Ehrlich 1969 : ‘Curtain of Smog’ May Bring Famine

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13 Responses to Ehrlich 1969 : ‘Curtain of Smog’ May Bring Famine

  1. Ed Darrell says:

    Of course, listening to Ehrlich (and dozens of others), Congress passed the Clean Air Act.

    Sound science led to sound policy, and we averted the disaster.

    So, your point was to give kudos to Ehrlich? You wish to point out we should pay careful attention to scientists?

    • Ehrlich’s mindless exaggerations were not helpful.

      Clean air and air pollution have been public issues for centuries. In 1306 King Edward I of England issued a proclamation banning the use of sea coal in London due to the smoke it caused. Over the next few centuries, additional efforts were made in Great Britain to reduce the amount of smoke in the air. The first attempt to control air pollution in the United States occurred during the industrial revolution. The cities of Chicago and Cincinnati enacted clean air legislation in 1881. Subsequently, other cities, towns, and regions slowly began enforcing their own clean air policies. At the beginning of this century, the Bureau of Mines, under the Department of the Interior, created an Office of Air Pollution to control smoke emissions, but the office was soon eliminated due to inactivity. During the late 1940s serious smog incidents in Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania raised public awareness and concern about this issue once again. In 1955, the government decided that this problem needed to be dealt with on a national level. The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955, was the first in a series of clean air and air quality control acts which are still in effect and continue to be revised and amended.

      http://www.ametsoc.org/sloan/cleanair/index.html

      • Ed Darrell says:

        Yes, clean air has been a concern. Action on clean air in the early 1970s, however, did not occur in a vacuum, nor as an unbroken cascade of events from 1306 unaffected by complaints from the 1960s version of Steve Goddard who argued no action was necessary.

        The Donora, Pennsylvania disaster, the London Killer Fog, the Los Angeles smog events, etc., added to the urgency. Writings, and accurate warnings, from people like Paul Ehrlich, mobilized citizens to write their congressmen and get action. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

      • Ed Darrell says:

        Steve, you’re way out of your depth. Clean air, and the Four Corners Power Plant, are topics I know a bit about. There is a direct connection between the public opinion mustered by Paul Ehrlich’s writings (and the writings of others) and the Clean Air Act of 1970 and Clean Air Amendments of 1977, enough that a claim Ehrlich’s writing had no role is a serious misrepresentation of history and the legislative processes of the time.

      • suyts says:

        Ed, you seem to be crediting the “boy who cried wolf” for the townspeople assigning watchmen over the flock. Very strange.

    • Mike Davis says:

      P E was trying to ride the gravy train by mimicking Chicken Little and he still is!

    • Paul in Sweden says:

      “”It’s really the best of all possible worlds,” said Mary Uhl, the New Mexico Environment Department’s air quality bureau chief.

      Department officials, industry representatives and members of the environmental community have been abuzz since Monday, when Arizona’s largest utility company announced plans to shutter part of the Four Corners Power Plant and seek majority ownership of its remaining two generating units from Southern California Edison.

      Arizona Public Service Company said its plan would reduce the plant’s environmental footprint, ensure affordable power for its customers and prevent layoffs among a largely Navajo work force.
      http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9JD9P2O0.htm

      Gosh, we really must have these people consult with leaders in the auto-industry. Each time the auto industry closes plants…people lose jobs.

      hmmm will closing power plants to reduce CO2 emissions effect the availability of electricity or does CO2 magic take care of that also?

  2. Ed Darrell says:

    By the way, can you explain to us what happened to the more than $1 billion/year cut flower industry in Pasadena, California, and its neighboring communities? The Rose Bowl Parade used to show off the products of local flower producers.

    Got a clue what happened to them? Any reason that the pollution that wiped out the flower industry couldn’t seriously affect other agriculture?

    • Paul in Sweden says:

      Ed,

      Wake up and smell the roses – and all the other flowers that are used in the Rose Bowl parade.

      Globalization effected the flower market just as it did the textile and manufacturing industries.

      Californians & parade sponsors want to see all the worlds flowers.

      Festooned to the floats are an estimated 20 million flowers transported from around the world in aircraft and trucks: orchids from Asia; dried everlasts from Africa; roses from Colombia and other South American countries; and tulips from Holland.
      […]
      But California growers are quick to point out that their home-grown ingredients have been forsaken for energy-intensive but still less expensive imports. Those flowers became increasingly available after 1991, when the United States struck a trade agreement with Colombia and Ecuador in an effort to curtail cultivation and processing of coca for cocaine. That gave cut-flower farmers and floral exporters duty-free access to the U.S. market, where 70% of flowers sold now hail from Colombia, according to the California Cut Flower Commission.

      http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/31/local/la-me-parade-green-20101231

  3. Ed Darrell says:

    Globalization effected the flower market just as it did the textile and manufacturing industries.

    Globalization, sure — but globalization wasn’t the culprit in the 1940s and 1950s. It was ozone killed the flower industry in the Los Angeles basin. Several pollutants mar the blossoms, turn ’em brown and spotted.

    In 1991 U.S. flower growers got hammered by the trade agreement. It had no effect in the Los Angeles Basin, however, because air pollution had wiped out that industry there, decades earlier.

    You could look it up, but you’ll probably need a library and not just the internet.

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