I remember the acrid smell produced by the coal fired power plant which I, then aged 16, was under orders by my (German) government to defend, should the Allies decide one day to attack it. They never did and I wasted a year practising at the vertical controls of my 88mm gun. I now think that the Allies decided not to bomb the power plant because it was more efficient to let it continue to poison the neighborhood, a sort of reverse chemical warfare.
When the war ended and I was no longer an enemy I found it very easy to become a friend of the United States. I moved to California in the Fifties, only to be choked by the pervasive and equally acrid smell of Los Angeles smog.
So I do know something about air pollution, and also how miserable it was to drive my employer’s, the Gas Company’s, truck day by day all across Los Angeles County, wedged in by big rig stinky Diesels. Back “in those days” we just worried about our lungs. In the meantime we have found out that it is more of a global problem, that it is not just the smell, but perhaps the ozone layer and hard to reverse global climate change that should concern us. We now know about hydrofluorocarbons, diesel exhaust, black carbon, and tons of methane from dairy farms and feed lots.
When I say “we” of course I don’t mean everybody. There is a solid body of citizens and politicians who deny that all this is real, that it may be just fake news, or as some say outright, that it is all “bull”.
Well, I have it from good authority: the Regulators at the Air Resources Board are recommending that we target, specifically, methane emissions from cow manure. I always suspected that the bulls were getting a bad rap.
(c) 2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman