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.

Californians are less concerned about smog and global warming than they used to be. Here’s the story about the poll in the Los Angeles Times.

Why some scientists now believe climate change is worse than many imagined is the focus of this Newsweek piece. “Shock” is not a word you want to hear.

Freeways and air pollution are synonymous, especially in L.A. To save the teetering roadways and remmants of our old lifestyle, authorities will now allow solo drivers into carpool lanes on two freeways for a price. Basically, we have to try gimmicks like this to slowly kill the freeway with piecemeal deterrence wrapped up in putative innovations. My two cents, anyway. L.A. Times link

Moms and the planet – an aside from our little interview last month on KCRW’s “Which Way L.A.?” Click here.

Effects of pollution on animals. Follow the turtle. Story

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 the MSNBC story:

WASHINGTON – Having received White House backing, the Environmental Protection Agency declared Friday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a significant threat to human health and thus will be listed as pollutants under the Clean Air Act — a policy the Bush administration rejected.

“This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.

The move could allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, but it’s more likely that the Obama administration will use the action to prod Congress to pass regulations around a system to cap and then trade emissions so that they are gradually lowered.

(more…)

In our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, we examine in pretty good depth just how Southern California went about ridding itself of sky-smudging, health-imperiling chemicals burped out by tailpipes and factories. But, as several reviews made clear, we did not stray from politics of smog or some of the dirty political deals they inspired. So, here’s a riddle for you. Can you name the legendary state politician — hint, he loved Fedora’s and Chinese food — who lined up tens of thousands of dollars for his mistress from one of the people who still the South Coast Air Quality Management District in exchange for a little legislative blockage up in Sacramento? The deal is emblematic of so many that have injected people pollution into the quest to eliminate the chemical kind. As they say, it’s all in the book.

Some mid-week links — all of them with wisps or plumes tracing back to the good, old L.A. smog crisis — for your reading pleasure:

* A sobering report on global warming’s effects on California’s water and agriculture.

* Environmental groups at a crossroads.

* How best to fight global warming: auction/credit markets to buy and sell the right to emit greenhouse gases or brute technological change. Here’s one opinion.

* The world’s coolest — and by that, we mean the most provocative and promising, thanks to our galaxy’s star — car race.

* Air pollution and headaches. A connection, or stretch? LA Times story Here’s an MSNBC piece about traffic smog & heart attacks.

* A dimming world … MSBNC reports.

* Haven’t we heard this one before? Mother Nature Network post.

* A greenhouse gas market similar to Southern California’s smog market is coming, and the auditors are going to be kept busy. Washington Post story

* Beware the danger of cheap, recession-pummeled gasoline prices. It’s haunted us before, and seems to be happening again. L.A. Times story.

* Global warming California-style won’t wait: story

Ladies and gents, let’s get right down to business. He have a full agenda.

First, Capitol Weekly, the publication that covers California state government and politics, printed a recent interview with us about our book (insert rolling of eyes at shameless plug), Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles.

Here’s the opening section

Capitol Weekly: How did you get the idea to write a book about smog in LA?

Jacobs: “A few years back, I was reading yet another newspaper series about the onslaught of global warming. Amidst all the debate, (I realized) nobody had written a social history about one of America’s most epic and teachable environmental crises. Having grown up in fume-choked Pasadena, where playing outdoor sports almost merited hazard pay, I vividly remembered the vanishing mountains, smog alerts, civic depression and the overwhelming zeitgeist that the situation would never improve. When I put together those childhood recollections with the glaring absence of a compelling book about the L.A. air pollution caper, I knew I had a chance to retell a pretty seminal ecological narrative.”

