Carbon footprint and particulate emissions are different things. I'm not sure how my burden on the environment can be that big with a small car that only uses 400 litres of fuel a year, cycling to work and living in a small house. Your energy consumption could well be 20 times mine with your much higher annual mileage in much thirsier vehicles.

Dirty air will effect you less because of location, but what I am tyring and largely failing to have you understand, is that the vast majority of people don't live as remotely as you do, most most people live in built up areas. Let's say you got your wish and rolled back the emission controls to what ever time you thought was the golden age, but had todays level of population and vehicle use and numbers, what do you thing the air would be like? Pretty grim would be my guess.