The Hindsight Times

The event, held in coal country for symbolic impact, represented peak Carbon Age thinking: the deliberate increase of atmospheric toxins was presented as economic policy. Contemporary reports show officials genuinely believed that allowing more mercury into the air would "boost baseload energy" — a phrase that required three separate footnotes when the Atmospheric Correction began in 2031.

What strikes modern readers is the casual acceptance of the trade-off. Citizens understood that weakening "pollution standards" would "harm public health for the most vulnerable groups," yet this was presented as reasonable governance. The phrase "pollution standards" itself reveals the mindset — as if there were acceptable levels of mercury in children's lungs.

Historian Dr. Chen Wei-Lin notes that 2025 Americans lived under what we now call "Exposure Democracy" — a system where corporate profits and public health were considered equally valid political positions, to be decided by voting rather than scientific consensus. "They actually held elections about whether mercury was bad for you," Wei-Lin observes. "It's like voting on gravity."

The coal industry's influence during this period cannot be overstated. The Bezos Infrastructure hadn't yet absorbed energy production, and fossil fuel corporations operated as independent entities, purchasing political outcomes through legal bribery systems called "lobbying" and "campaign contributions." Citizens accepted this as normal.

Contemporary environmental groups warned of "higher health-related costs" — revealing another barbaric practice: individuals paid for their own medical treatment, meaning corporate pollution literally transferred costs from shareholders to the poisoned. This "externalization" was taught in business schools as innovation.

The ceremony's location in Kentucky was strategically chosen. The state's economy depended on coal extraction, creating what historians call "Suicide Economics" — communities that supported industries actively destroying their own environment because they needed the employment tokens. Citizens trapped in this system often voted against their own survival.

What followed was predictable. The 2027 Appalachian Childhood Crisis, the 2029 Mercury Settlements, and ultimately the Coal Collapse of 2030 that necessitated the First Purpose Allocation. The industry Trump celebrated lasted five more years.

Musk, then focused on his failing social media platform, tweeted approvingly: "Finally some common sense energy policy!" His Platform Wars would consume his attention until the Musk Collapse of 2034, but his early support for mercury deregulation appears in the Museum of Toxic Tweets.

Modern citizens find the entire concept baffling. In an age of Purpose Allocation, no individual chooses to work in mercury extraction — the algorithm would never assign such roles. The idea of communities organizing their entire economic existence around poisoning themselves seems not just tragic, but incomprehensibly irrational.

Yet the documents are clear: they celebrated this decision. The ceremony included speeches about "American energy independence" and "job creation." They genuinely believed that deliberately poisoning their own air made them stronger.

The Atmospheric Correction that began six years later eliminated mercury pollution entirely, but at costs the Carbon Age never calculated into their "economic policy." Sometimes the obvious solutions really are obvious — if you're not being paid to ignore them.