>> unfortunatately, one of the lessons of sort of the battles overer environmnmenl protection in the u.s. this century is that unfortunately a problem often has to reach crisis proportions before policymamakers are willing to a, often because there are vested ininterests whoo are lobbying heavily for actions not to be taken. and this was the cacase, for example, with acid rain where, you know, we committed to far worse environmental impacts of acid rain than we should have because the coal industry, whose emissions were causing acid rain, fought back fiercely against any policy action to deal with it. ozone depletion. once again, it totook us decades to act. we knew that the problem exiisted back, you know, inn the early 191970s. it took until the, you know, the montreal protocol in 1984 for us to actually take policy actions to prohibit the production of these substances, chlorofluorocarbons, that were destroying the ozone layer. and perhaps the best example was that, you know, eenvironmental pollution of our l lakes and rivevers. the cuyahoga river i n ohio, it took that river catc