Kelly: “Los Angeles was the original laboratory for studying smog and devising solutions. The war on smog here has brought the world lower polluting cars, cleaner ways of making products, and even cleaner consumer products—from house paints to barbecues and even hair sprays and nail polish. But for every two steps forward through cleaner technology, growth has forced the region to take a step back. This is nowhere more evident than at the region’s huge ports, which many call the driveway to the nation. During the economic downturn of the early 1990s when the aerospace industry shrunk, political leaders were looking for a substitute to fuel growth. It was the time of free trade agreements and they seized on capturing imports through the ports of LA and Long Beach. It worked. But one of the consequences was the growing use of diesel trucks, trains, and huge ships spouting smoke and soot to move all those goods. Since the diesel soot is carcinogenic, the risk of cancer along the routes for the goods flowing through the ports is quite high. There is a plan to clean it up, but at a big cost. The current economic troubles will make it difficult and are likely to slow the plan.”

Now for a little university appeciation. As you’ll see when you read the book, Caltech, dawning back from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, was the intellectual center of the smog-discovery galaxy when nobody in all of Southern California could definitely say what was causing Los Angeles’s stinging air-pollution or explain the biochemical and metereological behaviors fanning it. Yesterday, we had the honor of speaking to a roomful of Caltech professors, students and others about what we learned from a social history vantage point. It was exhilirating and appropos, and the folks there asked the insightful questions you’d figure they would. Organing our little trip down there was graduate student Arthur Chan and one of his terrific professors, Dr. Paul Wennberg. After our talk, we were sky-high (and these days you can actually see the sky, not the brown overhang of yesteryear), and doubled our pleasure when we were invited to see a university laboratory housing a modern-day smog chamber. Eyeballing all that shiney equipment measuring and probing particulate matter got your brain buzzing. Yet it was speaking to the bright-eyed, sharp-minded students who help run it that was the most impressive. Our environment will be in fine hands, if the Caltech kids have their moment.

Booklist magazine, which had graced us with a starred review earlier in our launch, recently named Smogtown one of 2009′s best environmental books. We’re humbled to be in the company of such other great books, including Thomas Friedman’s. From the publication:

“A fun book about smog? Jacobs and Kelly capture the aura of 1950s sci-fi movies in this lively history of Los Angeles’ monstrous smog.”

Finally, Los Angeles’ smog-control agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, had its legal hat handed to it after a judge ruled one of its pollution-trading programs, known as Emission Reduction Credits, cannot move forward as planned without further analysis. In Smogtown, we delve fairly deeply, though not exhaustively, into the AQMD’s cornerstone pollution market for large manufacturers commonly referred to as RECLAIM. Stay tuned for a lot more about this!

From one newspaper account about the ERC-defeat, and its background:

“A little-noticed three-month-old Los Angeles court ruling is destined to cause big headaches for Southern California businesses and bring a pair of critical major mountain projects to a halt.

The ruling came in a lawsuit by four environmental groups—the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Communities for a Better Environment, Coalition for a Safe Environment and California Communities Against Toxics. They challenged the environmental review AQMD performed before adopting Rule 1309.1, pertaining to new power plants, and Rule 1315, which set up the emissions bank …

Here’s the Feb. 2 Los Angeles Times story about the situation.

After years of getting the cold shoulder from the Bush Administration, President Obama instead nudged the environmental world toward the intersection of common sense and desperately needed. California and other states now likely will have the right to set their own greenhouse-gas tailpipe standards. Los Angeles Times story link here for your reading pleasure. It’s deja vu for longtimers who wheezed through decades of searing, eye-charring, life-shortening L.A. smog, and saw a ray of sunshine, if not the MIA West Coast sun, when Congress in Novemember 1967 voted to allow the state to establish its own thresholds and limits on smog borne from millions of car tailpipes.

The parallels were so striking that the New York Times asked us to knock out a little something. When the gray lady calls, you get the door. Our book, Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, is not just a local tale of color and chaos. More importantly, when a White House up to its neck in bubble crises makes global warming a priority, perhaps it’s time to savor the achievement and wonder what else might be possible.

From Chip’s Op-ed on the New York Times blog:

“Despite the drumbeat of grim economic news up and down the state, Californians today no doubt are celebrating President Obama’s decision to allow states to enact anti-global warming auto emission standards stricter than federal rules. They’re also in a befuddled state of what-took-so-long deja vu.

