Southy,
we've been pretty far behind most people for a few decades.
Catalytic converters hit here in 1987, but had been used in large areas of the world for nearly 20 years before that. We had the ADR 26A on our cars in 1976, when they had been european and american wide for a decade at that point.
There's not a single power station in the country with Selective Catalyst NOx control, or flue gas desulfurisation (we lost the "ph" in sulfur to the Yanks three years ago).