SMOGTOWN

California is “failing,” or so says the British. Excuse us if I’ve heard this one before from supposed sharp-eyed observers convinced we’re past the tipping point to social doom. We dip into outsiders fancy for seeing ruin before the ruin is really there in our book Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. Imagine that: California actually made it out of the 1970s1

From a recent Guardian feature

“California has a special place in the American psyche. It is the Golden State: a playground of the rich and famous with perfect weather. It symbolises a lifestyle of sunshine, swimming pools and the Hollywood dream factory.

But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kevin Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: “California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America …”

Scoff as you may at predictions of California’s tragic early demise, don’t dismiss what some “green roofs” can do as one salvo in the battle against global warming. MSNBC story.

Feeling itchy and green all over? You’re not alone. We’re in era of environmental anguish, and unfortunately Tylenol and a margarita aren’t much relief. New York Times post.

We like this move as insurance if Obama-backed legislation focused on dramatically slowing U.S.-generated greenhouse gases while improving our energy efficiency and use of renewables goes down in flames to partisan politics. L.A. Times story.

Can the GM Volt really get 230 MPG? Story

If you’re skeptical about that, how do you feel about carbon sequestration. Count us as skeptics here, until that “ah-ha” moment of truth in science and consensus in D.C. Link.

The public’s de-prioritizing environmental cleanup during hard economic times is both common sense and old hat in Los Angeles, where anti-smog campaigns often were killed, delayed or made all marshmellow-like whe those jobless numbers went up and the booster types snarled that detoxifying the air was polluting the California business cliimate. Read our book Smogtown for a stroll down memory lane. This latest poll is pretty insightful about the American mind right now.

Idealab and solar power. What a marriage! Story.

Of all the recent enviro stories, this one from the New York Times about how climate change may wind up being a national security threat might be the most important.

We appeared on KCRW’s “Which Way L.A.?” program with Warren Olney in early July, and it’s only now that we’re getting around to blogging about it. Indolence, no doubt. Though we did the show from two different states (geographical, that is), we came together in agreeing just how much good, ‘ol toxic, L.A. smog has to teach and show and warn us as we move to arrest climate change. Here’s the link for this NPR-station segment. Go to 32:40 in the show to hear us. We were originally scheduled as guests for “Which Way L.A.?” back in Jan., but a certain financial tsunami and related money questions bumped us. Well, smog (utlimately) waits for no man or, evidently, sub-prime crisis to speak.

You can hear the entire interview on KPFK by clicking here and then searching for Smogtown. Or you can go to the station’s podcast center here. Wiener, a noted writer and documentary maker (think The U.S. Versus John Lennon) asked piercing questions, with a particular focus on corporate-tainted science and pollution-induced illness. Bill did great. Chip, for some reason, perhaps sleep deprivation, stumbled a bit in aBushesque way.

Incidentally, Jon will be moderating a climate change panel that will include Bill at the upcoming Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Sunday, April 26 on the UCLA campus in West Los Angeles. Chip will be on a different panel — one devoted to Los Angeles “unknown history” — on Saturday, April 25.

For your reading pleasure, may we present these selected articles:

* Our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, made another book recommendation list, this time for Earth Day. We’re flattered. (Kauai News)

* U.S. bracing for a drop in gasoline demand. (Wall Street Journal)

* L.A. City Hall teaming up with USC, UCLA and Caltech on environmental issues. This echoes our smoggy past. (L.A. Times)

* The new way of moving around cities. Three wheels up! (New York Times)

Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, by journalist Chip Jacobs and environmental spokesman William J. Kelly, chronicles the history and impact of smog in LA, exposing the dirty facts behind the unparalleled crises and the ways in which the city tried to combat it. This history explores the fate of a culture whose addiction to cars and mass manufacturing has shrouded cities like LA in thick layers of smog, quite literally changing the face of the earth. MNN is proud to present your exclusive excerpt.

Chapter One: State of Siege

“The beast you couldn’t stab fanned its poison across the waking downtown. Cunning and silent, its gray mist engulfed buildings and streetcars, obscuring the sun and killing all sense of direction as it assaulted Los Angeles’ citizenry with a face-stinging burn. Through nobody realized it then, the mystery cloudbank would rattle the planet—making “green” a cause, not just a color—but first there was the suffering, a city full of it. Inhaling the viscous stuff socked folks with instant allergies whether they had them before or not, eyes welled, throats rasped, hands grasped for hankies and for answers. On July 8, 1943, crowds from Grand Avenue to Union Station muttered surprise at the abruptness of the confounding haze, later mouthing anger at whoever was responsible. The pall, which seemed to have lunged from everywhere and nowhere at once, was a real day-wrecker. After a few hours, what had been a steamy West Coast morning in the town that had shredded notions that one place couldn’t have it all felt more like a party crashed by industrial fire.

