Transcripts For CSPAN3 Chip 20240705

Growing up in pasadena was great. Its a city known for beauty and for recreation. But we, during the summers especially, would get pummeled by air pollution. In the 1970s, none of us kids realized our parents had been dealing with this for a generation. But we felt it in our lungs. If you were outside for a couple hours playing sam on baseball, whether you had asthma or not, your lungs got constricted, your eyes would tear up, you would get bad headaches. I remember this so clearly. You know, wed be playing baseball or skateboarding, which is a really popular thing. And we come in and it wouldnt be because we fell. Wed come in because we felt so, so ghastly. And my mom, the scientist, would just say, oh, its smog, go lie down. Heres an aspirin and put it down. Washcloth over your forehead, you know, which really didnt do anything for me at all. But this was something that was just a part of our it was like the backdrop of our childhood. July 26, 1943, was was olays pearl harbor. It was on that day, broiling, day in the middle of summer, in the middle of world war two. Los angeles itself is doing well despite occasional fears that theres going to be some warfare here. A fix smog came in. I dont know from what direction, but it got so vicious d acrid that Police Officers directing traffic disappeared. Window washers vanished. It was the beginning of having smog related automobile accidents. It was so bad mothers were dragging their children in the Department Stores to keep them from coughing. And a sort of hysteria built because wed had smog before. Thered been ordinances. There had been commissions. Thered been outcries. But this oneas different. And it was the byproduct of having too many cars and to much combustion in a very High Pressure weather system. Were just kind of parked over the area and stayed and it was so bad the politicians couldnt ignore it and say, you know what . Just give it time. The winds will blow. Well tweak a few smokestacks and things will be normal people. Now, this one was a slap across the face that they were in the beginning of a crisis. Dr. Haugen smit was the man who probably saved Southern California and whose work still echoes today across to the third wod d china, etc. , because he found that air pollution wasnt result of egregious emission coming out of the top of a smokestack, none of which we had in pasadena. It was the result of sulfur coming out of some factory. Its air pollution was the result of having uncovered busted materials coming out of the back of a tailpipe hydrorb ions. Basically that would react in sunlight when nitrogen oxide to produce ozone and other very dangerous chemicals that were that were bad for human health and bad for plant life and everything. It was an incredibly unpopular message for him to say it was tailpipe exhaust. With the famous california side, which had drawn so many millions out here, thats really poisoning the area. But he took he started it all by drawing air into his basement lab at caltech, reducing it to acid, running further, experiment and duplicating his effort public izing it. And it blew minds. I mean, he was in his own nonpartisan way, challenging the might of the Automobile Companies that were the darlings of america. Gm, ford, chrysler, they were the emblems of american grtness across the world. And he was basically saying, you know what . Your cars are killing machines. The problem was, you know, just because you just because you know, the answer doesnt mean you can pack the genie back in the bottle. And it was impossible because even as we were learning, cars were poison in machines, we were building new freeways further ceer car. Er out from the city you know, automobile showrooms were springing up. Gas stations were were just sprouting like weeds. And now, you know, theyre not only selling gas, but theyre given away free, free stuff, you know . So a culture freeway culture was building around los angeles, which had been auto centric building, very wide boulevards, lowering traffic speeds, promoting Department Store signs, all for the car driven lifestyle. So, you know, they were asking us to repudiate the fundamentals that made Southern California life different. So it took a darn long time to get people to go, you know what . Maybe my choices arent great, but they love the bity. They loved the cool vinyl seats and the wind back, you know, and e stylish wing cars and the hood ornament. You know, i mean, we were living in a very car driven world when the car was making people. The beginning of our vanquishing of air pollution really started, i would say, six or seven years after hagen smiths landmark stories and other groups, even the car companies, begrudge really admitting their tailpipe exhaust was the source of the problem. 