A quarter of a century ago, doomsday reports about acid rain led to the signing of the Canada-United-States Air Quality Agreement. But today, climate change is the big storm on the horizon, and the once terrifying clouds of sulphur have floated away from public concern.

In the late 1970s, Canadian researchers and environmentalists connected the chemicals produced by coal burning plants and metal smelters, mainly sulphur dioxide, to acid rain that was poisoning forests, lakes and the fish that lived in them in northeastern North America.

Although Canada had the largest nickel smelter in North America, it was mainly the United States’ coal plants that were damaging Canada’s ecosystems. Because of the wind direction, American pollution produced 50 per cent of the acid rain in Canada, but only 10 per cent of the acid rain that fell over the United States came from Canadian pollutants.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, once dubbed Canada’s greenest prime minister, set out to convince Americans that something needed to be done.

“Reagan was going to veto anything that came up on acid rain,” said Leslie Alm, a professor in environmental policy at Boise State University. He added that the president and other American powers that be were more worried about the economies of coal plants and the auto industry than the lakes and trees in Ontario.

“There was not going to be any air quality accord between U.S. and Canada until the United States had developed their own acid rain policy,” said Alm, who wrote his PhD dissertation on acid rain in the 80s, and continued his research on the international issues surrounding acid rain well into the 90s.

Alm said that although Canadians were actively lobbying for acid rain policies in the U.S., the Reagan administration refused to move forward blaming lack of concrete research on the subject.

But as years went on, overwhelming scientific evidence led to a consensus on the dangers of acid rain, and in 1990, the American Clean Air Act was implemented. Newly elected George Bush Sr. promised to take swift action on the acid rain issue, signing the Air Quality Agreement with Mulroney in 1991.

Since 1991, both countries have released a progress report every two years to track acid rain pollutants in both Canada and America.

Their latest report, in 2012, stated an almost 60 per cent decrease in sulphur emissions in Canada since 1990, and a 79 per cent decrease in the U.S. during the same time frame.

According to Barbara Harvey, a spokesperson for Environment Canada, the agreement has been a success in both international and environmental policy.

“The Air Quality Agreement has enabled the two countries to work collaboratively to address transboundary air quality issues,” said Harvey. “This collaboration has fostered enhanced scientific cooperation to support the development of environmental policies.”

Don Munton, an expert on acid rain policy and a former professor in International Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, advised to take these reports, and the partnership between Canada and the United States, with a grain of salt.

“Canada couldn’t solve it’s own problem,” said Munton. “We needed the United States to act, and the United States decided to act for it’s own reasons. The agreement itself was pretty well an afterthought.”

“It’s the agreement that, past tense, ‘dealt’ with acid rain. The emissions are still there that produce a lot of acid rain,” said Munton. He believes that both countries have fell into a habit of overstating their progress.

Nitrogen oxides, a chemical emitted from car exhaust, was included in the agreement, but deemphasized to protect the auto industry, according to Munton.

Harvey also mentioned that between 2012 and 2000, the level of nitrogen oxides has been reduced by approximately 45 per cent in both countries. But according to the Environment Canada website, in 2013, there was only been a 28 per cent total decrease in nitrogen oxides from 1990.

But Munton is hopeful for the future; he says new fears might be the remedy to old environmental wounds.

“Shutting down coal plants in the United States in order to reduce carbon emissions will simultaneously reduce sulphur dioxide emissions. The battle against greenhouse gases will solve the rest of the acid rain problem.”

Documents

Leslie Alm Journal Article:

Don Munton Journal Article: