Growing up in the 1970s, I took for granted the trash piles along the highway, tires washed up on beaches, and smog fouling city air. The famed “Crying Indian” commercial of 1971 became a symbol of widespread environmental damage across the United States.

That’s why the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, energized the nation. In the largest single-day public demonstration in U.S. history, roughly 10% of the population took to the streets to shout together: “Enough is enough!”

Republican and Democratic politicians alike listened. Over the decade that followed, all the nation’s foundational environmental laws were passed with strong bipartisan support – the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and more.

These laws are taking a beating at the moment, including from the Environmental Protection Agency – the federal government agency created in 1970 to protect the environment. The agency’s own leader, Lee Zeldin, boasted of “driving a dagger straight into the heart” of environmental regulations. President Donald Trump regularly derides environmental laws as job killers and government overreach.

But the conditions that made these laws necessary have largely been forgotten. This environmental amnesia allows critics to focus entirely on costs while ignoring the laws’ very real benefits and achievements.

I’m an environmental law professor, so I was excited to learn recently about the Documerica project, courtesy of a wonderful article by writer Gideon Leek. It shows in clear photographic evidence how dirty the U.S. used to be and wakes people up to how much better the environment is today.

Environmental protection was a bipartisan effort in the 1970s: The EPA was created by President Richard Nixon, a Republican. The agency’s first leader was Bill Ruckelshaus, a Republican congressman from Indiana.

Inspired by the famous

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