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>bad press forcing change in laws and companies. Big oil has entered the chat.

• ardy42 6y ago
  https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire tl;dr: The Cuyahoga river caught on fire many, many times over the years. However, a fire in June 1969 spurred legislative action that finally solved the problem, even though that fire was not the most destructive nor the most deadly. The difference was society had changed, and that fire struck a nerve when the previous ones hadn't. The moral of the story is: past performance is no guarantee of future results.
  • throwanem 6y ago
    True. Totally unrelated, the example you cite is now fifty years in the past, and occurred in a time when local news still existed.
    • ardy42 6y ago
      > True. Totally unrelated, the example you cite is now fifty years in the past, and occurred in a time when local news still existed. It's related because it's a nice clear example of "bad press [eventually] forcing change in laws and companies," on an issue that's settled enough that one would be hard-pressed to argue the end result was wrong. The swipe at local news isn't exactly relevant, given this recent is a national one that did get coverage and the river fire spurred a federal, not local, legislative solution.