With Every Breath We Take
With Every Breath We Take
When I moved to LA in the 70s, I could see and taste the air most days. And it was never birthday cake flavored like one of today’s delicious vape concoctions. During runs on the Westside and on the beach in Santa Monica – where the air was supposedly “clean”- I often felt like I could hack up a lung or two.
I’m all for a free market, but I find images of people in the city walking around with scarves covering their mouths to filter the dirty air repugnant. Do we really need to create and maintain a world that is that filthy to show the rest of the globe how industrious we are? Even China seems to be getting over that, isn’t it?
The population of the Golden State was just over 20 million in 1978. Then, the air was so lousy that everyone standing over 10 feet away looked like they were softly lit actors behind a flattering gauze filter. The downside: asthma and hacking coughs were more common than gluten intolerance.
Today, the California population is almost 40 million. With about a zillion more cars on the road. Despite the huge population and vehicle influx into the State, vehicle and industrial emissions controls have lead to much cleaner air here. Now, those same people standing 10 feet away need to visit an actual soundstage or a plastic surgeon to get that lovely gauzy look while eating their gluten-free Tate’s chocolate chip cookies.
The air isn’t perfect now, but at least we can breathe most days. And the clearer air allows us to actually notice the crow’s feet and bad dye jobs when we see them – even at 10 feet or more away. Plus, it’s a lot nicer to be able to take a deep breath and not to feel like hacking up a lung!
In the next ten years, California alone will add at least 10 million more residents and almost as many additional cars to its roads. Even the so-called zero emission cars require a fair amount of conventionally produced, pollution-causing energy to charge their batteries. If we just hold the line on innovations in energy conservation methods, we could be looking at the return of regular breath-stealing, bottom-line costing smog alerts in California. And that’s not considering the dozens of other American cities and States with escalating smog problems of their own.
President Trump, please don’t push for relaxing gradual mileage requirement improvements and air pollution control standards to try to bump up the economy. You won’t be around that much longer compared to younger generations, but they’ll be paying that bill well into the future after you are long gone.
Let the car companies, industry and the oil companies continue to challenge its engineers to help make the environment cleaner and cleaner so our kids and grandkids will grow up healthy enough to graduate, to learn and to earn enough money to buy the cool new vehicles and fantastic things they’ll make that will be even better and more efficient than they are today. Don’t shortchange their future and cloud all of our lungs simply for a short-term bottom line boost. Even your kids and grandkids will breathe easier for it.
My guess is, if you give in to the special interests unconcerned about degrading the environment, many people unnecessarily will develop illnesses caused by the fouled conditions. Costs will shift to providing healthcare to people living with and dying from the chronic health issues created as a result of this pollution.
Long after a handful of corporate chiefs have pocketed and forgotten their negligible extra earnings created by relaxing the established standards, the nation’s dirtier environment will simply serve to smudge your legacy.
Or, you can confound your critics, do the opposite, and take the credit that you will justly earn.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-fuel-economy-20180802-story.htmlhttp://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-obama-smog-20150803-htmlstory.html
Comments
Post a Comment