People don't really care about 100yo pollution that makes them and their neighbors marginally more cancerous when $3+ gas actually hurts them today and the wastewater plant is a museum of obsolete equipment. There's a fine (yet blurry) line between suffering an externalized problem and having other bigger problems that are more deserving of resources. They're poor. Not stupid. They have different situational constraints and therefore chart a different course.
> having other bigger problems that are more deserving of resources.
They just have fewer resources. But saying they "don't really care" is like saying that somebody who skips buying medicine to buy food doesn't really care about medicine.
There's a difference between not having resources and simply having other problems that demand those resources.
For example poor cities typically have to subsidize their trash pickup more (for equivalent results) because their residents won't just bend over and take fee for use, they'll burn it or dump it wherever. Poor people don't buy pet licenses so that means animal control gets more funding out of the general fund. Even if you take in equivalent money (which you don't) having poorer people to serve results in catches like this in every endeavor of municipal government from the library to the roads to the police.
> Even if you take in equivalent money (which you don't) having poorer people to serve results in catches like this in every endeavor of municipal government from the library to the roads to the police.
This isn’t totally true. Poorer people frequently live and work on land that is substantially more economically productive. If you have 20 working adults using the same amount of space as a single family, you’ll usually have a lot more tax revenue from the same amount of land. Without requiring much more infrastructure. Which means in terms of tax revenue versus outlays, poorer districts frequently subsidize wealthier ones.
> Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, finds that sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973. Following the trajectory we are on, Swan’s research suggests sperm counts could reach zero by 2045.
> the average twentysomething woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35
We can do both. And we shouldn't ignore the 100yo polluters because they can make people more aware that the exact same irresponsible waste disposal that happened 100yo is still happening today under the guise of "clean industry".
Also - I'd challenge the fact that people don't care about 100yo pollution if you've ever talked to someone living in the neighborhood of a superfund site.
Which is a perfect role for a strong regulator -- towns shouldn't have to weigh the tradeoffs of being poisoned. FWIW, Rockford isn't a poor town in any case, median income is like $70k/year which is very comfortable in the Midwest.
