* The startling picture of smogged out L.A. was the cover shot for a Wired magazine feature story about Southern California’s epic fight for blue skies against it’s own people’s auto addiction. They were gracious to highlight our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, and interviewed me. Here’s a little blurb:
“… People in Los Angeles were very proud of their air,” said Chip Jacobs, one of the authors of Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Smog in Los Angeles. “They said that L.A. was the land of pure air, and that moving there could cure tuberculosis and alcoholism. They thought there had to be one simple answer.” The day after the first big smog, city officials pointed to the Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Street Plant as the source of the thick cloud. The facility manufactured an ingredient in synthetic rubber called butadiene. Public pressure temporarily shut down the Aliso Street Plant, but the smog episodes continued to get even worse. Undeterred, Los Angeles Mayor Fetcher Bowron announced in August that there would be “an entire elimination” of the problem within four months. But the search for the culprit of the “gas attacks” — and the ensuing battle to curb the culprit’s emissions — was just beginning …”
* An interesting MSNBCpiece about scientists’ progress in creating artificial lungs. Gosh, L.A. would be the perfect test city.
” … Nearly 400,000 people die of lung diseases each year in the United States alone, according to the American Lung Association, and lung transplants are far too rare to offer much help. But how to replicate these spongy organs? Niklason’s team stripped an adult rat’s lung down to its basic structural support system, its scaffolding, to see if it would be possible to rebuild rather than start completely from scratch …”
* For now, forget using the prospect of a green-jobs bonanza to convince Congress and the American public to support the national climate bill stalling in Washington, D.C. From the L.A. Timesblog.
* Speaking of cap-and-trade, California and other regions, though not the first ones envisioned, may enact their own greenhouse market. Good luck getting voters to support it in this jobless recovery or keeping fraud at bay. From the L.A. Timesstory.
“As the nation’s most populous state and the world’s eighth-largest economy, California wields significant influence. International and national controls are needed to curb global warming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday, “but California and the rest of the Western Climate Initiative partners are not waiting to take action.”
” … The Western initiative would cut emissions 15% below 2005 levels. It would transition the region to “a green economy that will reduce our dependency on oil, increase our energy security and create jobs and investment now,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. The trading program would allow companies to meet targets by purchasing less expensive “offsets” from forests, agriculture or garbage dumps when companies in those sectors store carbon dioxide beyond what they would have emitted in the normal course of business …”
* I’ve probably written a dozen stories about L.A.’s unheralded crisis with deadly hexavalent chromium (otherwise known as “chrome-six,” or the Erin Brockovich chemical) creeping and moving through its acquifiers and land. In 2004, I did a series about it for Southland Publshing and in 2000 I covered the subject for the L.A. Times. Unfortunately, the problem is getting worse. Here’s the L.A. Daily Newscoverage (and the Daily News deserves lots of credit for its mid-1990s stories on chrome-six related to Lockheed Corp; I was lucky to have on the team that wrote about it). With all the focus on greenhouse gases and the drought, we’ve all forgotten about a deadly industrial poison spreading through wells and leaving local officials with tricky decisions to make.
“Metropolitan Los Angeles, extending to Riverside and Long Beach, remains the smoggiest city in the United States, with an average of more than 140 days a year of dangerous ozone levels, the American Lung Assn. reported Wednesday in its annual assessment.
All of the nation’s 10 smoggiest counties are in California, with San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern, Tulare and Los Angeles leading the pack. And the state’s cities and counties, with their ports, refineries, power plants and crowded freeways, rank near the top for particle pollution.
“This is not just a nuisance or a bother,” said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, the lung association’s California policy director. “Thousands of people are being rushed to emergency rooms. Thousands of people are dying early as a result of air pollution…. It is a crisis.”
The report comes at a time of conflict over the state’s efforts to slash emissions. Citing the recession-battered economy, trucking and construction firms are seeking to delay California’s rules to limit diesel pollution from operating big-rigs, forklifts and other equipment …”
Let Freddie Mercury reinforce the point: We are the champions … of smog … mostly by our own making!
* Excellent perspective on the phoniness and promise of Earth Day from the Washington Post. Link.
* California Solar Initiative: billions on the line, millions of lives potentially at stake, and yet most are in the dark. For your enlightenment, link up. California: meet Spain. Link to New York Times story on their solar-lifestyle.
*Boeing scientists use organic remedies to remove toxins at Santa Susana Field Laboratory site. Enough said with the L.A. Daily News headline. Link.