1960 saw the beginning of the California Legislature requiring cars to have retrofitting equipment. Mufflers, filter doors, those types of this. The legislature got more and more involved. People were dand dying, especially mothers solutions and the big breakthrough came would california won right to impose stricter tailpipe standards on vehicles in state than the rest of the country. Detroit, michigan, led by john dingell, did not like this idea. Other states didnt like this idea, but we banded together with massachusetts, new york. Robert kennedy was instrumental in giving advice, and we won with something called the ah emissions waiver, which gave us this right. The Lyndon Johnson administration also brought an antitrust case against the car makers for conspiring and deceiving and tricking california unions that believe they were working on the problem when really they were just filibustering, delaying and tricking and that kind oended with a whimper. Nixon settled the case, thgh nixon did. It was under nixon that we had the first Clean Air Act and so those that waiver became part of the Clean Air Act. But but through the seventies, as my lungs can attest, growing up, we had a solution, but it didnt mean the remedy was at hand because it just takes a while for technology and Public Acceptance to creep through the, you know, the political ecosystem. The Los Angeles Area still has the worst air pollution in the United States. Its greatly improved, partly because of the Clean Air Act. And there is an environmental ethic in the United States. Its still really bad air. Its not like china, which loses 3000 people a day. But we still left out, lose thousands of people a year prematurely to air quality. Californians as a whole want to be green. They dont want air pollution. They want clean water. They want clean soil. But we have a very passive type of environmentalism. What i mean by that is we allowed our we allow ourselves to be taxed. We allow ourselves to pay for clean air initiatives, public transit, better roads, alternative energy. Every time you fill up your tank, you fill up your car at the gas station. Every time you make a purchase or pay your property tax, you know youre getting hit there. That is whats really propelling environmental progress or keeping things the status quo. Theres not people you now pouring Vegetable Oil under the prius, although we have a lot of electric cars and hybrids here, its it its still only two or 3 of the total driving population. People still mainly drive solo in tirars. We have the worst traffic in the United States to. So in a way we have kind of relied on technol and and levees to do, you know, allow us to feel good about where we are environmentally. You know, theres not people protest. Yes, we recycle. Weve kind of just been programed or conditioned like a rat that this is what the things you have to do if you want to exist in calif. But theres also an independent streak out here that says the two things you dont mess with in california is with a car or somebodys gun. You know, i hate to say it. I dont know. Were still as gun crazy here. But when you start asking people not to drive or to work at home or to carpool, people feel having like their rights invaded. One of the more interesting stories, the l. A. Smog crisis, is when they try to get rid of the backyard incineratowhe people would burn their dry trash and you would think they were asking for peoples firstborns. Now, there was a great tumult and a resistance to doing it. So we have in a way very, you know, unrest and sizable, unreconciled despair of wanting clean air. But rights moving forward. There are a lot of lessons we can learn from ellas experience in the smog chamber. The first one is apply science, use reason, impose logic and reason your first instinct. So blame and judge and execute the first smokestack. You dont like or the first easy solution that somebody whispers into your head. You know, theres reason were america is technological vanguard of the world. And its through calm, you know, application of science. The other lesson is be careful of the culture you build community on and if it seems too good to be true, its false. The idea you could be millions of cars running on internal combustion technology. Zip around without having a consequence was delusional and really dishonest and incredibly dangerous. And thats why we found ourselves in the middle of the fifties. You know, we were building freeways, we green, you know, bigger garages. We were promoting doing car giveaways and. Even a science was saying, you know, this is deleterious to the public health. We have to be very aware of the lifestyles were encouraging people to to accept. If we dont know the consequences, you know . And so los angeles is built on the idea of suburban, freewheeling lifestyle spread out. Now were going the opposite direction, including in pasadena, pasadena embrace the car like nobodys business. Now, pasadena has built so many stucco apartment buildings, you cant see the mountains anymore. You know, maybe thats just the march of progress and understanding, or it just shows that we were shortsighted before, when we were just loving anything you put a key into. We also have to realize, you know, environmentalism, you know, is about relying on technology. It is about, you know, understanding when you every time you you make a purchase, you know, youre paying for the right to live in an area prone to terrible air pollution. Id say the last the last lessons are you know, listen to your mother. You know, when a mother gets upset and sees a child that should be excelling in school but is distracted, is coughing and is lethargic, and theres something going on. Theres something wrong. You know, there shouldnt be air pollution in the year 2002. Native, one of the big lessons i would tell you or one of the one of the scary realities is that we arent making the progress. I think dr. Huggins schmidt would have expected or the world would have expected or our grandparents would have wanted that were still dealing with this not only here, but in other countries in india and the middle east. You know, it is a you know, its a reminder the world has a long q gives me great pleasure to introduce melissa wynne, who is currently marketing Marketing Manager at the