https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/4-5/52/enacted
Clean Air Act 1956 1956 CHAPTER 52
An Act to make provision for abating the pollution of the air.
It's apparently coal burning chimneys that were of concern there. "In effect until 1964" - which is even more interesting. My understanding is that in 1952, the effects of privation from WWII were still acutely felt. I wonder if the rising economy didn't make better fuel more affordable.
Burns' films do seem to file out a few heroes ( meaning there seem fewer even than they were ) but there were not that many other people, especially in government, who felt that way. You had many more "man has Dominion Over Nature" types, like Floyd Dominy of the Bureau of Reclamation.
Also; within Burns' film ( which is, as always, excellent ) note the rather large changes in management style over the years - and we're still learning . The part about how litter alone caused problems was pretty entertaining. I'm old enough to remember when people just littered.
What's different now is that environmentalism to some level is now nearly universal. Even people who oppose the EPA have some belief in the importance of the environment.
Stop projecting. Animal conservation was a hugely popular movement in the late 19th and early 20th century in the United States. John Muir and Guy Bradley were national heroes, and those are just two that we remember today. Roosevelt's environmental policies received wide public support. Campaigns against hats made out of birds grew so large and so quickly that this almost-universal fashion trend ended entirely and for good by the 1920s (http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/07/15/4228...), something that hasn't happened today with anti-fur and anti-ivory campaigns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_history_of_environ...
After the industrial revolution there was quite a pick up in valuing the natural world.
The Nazis were into environmentalism. Claiming that the German people had a bond with the natural world that was broken by pollution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism#In_Germany
They used the German word pollution in a non-scientific way.
It should be fairly easy to see that with the aid of mass media, its much more prevalent than it was.
Maybe it is just me, but I find the way folks get to these conclusions fascinating.
Just as an example - outside of people like John Muir ( who was a somewhat obsessive ... guy ) , ALMOST NOBODY was an "environmentalist" prior to say, 196x ( call it 1965 ). Zappa claims that (his) "Nine Kinds of Industrial Pollution" was the first use of that word in any popular ( read; non-scientific) literature/media.
The whole idea just sort of appeared, out of nearly nothing. What's interesting is that one of my favorite filmmakers, Adam Curtis, does an essay film, "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" where he ties environmentalism to ... the then-rising computer industry. The tools of Systems Analysis were turned on Nature, and we discovered Preferred Equilibria.
I don't even know how you'd evaluate Curtis' claim. It's a pretty whacky idea. But something about it... plus a few searches here and there, and sonofagun, there are no actual references to "pollution" prior to the '60s. That's hardly rigorous scholarship.
The reason I picked "environmentalism" is because then things like what "conservatives" hold up were similarly invented even since then, to show that it's not a partisan phenomenon. I think moderate environmentalism has immense value. But it fascinates me that it's sort-of a fabricated idea.
But we, as a species, apparently just do this. Isn't that what the original "meme" was ( before cat pictures )?