"politics of high smokestacks" was when e.g. Germany got higher smokestacks, since we initially killed the local plant life when burning coal. Now, we can kill the whole planet at once, but only a tiny bit. Problem solved, until we later said "actually, use filters, not (only) high chimneys".

Thanks for having been to my Ted talk.

Next up: Why climate change made the filter solution not work, either — with cutting edge science claims back from 1856.

(Damn, the actual timeline for 1950-1980 and 1856 mixes these two issue non-chronologically. Sorry, to be fair: we were completety certain of climate change in 1990, when we saw that the 1970s era cooldown was not a new trend, but just a decade of a brighter albedo due to particle emissions.)