SMOGTOWN

From the Los Angeles Times story:

“The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the nation’s strictest-ever smog limits this morning, a move that could put large parts of the country in violation of federal air quality regulations.

The EPA proposed allowing a ground-level ozone concentration of between 60 and 70 parts per billion, down from the 75-ppb standard adopted under President George W. Bush in 2008.

That means cracking down even further on the emissions from power plants, factories, landfills and motor vehicles which bake in sunlight and form smog.

Obama administration officials and environmental groups say the new standards align with the levels scientists say are needed to safeguard against increased respiratory diseases, particularly in children, and that they could save $100 billion in heath costs over time. The EPA also said compliance costs could total up to $90 billion nationwide.

A 65-ppb standard — the middle of the proposed range — would avert between 1,700 and 5,100 premature deaths nationwide in 2020, compared to the 75-ppb standard, the EPA estimates. The agency projects the stricter standard would also prevent an additional 26,000 cases of aggravated asthma, compared to the Bush-era standard, and more than a million days when people miss work or school …”

If you read our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, you’d know ozone sounds whimsical but is pretty deadly.

WAS CONVICTED SMOG-CREDIT SWINDLER ANNE SHOLTZ PART OF SHADY INTERNATIONAL ‘MONEY REPATRIATION’ SCHEMES?

August 20, 2009

By Chip Jacobs for the Pasadena Weekly

The demise of Anne Sholtz’s once-grand life is evident in the smaller things. It’s there in the GPS-tracking bracelet — standard issue for felons in home detention — that looped around her ankle for a year, and in her near-dormant passport. It’s traceable in her pillow, which rests today in leased home miles from the $5-million hillside estate that had broadcast her transformation from Caltech economist to business phenom.

Yes, the wreckage from that existence — the economizing, the isolation from connected friends who now shun her — is graspable.

Where the picture turns as murky as whisky-brown Southern California smog is how Sholtz, as a then-thirtysomething go-getter, was able to deceive the very air-pollution market she helped conceive, and the lessons that holds for keeping financial crooks out of the trillion-dollar, greenhouse-gas trading system that President Obama has trumpeted as a key to curbing global warming.

Unless you’re in the arcane field of emissions trading, chances are you’ve probably never heard of Sholtz before. Last April, the former Pasadena emissions-broker was convicted in federal court of fraud relating to a multimillion-dollar deal for credits in Southern California’s novel smog-exchange. Despite pleas that she sock Sholtz with years behind bars, US Central District Court Judge Audrey Collins gave her just a year in home confinement.

Fortunate with a light sentence in that downtown LA courtroom, Sholtz nonetheless sustained heavy losses outside of it, squandering, among other potential, her chance to build a unique and lucrative pollution-trading business, with access to Obama or Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as an industry confidante. Those opportunities gone, she now drives her mother’s car, not the Mercedes or SUV she once did. Rather than expanding her ideas into climate change, she checks in with her parole officer.

Blown prosperity for Sholtz, it’s been no bonanza for others, either.

Between criticism over its secretive, mixed-bag prosecution of her and evidence of Sholtz’s role in a scheme to extract millions in overseas US aid with men purporting to be American intelligence and military operatives, the Department of Justice’s LA office probably wishes she would just fade away. Local smog regulators at the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), whose market-based regulation proved vulnerable to her deceptions, can relate.

Trouble is some events are just too big to disappear. And the Sholtz case, no matter its relative obscurity or connection to complex regulations, fits that mold because it underscores the need for vigorous oversight of emissions markets against seemingly inevitable Wall Street-style chicanery.

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And just when you thought you could. According to the American Lung Assoc., a terrific organization that we try to give historically due to in our book Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, the L.A.-area and California still wear some rather unfavorable crowns for emissions ozone and particulate matter. And 60 percent of Americans live in areas with unhealthy air. MSNBC reports.

Those two-wheelers are finally drawing the environmental scrutiny they deserve from California’s smog check program.

From the L.A. Times blog post:

“Cars do it. Trucks do it. And now the state of California may require motorcycles to do it too. Biennial smog checks would be required for motorcycles manufactured in the 2000 model year and later under a bill making its way through the California Legislature.

Motorcycles account for 3.6% of registered vehicles in the state, and they make up just eight-tenths of a percent of vehicle-miles traveled, yet they account for 10% of passenger vehicles’ smog-forming emissions, according to the California Air Resources Board, which backs the measure. Although fuel-efficient bikes emit significantly less carbon dioxide per mile than cars, the ARB says they are, on average, 14 times more polluting per mile when it comes to emissions of oxides of nitrogen and hydrocarbons – smog-forming pollutants that have been shown to trigger asthma attacks and worsen respiratory and cardiac illnesses.”

Not the Number One status the San Joaquin Valley would seek, but one us Angelenos are at least glad to shed. Particulate pollution is a very serious matter. Here’s a brief L.A. Times story about the new rankings, and no, Southern California did not escape thanks to the port area.

Another landmark state move on greenhouse gases and fuel, in case you missed it. Here’s one article.

Modifying the atmosphere to induce cooling. From the Newsweek story – a story ever so reminiscent of early efforts to mold the weather to lower L.A.’s infamous smog.

“Over the past two decades geo-engineering began to include other ways of fixing climate, including new spins on the Pinatubo effect. Using sulfur dioxide or other materials, they aim to reflect sunlight back into outer space. One would boost a series of mirrors into orbit, shading Earth from sunlight, but at a cost that would likely bankrupt the planet. In the 1990s, the controversial inventor of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, proposed floating reflective particles of metal in the atmosphere, adding a Dr. Strangelove air to the geo-engineering field.”

Calibrating your carbon. C’mon. It’s a gas. From MSNBC.

Lastly, another sterling review of our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burnng History of Pollution in Los Angeles, this time from Earth First (not to be confused with Friends of the Earth) …

” … Smogtown is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. It’s a dramatic story, playing out like it was written for the screen, with clear protagonists and villains – and humor peppered throughout. While Smogtown does an excellent job of providing the hard facts about how the pollution got so bad, the weakness of the government in controlling it and the difficulty of convincing Los Angelenos to sacrifice any part of their lifestyle to make it go away – it’s also a gripping tale that will keep you eagerly turning the pages. What with the terrified citizens crashing their cars in panic at the appearance of the smog and bewildered, ineffectual government officials bumbling about, it’s almost like Godzilla, but with pollution as “the beast” …

For full review, click here.

From a recent Pasasdena Star News story (one of many on this important subject lost in the economic collapse and greenhouse gas frenzy):

“Don’t plan on seeing the opening of any new public facilities or for that matter new small businesses which have generators or other polluting devices.

Local government and others can’t get the necessary permits from the South Coast Air Quality Management District due to a November court decision that many are just learning about.

If this issue is not resolved, it could mean that the Whittier police station or a Los Angeles County fire station on the border of La Mirada and Habra – both under construction – can’t open.

Both have small emergency generators and need permits from AQMD. Construction on both is expected to take another year.

“It compromises the level of public safety,” La Mirada City Manager

Contractors continue to work on the new Whittier Police Department building project at the corner of Washington Avenue and Penn Street on Thursday March 26, 2009. The 55,000 square-foot police building is expected to be completed in June 2010. (SGVN/Staff Photo by Keith Durflinger)Tom Robinson said of the moratorium established by the AQMD.

Other types of new businesses affected are auto body shops, service stations, printers, and even car dealerships.

“It’s safe to say that cities throughout Southern California are very concerned about the moratorium,” Robinson said. “Everybody else in the country is trying to put people to work and here’s a ruling that’s going to put people out of work.”

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