Air quality improving in California
By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times
Despite a threefold increase in people and cars in the last 50 years, California’s strict vehicle emissions standards have managed to significantly clear the state’s air, according to new research.
The study also found that Southern California’s air chemistry has changed for the better. The amount of organic nitrates in the atmosphere — which cause smog’s eye-stinging irritation — has drastically fallen off, according to federal researchers.
Ozone and other pollutants have been monitored in the state since the 1960s. Since then the population in Southern California has tripled, as has the number of cars on the road. Nevertheless, tailpipe emissions have decreased.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado led the research, which analyzed decades of data and collected air samples from overflights in 2010.
The researchers credited the state’s stringent emissions standards with bringing about the pollution reductions, although they note that automobiles remain the dominant emissions source in Los Angeles.
This is good news and could be one reason that people are choosing to live and retire in cites again — as opposed to suburbs and resort communities. Nationally, crime is also down in big cities, and new transit improvements allow people to move around their home towns without automobiles. California cities in particular are “greening” as they mature, and are more attractive to people of all ages. I wonder what percentage of Tahoe residents are “urban refugees” from days gone by? Count me in that cohort.
These successful gov’t environmental regulations that were so despised by the people that have been WRONG their entire lives are one of the reasons that California has a chance for a future… and the ideas they support of the TeaBagJebus profiteers in Texas et al.? …not so much.
Man there are some bizarre rants on this blog! But I don’t know anyone, and I know Conservatives, Liberals & Moderates, that likes to see cars, trucks, busses or factories pumping filth into the air!
As a lifelong Californian, improved air quality is a very good thing! And if you look at the actual record, every CA Gov., of both political parties, since the 50’s, has worked to improve the air quality!
Just love to know, (and I’ve asked this previously on this site) what those that see certain global environmental issues out there would do to get places like Beijing, Shanghai, Calcutta and Minsk, to stop, (in an enforceable way) pumping pollutants into the atmosphere?!
No GOP candidate for Governor of California since the 50’s could ever get elected or remain in office without cooperating with or at least paying lip service to the environmental movement. Without the votes of moderates, independents and single-issue voters there is no chance for victory in this state. The ultra-conservative base of the electorate has always rabidly opposed the air quality measures discussed in this article and to this day fights to chip away at them every chance they get. Pretending this isn’t true is disingenuous at best. These are the people I was referring to. That’s not bizarre, that’s political reality.
And in answer to your question about what you call “certain global environmental issues” I would suggest that it would be stupid for Americans to avoid a leadership role in addressing these problems just because other countries will not. Sooner rather than later the entire planet will have to face up to it.