Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
nificantly limited sales, and consumers have absorbed the costs of emissions-
control equipment. Another cost of cleaner air that has been sloughed off
onto the consumer has been the time and money expended in passing an
emissions test every 2 years in order to renew a car or truck's registration.
California's vehicle inspection system has not always been a model of either
efficiency or consistency, but there has been no widespread revolt against it.
Again, we see that elements of a technological fix are more likely to be
implemented when they have at least tacit political support.
THE FUTURE OF SMOG IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
As with most things, efforts to reduce vehicular emissions are subject to
diminishing returns. Thanks to the improvements noted above, cars and
light trucks are much cleaner than they were 20 years ago. Even so, the
region still has the worst air in the United States. In 1989 the regional
agency responsible for smog reduction, the South Coast Air Quality Man-
agement District, released an Air Quality Management Plan that would
have required massive changes in ensuing years, such as having 40 percent
of all passenger vehicles powered by methanol or electricity, while at the
same time reducing the number of vehicle-miles traveled to the 1985 level.
Loud protests accompanied the plan, which subsequently went through a
number of revisions that diluted its proposed mandates.Yet if reducing smog
in 1989 was problematic, it is even more so today and will be into the
future. The population of California now numbers nearly 33 million. The
state has nearly 17 million cars and light trucks, more than one for every
two inhabitants.
11
According to recent projections, California will have up
to 45 million people by 2020, and a large percentage of that increased pop-
ulation will be located in Southern California. Under these circumstances,
just holding the line on air pollution will be difficult; making the skies
cleaner will pose Herculean technical and political problems. Engineers,
politicians, bureaucrats, and the citizenry will encounter many challenges
down the road—or should I say the freeway?
NOTES
1. On the chemistry of smog formation, see Robert Jennings Heinsohn and
Robert Lynn Kabel,
Sources and Control of Air Pollution
(Prentice-Hall, 1999),
281-313.
