Fox host: We don't need smog rules because 'whatever happened with acid rain?' (Spoiler: Laws worked)

Fox News host Clayton Morris on Wednesday suggested that President Barack Obama's administration had been wrong to move forward with new EPA smog regulations because pollution problems -- like acid rain -- were hoaxes.

"The EPA came out in 2007 [under President George W. Bush] and said, 'You know what? Ozone exposure, not a big deal, we can find no evidence that it has adverse effects'," Morris explained. "Well, the Obama administration has dug through and tried to find people that say that ozone still is bad for you, and they're going to push through this ozone regulation, the costliest in American history."

Co-host Peter Johnson Jr. added that new coal ash regulations were also going to cost $20 billion.

"Just when you thought you were over-regulated already," co-host Ainsley Earhardt sighed. "I haven't heard ozone layer in forever."

"I know!" Morris exclaimed. "Or do you want to bring back acid rain?"

"Remember acid rain," the Fox News host laughed. "Whatever happened to acid rain? It was ruining cars. Whatever happened with that?"

However, the reason Morris can't remember "whatever happened to acid rain" is because regulations worked.

Beginning in 1980, Congress began passing laws like the Acid Deposition Act, President George H. W. Bush amended the Clean Air Act during his term, and the EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) under President George W. Bush.

More than 20 years after the government began regulating acid rain, the EPA estimated that 2009 sulfur dioxide levels were cut to about one-third of what they were in 1990. But the EPA has also said that further reductions are still needed to recover from the effects of acid rain.

Watch the video below from Fox News' Fox & Friends, broadcast Dec. 21, 2014.