*When it comes to long distance running, L.A.’s toxically perfumed air give local athletes that competitive edge. Coughing will knock you off that medal stand. See the L.A. Marathon. Link to L.A. Times blog.
* An EPA man of substance: where was this guy when I was reporting on chromium, et al? Link from the Patt Morrison radio show on KPCC.
* Now this is a real-mini, but will the Third World embrace it in the name of post-climate change and unglamorous function. At least GM is trying, which is better than wallowing in bankruptcy blues. Link to MSNBC story.
* A couple of morsels on California’s climate law, which right now is anything but orderly. L.A. Times story on opponents pouring in money for initiative to delay the climate-change-fighting legislation. Link. On the same subject of global warming, here’s what the California Air Resources Board projects will be the economic benefits of the bill. Link to L.A. Times piece.
for every crisis there’s opportunity, and for every group of downtrodden people there are those who use ingenuity, generosity and a some competitive fire to make life better for those in desperate need. In L.A., we’re talking about the hundreds of thousands who go hungry and a terrific charity that deserves forests (whoops) err PC-worths of bytes. We’re talking CANSTRUCTION. Watch the video or hit their website and give what you can or conjure up what up you should. No human should EVER go hungry. Nope, not a single one.
Because of the holidays and my crazy schedule, I’m just now posting this. PR extraordinaire Julie Taylor told me in December about this event, which she is deeply involved in, and is worthy of some praise herself for her benevolence.
Here’s a link to the group’s website. One can CAN make a difference. Read up and you’ll see.
From the story titled, Electrical pollution from cell phones and WiFi may be hazardous
“In 1990, the city of La Quinta, CA, proudly opened the doors of its sparkling new middle school. Gayle Cohen, then a sixth-grade teacher, recalls the sense of excitement everyone felt: “We had been in temporary facilities for 2 years, and the change was exhilarating.”
But the glow soon dimmed.
One teacher developed vague symptoms — weakness, dizziness — and didn’t return after the Christmas break. A couple of years later, another developed cancer and died; the teacher who took over his classroom was later diagnosed with throat cancer. More instructors continued to fall ill, and then, in 2003, on her 50th birthday, Cohen received her own bad news: breast cancer … ”
This one falls under the environmental “Duh” category. Can you believe that Chinese smog drifts over the Pacific Ocean, adding to the West Coast’s pollution problem. It’s only a phenomenon that’s been heavily reported for years, and makes it way into our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution In Los Angeles based on a 2005 Wall Street Journal story. Well, the L.A. Times is catching up. Hooray. They can use a “recent study” to explain why they’re just awakening to a seriously scary pattern of atmospheric assault. Story link.
“Ozone from Asia is wafting across the Pacific on springtime winds and boosting the amount of the smog-producing chemical found in the skies above the Western United States, researchers said in a study released Wednesday.
The study, published in the journal Nature, probes a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists in the last decade: Ground-level ozone has dropped in cities thanks to tighter pollution controls, but it has risen in rural areas in the Western U.S., where there is little industry or automobile traffic.
The study, led by Owen R. Cooper, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, examined nearly 100,000 observations in the free troposphere — the region two to five miles above ground — gathered from aircraft, balloons and ground-based lasers.
It found that baseline ozone — the amount of gas not produced by local vehicles and industries — has increased in springtime months by 29% since 1984. The study has important implications both for the curbing of conventional pollution that damages human health and for controls on greenhouse gases that are changing the planet’s climate, experts said.”
Finally, Bill gets a little digital ink in the Huffington Post with a book review about the Southwest’s perennial drought. That silky prose dances on the page.
The new year could well ignite fireworks anew over the Anne Sholtz caper, a story we showcase in our book Smogtown and in Chip’s freelance articles about her intriguing case. It’s a tangled, air-pollution market story involving fraud, red flags, the CIA, a secretive prosecution and much more, with sticky lessons for the carbon market Pres. Obama wants enacted nationally. So far officials at Southern California’s smog-fighting agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, hasn’t wanted to acknowledge that their cap-and-trade, known acronymistically as RECLAIM, has been vulnerable to white-collar troubles, and the U.S. Dept. of Justice-L.A. office still probably wishes their mixed-bag prosecution of Sholtz went the way of Compuserve. As George Bush I would say, “Not gonna happen.” Probably.
From the Wall St. Journal/Dow Jones New Service story:
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. legislators have obtained a court order unsealing documents in a case involving a multi-million-dollar cap-and-trade fraud.
