Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
relations in order to consider two case studies. The
first case study considers the London fog disaster
of 1952. The second explores evolving forms
of environmental government in the Florida
Everglades.
appears to have always involved a mix of local and
national action.
Despite the various forms of national and local
legislation that were enacted in order to regulate
air pollution during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, such actions only achieved
limited success. The limited success of such
legislation was the result of two issues. First, it was
very difficult to effectively monitor and then
prosecute corporations that broke air pollution
laws. In large cities it was often very difficult to
attribute smoke production to any given factory.
It was also very difficult for local government
smoke observers to travel across rapidly expanding
urban landscapes, and then to gain suitable vantage
points from which to observe air pollution
activities (see Whitehead, 2009: 37-66) (see
Chapter 3 i
n this volume). Second, early laws on
air pollution tended to only be applied to corporate
rather than domestic premises. The reasons for this
are complex, but clearly had a lot to do with the
strong sense of attachment that people had to coal
fires. George Orwell, for example, once suggested
that coal fires were so much a part of national
identity that they were the 'birthright of free-born
Englishmen' (McNeill, 2000: 66).
It is precisely in this context that we start to see
the challenges that exist to the state when it comes
to governing human-environment relations. At
one level they have to consider the needs of
industry, whose atmospheric polluting activities
produce wealth and employment. At another level,
they must also think of the needs of the public who
are subject to the various ailments that pollution
produces. At yet another level, the British state had
to consider the strong cultural attachments that
people had to the burning of coal in the home, and
the complex system of everyday practices - from
cooking to washing - which had developed around
coal.
The problems of governing air pollution came
to a head in London in December 1952. On 5
December 1952 a thick fog settled over the city.
Cold weather conditions in early December
resulted in the burning of high levels of coal within
7.4 GOVERNING THE AIR: THE
CASE OF THE LONDON FOG
DISASTER
7.4.1 Fog and social chaos
London is no stranger to the problems of air
pollution. Ever since the 1307 Royal Proclama-
tion, which forbade the burning of sea coal, state
authorities have been involved in a constant
struggle to regulate the quality of the air in the city
(see
Chapter 3).
During the rapid industrial-
ization of the city in the nineteenth century
the situation deteriorated. Chemical effluents
produced from the alkali industry mixed with the
soot and sulphur produced by the burning of
coal in industrial and domestic premises to create
what came to be known as 'pea-soupers'. What is
interesting about early attempts to monitor and
regulate urban air pollution in the UK was that they
involved both the local and national state. During
the nineteenth century, many British cities formed
urban corporations that, through local taxes,
provided the first forms of publically provisioned
sanitation and health care (this had previously been
provided by private organizations and charities)
(see Whitehead, 2009: 44). An important part of
the work of urban corporations was to monitor
and regulate atmospheric emissions. Police officers
and health inspectors could thus be seen routinely
traversing cities in order to monitor, and at times
prosecute, atmospheric felons. Over time, sanitary
authorities became responsible for enforcing
national legislation on smoke nuisance and public
health. Local sanitary authorities did, however,
pass their own laws on air pollution and develop
their own innovative ways of enforcing restrictions
on atmospheric effluvia (see Mosley, 2001). To
these ends, governing the British atmosphere