For those who don’t remember, thick, noxious, russet-hued air pollution from the 1940s on used to blanket a good part of the Los Angeles area a goodly part of the year. When it dawned on desperate environmental officials here in the late 1960s that California needed to drop the hammer on the politically powerful, sales-oriented car companies by forcing them to slash ozone-forming compounds with regulations far sterner than the national limits, the industry rolled out the same arguments we’ve seen on the greenhouse gas front. “It’s not fair to do this state by state.” “It’ll cost too much.” “It’s technologically infeasible.” “Production chaos isn’t good for consumers.”

No matter how much southern Californians adored their cars, they began seeing the speciousness of these arguments, and that what the automakers seemed to care most about was the yearly sales ledger, not technological improvements that supposedly would drive certain models out of people’s price range. So in 1967, aided by some plucky California politicians, a young Ralph Nader and a well-timed radio documentary titled “A Breath of Death,” about smog’s pernicious stranglehold on the L.A. dream, the state built a congressional coalition with other increasingly polluted states and resisted efforts, primarily led by Representative John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat, to put so-called emission standards on the shelf.

And yes, it’s the same John Dingell! Not that it was easy. Not that the then Big Four automakers and their lobbyists didn’t try everything they could to blunt the attack on their tailpipe waste. Yet when 500,000 pro-waiver letters were dumped on the Capitol steps and dreary pictures of skyline-obliterated Los Angeles went up in the Rotunda, the tide began changing …”

Overlook Press notation.

With all excuses to the 1960s’s feel-good, free-love reveries, the Mamas and the Papas I’m sure they’d be amenable to me using this Youtube blast from the past. Listen closely to the words. What an important day it was. Maybe the Artic, in about 1,000 years, will send us a thank you note as it refrosts.

From the Yahoo story: “… The expertise needed to build a compressed air car, or CAV, is not rocket science, either. Years-old, off-the-shelf technology uses compressed air to drive old-fashioned car engine pistons instead of combusting gas or diesel fuel to create a burst of air to do the same thing. Indian carmaker Tata has no qualms about the technology. It has already bought the rights to make the car for the huge Indian market.

This car leaves the highest-mpg vehicles you can buy right now in the dust. Even if it used only regular gasoline, the air car would average 106 mpg, more than double today’s fuel sipping champ, the Toyota Prius. The air tank also can be refilled when it’s not in use by being plugged into a wall socket and recharged with electricity as the motor compresses air …”

For those interested in a little video, check out this BBC segment about a similar concept car.

Maybe world governments need to start encouraging its citizenry with a renewed effort to buy different types of cars dictated by the type of environment in which they’d run. People living in chronically smoggy lands like Los Angeles should have incentives to purchase ultra-low- or zero-emission models. We already have that in California, where solo-driven hybrids are allowed in carpool lanes and owners receive available tax refunds. Expanding on that idea, clean-running cars like the one above are ideal for short-range city driving. Longer trips and bigger loads could be handled by more traditional automobiles, provided they meet ever-tightening standards for the good old internal combustion engine.

How America got so far behind the curve on all this is a subject we take up in Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. Read it and weep (at opportunity lost). Read it again and get motivated.

For your viewing please here’s a vintage Youtube video on the subject and the MSNBC story about the announcement. The onetime auto giant, now an also-ran giant, can’t decide which of 3 new models to roll out. One is 100 percent electrically powered. However you slice it, this is a big deal, if not a predictable one. Chrysler has no choice. And neither does mighty General Motors and its rivals. Toyota worked harder, longer and more innovatively to be the world leader, and that’s what it is today. In our book, we devote plenty of time to GM’s resistance to de-smogging its shiny products. Automakers sleek-footed manuvering around California’s innovative electric car program some years back also gets bigtime coverage by us, as it should. Anyone want to rekindle the debate about why — in 2008, for goodness sake — even discussing alternatives to the environment-damaging, national-security-imperiling internal combustion engine. For those in the dark, the electric car concept is long in the tooth — 110 years long, that is. If Americans want to shout their demand for a new energy way, an electric car should make their list of models to test-drive. For now, we say bully to Chrysler. You have lots of wasted time to make up.