For days now it has seemed so familiar, but I wasn’t sure why.
It’s prickled at my memory even as it’s prickled my throat and eyes—this haze that has filled the air in a perfect storm of summer heat, smoke from wildfires more than one hundred miles away, and a high-pressure weather system that hasn’t budged in a week.
But this morning, looking at the sky on my drive to work, I finally remembered.
I’ve seen this sky before.
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 60s and 70s—before the EPA was formed and we began to see a positive difference in our air. Before there were laws that protected us from the industries that were there to make our lives “better.” To supply factory jobs, mining or refining jobs, or whatever else was promised us in the way of progress and wealth.
Before the EPA, the Bay Area sky—ashy noons, and orange-tinged suns rising and setting, just like the ones that have begun and ended our days for the last week—was all-too-often a sweeping showcase of smog.
Smoke + fog = smog—or whatever the definition that was first floated on weather forecasts in the late 60s/early 70s when the gunk in the sky gained a name.
Whatever you called it, it looked bad, it smelled bad, and it made people sick—just like the air this week in the Puget Sound!
I remember late summer days when I was in Jr. High, sitting under an ashen sun hung high in a smoky sky at lunch time, or looking out across the bay toward SF at the brownish haze that seemed settled over the city, or watching the searing orange glow of the sunset. I remember learning about this new “weather” phenomenon in science classes, but also hearing that President Nixon had formed a new agency to take care of the problem—to fix the air and the sky before it killed us all.
Now I know that this haze that’s been hanging over our heads for the last week, keeping me inside the house, off the deck in the evenings, and away from my daily noon walks at work because the smoke irritates my eyes and throat, gives me headaches and makes me cough—this haze that has turned the spectacular blue of our Washington summer skies to the pallid hues of my California childhood memory—has not come from industry or too many cars spewing toxic exhaust. But, in spite of its natural origins, it is a reminder of why we cannot allow our hard-won environmental protections to be gutted by an administration that doesn’t “believe” in climate change. That believes in promoting economic interests above the interest of the people who live in our country—the people whom government is supposed to exist to serve.
Now, those of you who know me well know that I typically avoid any conversation that smacks of politics as if it was a python at a child’s birthday party. I have very decided opinions, but I’d really rather not get into them in a public forum (or anywhere, except debates—I mean, lively conversations—with my kids). I really hate arguments! But this time, I’m making an exception. This time, I’m willing to stand up and say that if we don’t do what we have to to protect our air and water, and defend our natural landscapes, no one will do it for us. This week has convinced me that we cannot allow a push for unfettered business decisions that do what’s best for someone’s bottom line, without concern for the bigger picture, to make this week’s “weather” a daily phenomenon. Don’t believe it could happen? Have you seen those pictures of people in Beijing wearing surgical masks to breathe? That is exactly what rolling back environmental protections will get us.
Progress, it ain’t!
The current administration has made it clear that they are determined to undermine those protections—through an executive order that requires two old regulations to be eliminated in order to pass a new one (see section 2). Isn’t that a bit like saying that we have to get rid of all our socks if we need a new pair of shoes? Just because a new problem needs to be addressed cannot be made to mean that an old solution to an old problem—actually, two solutions to two old problems—must be abandoned.
Why shouldn’t we have both?
While I was heartened to read that the US Court of Appeals in D.C. had, In a 2-to-1 ruling, “concluded that the EPA had the right to reconsider a 2016 rule limiting methane and smog-forming pollutants emitted by oil and gas wells but could not delay the effective date while it sought to rewrite the regulation” (Washington Post, July 3, 2017), is that enough? With an administration that has campaign promises to keep—one of which was to eliminate the EPA—can we just wait and see what happens?
Does it matter if the coal industry rises and jobs return again if the few employed coal miners and their families are poisoned by the coal waste infiltrating their drinking water? Not to mention those sickened by the emissions from coal-fired electricity plants.
Are any economic gains that might result from dismantling those environmental protections that work to clean our air and water worth the human cost?
Whether you “believe” in climate change or not, a lack of environmental protections will only lead to more pollution, and more “weather” conditions like the one we’ve experienced this week. And they won’t be temporary conditions like this one that will end whenever the wind finally kicks up, or the rains come.
They might just be forever.
