Notes From the Plague Years
Have you noticed how blue the skies are these days? How far you can see? How quiet the world around us is?
Nice. It took me a few days to notice the pleasant change, and another day or two to account for it. It was the lockdown: no planes to stain the atmosphere with spent fuel, few cars to spew their pollutants into our breathing passages. This would have been the way earth was before the Industrial Revolution. Real nice!
I remember the 1950s as a young reporter in downtown L.A. breathing smog so dense you could actually taste it.
A Los Angeles Times photograph of not-so-scenic downtown Los Angeles in 1955.
But progressive California took action against air pollution and over the years became the world leader in curbing such pollutants as unburnt hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen; the air quality improved considerably, though not to the degree we’ve seen the last few days.
Then I read Wednesday’s news that President Trump has rolled back auto emissions standards imposed by Obama in 2012 that required automakers to average 54 miles per gallon of gas by 2025. Trump dropped it to 40. It is estimated that such a standard would pump nearly a billion more tons of carbon dioxide into our already-warming atmosphere. The is merely the latest in a three-year effort by Trump to undo regulations reducing smog, particulate matter, and greenhouse gasses into the air we breathe.
As you know, Trump doesn’t believe in global warming. But he does believe in revenge. His latest action targets both President Barack Obama, who pushed passage of the clean-air law, and California, which rejected him in the 2016 election by a hefty margin of 4,269,9078 votes. (Wow! What a thrashing.)
I’m starting to wonder which is the greater threat to the Golden State, the Coronavirus plague or the Stable Genius. And I must wish success to California as it leads some 20 states in fighting the Trump’s rollback in the courts…possibly all the way to the Supreme Court.
’Til then, I’ll enjoy the soundless blue skies…until doomsday arrives, and I have to climb up to my cross and sing that wise ditty those Monty Python guys gave us: “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.”