Republican legislators say the records–due to be opened to the public in early January–could shed light on the potential challenges of policing a new, trillion-dollar commodities market that would be created under climate legislation that Congress is considering.
In a rare filing by House lawyers, Reps. Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Greg Walden (R., Ore.), the ranking members respectively of the Energy Committee and the Oversight Subcommittee, asked a federal district court in California to unseal all the closed records regarding the successful prosecution for fraud of Anne Masters Sholtz, a former California Institute of Technology economist.
Lawmakers say Sholtz’s case could expose the weaknesses of a federal cap-and- trade system because it involved the same market mechanism meant to cut emissions …”
Be forewarned there are a lot of errors in these Republicans’ understanding of Sholtz’s case. It involved cap and trade for two smog-forming chemicals unrelated to global warming, and did NOT involve counterfeit credits. However, the federal case against Sholtz did NOT even mention an earlier action involving 500,000 in RECLAIM credits that allegedly bankrolled a CIA-associated currency repatriation effort. See here for that.
For more on this story, here is Rep. Barton’s comments about it and the judicial order lifting the veil of secrecy thrown over many of the case’s key documents.
“The top cops in Europe say carbon-trading has fallen prey to an organized crime scheme that has robbed the continent of $7.4 billion — a massive fraud that lawmakers and energy experts say should send a “red flag” to the U.S., where the House approved cap-and-trade legislation over the summer amid stiff opposition.
In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe’s cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.
“These criminal activities endanger the credibility of the European Union Emission Trading System and lead to the loss of significant tax revenue for governments,” Rob Wainwright, Europol’s director, said in a statement …”
“Jane Goodall, the champion of chimpanzees, knelt Monday over a newly planted sticky monkey flower and kissed its leaves for good luck.
She had come to Calabasas to tour a restoration project at the headwaters of the Los Angeles River. But as luck would have it, the sticky monkey flower had yet to be planted.
So the world-renowned primatologist and conservationist knelt, grabbed a handful of soil and sunk the plant into the earth.
While she travels all over the world to talk about the importance of conservation and environmental responsibility, Goodall said it all comes down to a very simple message: One flower planted on a hillside can evolve into a global movement.
“I’ve visited these types of restoration projects all over the world, and it always amazes me how Mother Nature restores herself,” Goodall said …”
Global warming:
* The latest on President Obama’s energy bill, and the politics of cap and trade. It’s about the mighty benjamin. Washington Post story.
* A still frightening Washington Post story about how fast temperatures may rise this century.
* Aspens dying off from global warming. Sounds pretty familiar to Ponderosa Pines and smog. This time we’re smarter, right? Story link from the L.A. Times.
* EPA cracking down on coal-fired power plants. Story.
Odds and ends, green-style:
* Terrifiic piece of enviro. investigative reporting. Gosh, what a connect. From a New York Times piece of late.
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
“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.
Here’s a description and other details about this sweet honor, which was presented to us and other writers on Saturday, Oct. 5 by the city of Santa Monica:
The Green Prize is intended to “encourage and commend authors, illustrators, and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden public awareness of sustainability. The City of Santa Monica’s Sustainable City Plan defines sustainability as “meeting current needs – environmental, economic, and social – without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same.”
Did I mention how tickled we are to be receiving this, particularly on top of the other awards we’ve fortunate enough to collect? If not, thank you SANTA MONICA!
“If you think the air is bad in Los Angeles right now, you probably didn’t live there for much of the past century. When the thick, view-obscuring gray haze first appeared in the city on July 26th, 1943, nobody knew quite what to think of it. Was some factory suddenly spewing tons of pollution in to the air? Was it some kind of chemical attack? Citizens of this Southern California city didn’t yet realize the cost of their own modernized lifestyle, wherein practically every single resident owned their own vehicle.
“Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles” by Chip Jacobs and William Kelly tracks the smog invasion of LA from the first moment it arrived through the many efforts to combat it. This might not sound too exciting – especially for people who aren’t hardcore environmentalists interested in every detail of our nation’s struggle with pollution – but you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that 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”.
Of course, we all know how this story ends. Air pollution is still a major concern in Los Angeles, and despite knowing that the automobile is the source, LA is still crawling with cars and lacking a decent public transit system. But don’t let that stop you from giving this lively story a read. It’s got sex, plenty of Hollywood glamour, scandal, and murder – but never falters in its brilliant coverage of an incredibly important environmental issue …”
