How can society prevent acid rain?

Answer 1

The former answer was: "start recycling and try not to burn too many fossil feuls ( natural gas,coal, and oil )."
While it is true that much of the present fossil fuel burning technology leads to emissions that are implicated in "acid rain", this is far from any form of an absolute relationship. While it is true that many forms of fossil fuel (particularly certain forms of coal) have Sulfur impurities, which are oxidized to Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), which is implicated as a precursor to the Sulfur based acid rains (Sulfuric acid, and relatives), this need not be the case in general. (Besides, what's to keep us from removing such impurities in the first place, or removing the SO2, and/or other sulfur compounds within the exhaust gases?).

Perhaps the most prevalent precursor to acid rains are oxides of Nitrogen (primarily NO, and NO2, together called NOx), leading to Nitrogen based acid rains (Nitric acid, and relatives). What makes this far more prevalent, and insidious than the Sulfur based acid rains is that our Nitrogen rich atmosphere leads to such regardless of the fuel used for combustion! Even burning pure Hydrogen, within our atmosphere, leads to the formation of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)!

In addition, these Nitrogen Oxides are one of the precursors of Ozone (the others are various forms of Volatile Organic Carbon [VOC] compounds). In fact, in many areas with high Ozone problems, the level of natural occurring VOCs is already sufficient that the only viable controls have to be on NOx. (Even Houston Texas, with all the VOCs emitted by all those petrochemical plants, would still have an Ozone problem if one were to eliminate all the human caused VOC emissions, without reducing NOx, simply because of all the VOCs emitted by the nearby forests! I'm reasonably sure we don't want to have to "solve" the problem by paving over the forests of this world.)

So, a possibly "more correct" answer could be to "try not to burn too much of anything within our Nitrogen rich atmosphere". (While I, personally, believe we should have gotten away from combustion based energy technology long ago, I will refrain from proposing any form of "ban" on all combustion technology, as I believe any such to be an oversimplified "solution".)

Answer 2

Pollutants in the atmosphere from power plants and the like can cause acid rain through a chemical reaction with water. Power plants could clean up their emissions or we could find new sources of power. Hope this helps!