Peoples’ attempted escapes from the noxious cloud bred hair-raising street drama. Blinded drivers jerked from side to side to avoid collisions. Mothers snatched up frightened children into ornate lobbies for shelter. If it was hard on pedestrians, it was hellish for the beat cops supervising public safety, let alone for any dangling window-washers. Whatever had summarily blanketed downtown was reminiscent of a harsh, pea-soup London fog. Then again, this was Southern California, where fabulous sunshine was a birthright. Try telling that to the beast.

From within the horn-honking turmoil spread a wild rumor that the cloudbank meant war—chemical munitions the Japanese had lobbed in a sneak attack. With Pearl Harbor and the Imperial Navy’s shelling of Santa Barbara, might this be the first salvo against L.A.? Was mustard gas next? By hour two, the tendrils of the murky climes had thickened and widened, edging toward the northern foothills, which the big-spenders lived against the national forest’s piney backdrop. An irritating haze had intermittently gripped the central city since the turn of the century. Never a crisis before, it was fodder for blue ribbon committees and the reason for a drawer full of ordinances targeting smoke, soot, and odors. Now the stuff had re-materialized with a vengeance and, maybe, an agenda. Deprived of the sweet air they’d taken for granted, tens of thousands of Angelenos hacked: the thin and sickly, the corpulent money-men of Spring Street, jug-eared Boy Scouts, grimy trench diggers, haberdashers, transplanted Okies. A judge furious that acrid air had invaded his courtroom threatened to adjourn for the day, the docket be damned.

(more…)

Trouble is, nobody can ever really predict what net benefits will result. What if oil prices keep sinking, and Californians slide back toward SUVs and other gas gulpers as they have before in the post-Earth Day, stay-green era? Legendary billionaire Texas oilman-cum-investor-cum-energy-hero is championing Proposition 10 on the Nov. 4 ballot. Under it, the state would borrow $5 billion to invest in alternative energies, notably natural gas, to help wean us off those foreign sources — you know, the ones that tend to drag us into deadly conflict in the Middle East. Pickens certainly has his principles and pocketbook harmonized here: he owns Seal Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp. that supplies natural gas to vehicle fleets. Don’t forget that before gas prices soared to the $5/gallon range, “green cars” were the domain of believers and futuroligists. As much as General Motors’ and other carmakers political clout hamstrung California’s effort some years back to introduce electric cars into the consumer mainstream, it was motorists’ overall lack of interest that really killed the notion you could have hundreds of thousands of vehicles humming on something other than the fossil fuel engine.

Using the ballot box as a shock troop to spur whole new ways of thinking and living without poisoining ourselves on our toxic emissions has been a Golden State tradition dating back to the early 1970s. Striving to pressure Detroit’s Big Three (previously the Big Four and now maybe headed to the Big Two) is another state legacy. If you want to understand the context of where we are today with alternative-fueled vehicles and audacious ballot initiatives, our just-released book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, brims with perspective. Or so we hope. In the Internet age, there’s no excuse for ignorance when it comes to election choices. Here’s the official voter guide description of Prop 10: link. Get educated or no bellyaching if the air gets brown-orangish again.

This cartoon, sketched when we were wee lads (or not born at all), beautifully typified the region’s desperation for state and federal assistance combatting air pollution. It took an excruciatingly long time to arrive. Look closely at this cartoon, and you can feel the anguish of the actual cartoonist. Notice the apocalyptic gas mask face below City Hall’s hollering face. Sacramento and Washington D.C.’s glacial response to L.A.’s murk makes Southern California’s campaign against smog all that more extraordinary. It’s a topic we explore it in depth in our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. It rolls out next month by The Ovelook Press/Penguin U.S.A.

The federal government’s now-defunct Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the early 1970s compiled and disseminated a brochure of smog cartoons like this from the nation’s periodicals. It was called No Laughing Matter, and it was aimed at the average citizen. Officials probably believed that people, after a few chuckles, would realize that surrender and dark humor was no way to solve a crisis. If you’d like see more of these cartoons, check out the CLASSIC DOCS page.

If you think this disturbing picture of downtown Los Angeles was snapped before the region got its dander up about fighting air pollution, you might’ve underestimated the magnitude of the problem. This scene, taken by the L.A. Times and stored at the UCLA Special Collections Dept., was photographed in 1948, some five years after air pollution rolled into the Southern California and didn’t roll back as it had before. A Times photographer got this Civic Center picture from First and Olive Streets. Anytime today that hovering, russet layer appears — a dirty sunset, a plane ride through the inversion layer, a dull reflection, heck, a nostalgic film of pollution on your car – remding you that smog is still very much in the L.A. basin, think about how it used to for your parents and their generation. Breathing was life-risking. It’s a subject we dissect in our book Smogtown