City of swans, that is us.
From a vantage point of the world, Los Angeles may look like a place gliding peacefully under the beautiful sun.
But we know better. We know that underneath, we’re trying desperately to keep going – sometimes, even to stay on water.
Right now, especially right now, we are working hard, very hard, to regain our position mojo. When two of our communities were completely destroyed by fire, we were treated very badly. Our legendary powers of invention and reinvention are being mightily tested, and yet, to use Maya Angelou’s phrase, we rise – most of the time.
“Smoglandia,” my podcast and column series, which runs online here (hyperlink) and in print for four days starting Sunday, takes a look at a historical giant return model. It’s a slow-moving success story that has made L.A.’s air, if not spotless, but at least livable.
We achieved this sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes at the ballot box, sometimes by following rules made and enforced by politicians and policy-makers, like smog checks and carpool lanes, and sometimes by letting science and technology do their thing.
Can we still do big things? Can we solve our own disasters? There are many such examples in our rearview mirror past.
There is some work of nature. The 1933 Long Beach earthquake, magnitude 6.4, killed over a hundred people, but it also made seismic safety a necessity throughout the state. After the 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994, seismic retrofitting became a rule for many buildings, not an option.
Some disasters are created by human hands. Our two modern civil disturbances, or riots – whatever we call them – in 1965 and 1992 were a major blow to decades of oppression and inequities in public institutions, harsh and racist policing of people of color.
A drought cycle that began decades ago has forced Southern Californians on a “water diet” indoors and out. Water technology has made us passive water savers with devices like low-flush toilets, without much sacrifice or awareness on our part. Even though there are more than a million people living in LA, the city uses about the same amount of water as it did 40 years ago.
When it comes to smog, let’s not congratulate ourselves too much; It was technology that did the heavy lifting, not requiring much sacrifice or change in our behavior. Cleaner cars have worked wonders in getting rid of photochemical smog, while all we need to do is buy one.
Caltech biochemist Arie Hagen-Smit, “Dr. Hagen-Smog”, who proved the link between cars and smog, put forward the psychology of the crisis 50 years ago, saying, “The public wants clean air. Yes, they want clean air – if they don’t have to go to a lot of trouble.”
A Los Angeles hiker wears only a slightly cartoonish gas mask in the battle of smog, October 2, 1966.
(Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection/Los Angeles Public Library)
The problem at this moment is man-made, and it comes primarily from President Trump, who makes no secret of his dislike of anything California.
Los Angeles has gotten a pretty good handle on the smoke from cars, and it has turned its attention to other sources — heavy trucks and cargo ships in ports, and even the pollution from cooking emissions from L.A.’s groovy restaurant scene.
And that’s the moment Trump put the brakes on nearly 70 years of bipartisan federal waivers that allow states to set strict air pollution standards — and make the state’s air cleaner and safer. Trump also blocked the state from pursuing an ambitious long-range plan to retire diesel trucks and gasoline-fueled cars. And he’s doing again what he did in his first term: reversing fuel-economy standards for cars, which could put larger and more polluting vehicles on our roadways again.
In this, too, California is leading the way: At least 10 other states have joined California’s lawsuit against the president, whom Governor Gavin Newsom called a “wholly owned subsidiary of big polluters.”
“Smoglandia” is a great California yarn, and its ending is still unwritten.
