have waited longest to breathe.

Do these things steadily, and Diamond’s paradox becomes our liturgy: a people who prove, year after patient year, that the sky belongs to everyone. Then the elders will nod by the evening fire and say to the young: “Behold—more wheels, more miles, and still more morning blue. This is what happens when a nation chooses to be clever and kind at the same time.”