“Sign, sign
Everywhere a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery
Breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that”

— Five Man Electrical Band

With so many motorists and their passengers looking at their phones while they speed down the highway, the time is right to take down the billboards of a big-headed, cartoonish attorney begging us to call him when we’re in pain.

Doesn’t Wayne know Jesus Saves? Besides, “The Heavy Hitter” and a father and his three sons are also mucking up the airspace above interstates 95 and 195.

The first billboards were erected in the 1830s, mostly to advertise traveling shows such as the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Today, they are largely used by personal-injury attorneys searching for clients, fast-food chains looking to feed us cheap food, and casinos trying to entice gamblers.

Billboards had a nice run, but we’re too distracted now by Smartphones, earbuds, Fitbits, Apple watches, and Google glasses for them to be effective. We need a break from the constant barrage of mass marketing. Plus, isn’t Allens Avenue suffering enough already with pollution?

While air, water, and noise pollution persist, let’s at least make an effort to reduce visual pollution. Also, if we took down billboards and, say, planted trees, that would help reduce all four.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1984 case, said: “Pollution is not limited to the air we breathe and the water we drink; it can equally offend the eye and ear.” Of course, that was before the highest court in the land was taken over by the unethical and easily bribed.

Billboards, towering shrines to mass consumption — and referred to over the years as “junk mail of the highway,” “litter on a stick,” and “visual kudzu” — were on the verge of extinction in fall 1965, when Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Highway Beautification Act.

But, in a situation all too familiar in Rhode Island, the law was so riddled with loopholes and enforcement so lackadaisical that advertising companies were soon erecting thousands of bigger, more obnoxious billboards. Many are now digital, adding to the vast amount of energy required to power a society that constantly needs to be plugged in.

The 59-year-old act, which has been amended or attempted to be revised numerous times, called for control of outdoor advertising, including the removal of certain types of signs along the nation’s growing Interstate Highway System.

The Visual Pollution Control Act of 1990, introduced by Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., prohibited vegetation control in front of billboards and banned new signs after Oct. 1 of that year, among other things. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted, 11-4, in favor of the Chafee amendment. Congress, however, adjourned before any other action was taken. It’s been held for further study ever since.

All of our excessive outdoor signage — of various shapes, sizes, colors, and neon messages — commercializes and homogenizes the aesthetic, economic, recreational, and natural value of the landscape, just to make more pollution.

We’re really good at making a mess and then leaving the brownfields and Superfund sites for taxpayers to clean up. Cutting down trees and illegally hardening the shoreline are easy. Siting solar energy responsibly and holding a notorious waterfront polluter accountable are next to impossible.

I’m sure removing billboards and everywhere signs, which add to urban blight and lower property values, falls under the latter.

The photo above is just one example of many unnecessary signs cluttering our field of vision. This one praising the efforts of a former Providence mayor and a former City Council member — for what, the graffitied, sticker-decorated light pole or the freshly paved parking lot behind it?

In fact, signs praising the efforts of governors, mayors, and the departments they oversee are common obstructions plastered about. Allegedly “on time and on budget,” these infrastructure projects, like the signs applauding those who didn’t build them or pay for them, are taxpayer funded.

I, for one, would be willing to pay, and tolerate the visual pollution, for signs on I-195 East and West before the Washington Bridge that read: “This mess brought to you by Rhode Island Department of Transportation director Peter Alviti Jr. and Gov. Dan Mckee.”

As for the rest of the billboards and exorbitant signage, take them down. We don’t need to know slots and table games are only 10 minutes away. We can use our phones to place a bet.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.