Southern California just saw its longest streak of bad air in decades
latimes.com
latimes.com
Ships come into Long Beach, the containers are offloaded, the trucks begin a lumbering journey to points East. Belching all the way.
I'm not making up the claim. California rules put in place over ten years ago had trucks retrofitted or whatever, and this change to TRUCKS ONLY was like removing 30 MILLION cars from California roads. There are not 30 million trucks in California, though sometimes it appears so.
There are "clean trucks" requirements, but that can be enforced only in the immediate vicinity of the port. I don't have a source but there have been reports that the clean trucks shuttle back and forth between the port and nearby places where the cargo can be transferred to other trucks.
Any citation on that? The article itself says the peak of pollution isn't as high, just the longevity. The article also mentions climate change modifying weather patterns which could be a contributor. As someone who lived in LA you're always preying for rain to wash out ash or smog from nearby fires (which seem more common) or pollution and precipitation has been rarer over the past few years.
No doubt reducing pollution (and trucks have been a huge contributor) will help, but since you mentioned Long Beach, boats have very few regulations and burn giant amounts of the lowest-quality fuel.
An addition, a bunch of recent studies I've seen over the past few years show that up to 30% of the air pollution on the west coast comes from Asia.
It just seems like something that should be addressed on multiple fronts and with things objectively getting worse, every bit helps.
I used to work for air pollution regulators. I don’t have the citations but I’ve seen the presentations.
Once was enough.
By making the tax small and gradual, everybody can PLAN around the fact that gas is going up instead of the dislocation from when gasoline prices whipsaw.
The problem is that we have zero political will to do this. People will attack the gas tax instead of attacking the lack of transportation options.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/jpube-v...
as for the tax being regressive, we could provide a tax credit for low-income/low-wealth folks. even better if we could figure out a way to calculate (differential) tax on-the-fly at the pump.
LA has started rolling out blueLA, electric cars rentable by the minute, in low-income neighborhoods. it's not a complete solution, but it helps.
For only automobiles, possibly.
But a slow and consistent increase in petroleum price incentivizes the trucking industry as well.
And, as the article points out, the trucking industry is responsible for huge pollution hotspots near the ports.
Before you think that's isn't possible, it's not uncommon for a semi to have a range of 2000 miles.[1]
1 - https://www.quora.com/What’s-the-average-range-for-a-diesel-...
A tax on gas doesn't solve the surrounding geography.
Emissions in LA have plummeted since the 1970s, but while air quality has improved in that time, it has not improved as fast as the drop in emissions would predict based on other cities. That's because of the surrounding geography - air pollution gets trapped there and doesn't clear out as easily.
And already the highest priced in the US
The problem here is that we implicitly (and sometimes not so implicitly) subsidize the infrastructure for cars and the moment you try to start making that subsidy explicit everybody loses their minds.
The primary issue, as people have pointed out, is that gasoline taxes tend to have a regressive effect and hit the poorest the worst. To make matters even more complicated, the poorest also tend to have the oldest cars that pollute the worst--so letting them completely off the hook isn't really a valid solution, either.
With a few of the recent fires to the north of SF we've also had the charming situation in the South Bay of ocean breezes blowing the smoke from the fires over us... it was blowing down the cost offshore of SF, and then inland.
SF != SF Bay Area
In fact we're in that kind of scenario right this minute.
Presumably in iOS 12 the feature is both more refined and Apple has also just plain worked to get more access to the necessary data streams and integrate them. From a brief glance around at some weather related APIs I've played with before it doesn't seem like AQI data, particularly sufficiently granular, has the kind of global support that is simply universal for other more common measures. I guess as knowledge of the health effects of small PM pollution and such start to become more widely known by the public, combined with worsening climate making it more common/worse in new areas we'll see sensors and data streams for that improve worldwide, at least in urban areas.
https://www.purpleair.com/map#11/34.0244/-118.4531
The map extends worldwide, but only reports data from those who have purchased their monitors.
The real issue is transportation pollution occurs right where people are. Further, you get inversion layers over cities which traps the pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology)
The air quality indoors is usually even worse than the air outside if you aren't using some filtration system. New-ish buildings release formaldehyde, laser printers release particulates and ozone, 3d printers release VOCs and particulates, and there is lots of dust generated by inhabitants and their pets.
Sadly, the Trump administration did a rollback of emission and fuel efficiency standards. It's a big step in the wrong direction.
Personally, I'd even ban combustion engines within city limits. It's completely insane that we poison the air we breathe 24/7.
If air quality becomes more consistently bad then maybe wearing a mask, like in some Asian countries, will become more socially acceptable. Sometimes I'd like to wear one but I'm scared people would treat me like I have TB or ebola.
And even on clear days, the air is still bad next to busy roads.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-airpollution-masks...
The real solution is green energy production and electric transportation.
But yes, from what I've read, for a couple weeks last month, Seattle had the worst air quality in the world. And if you were here, you'd believe it.
I don't think this is true. You could see maps, and Seattle and the sound happened to be in the path of the smoke at times. But things were also bad east of the Cascades, in various parts of B.C. etc. The smoke doesn't have a particular tendency to linger in Seattle or Puget sound.
We can't get the LA Times here.
What has changed this year - wild fires? Or is it the problem of ten million cars pissing in the pool with no wind to clear the air. Do tell.
You should let your MEP know how upset you are about that...
TL;DR: We don't know why exactly, but it's a bad sign and action should be taken. But it's only slightly out of normal for this time of year.
If you want to claim it's an issue of that much discussed EU law, plenty (or even most) of US websites don't have an issue serving their content to me, from NY Times, Washington Post - even Fox News has no problems (I would suspect them to be the first ones to complain about the EU)! To me that shows it's not a problem with EU law, but one with relevant people in power at the LA Times. I don't see how a message to an MEP could solve that, unless you think the EU should give in every time somebody in the US has a complaint - valid or not.
Let your MEP know that the next time they want to write an extra-territorial law about technology, they should get some technologists to help them write it so that it actually makes sense.
Jokes, full article: https://outline.com/CrmCSK
That is okay then, you down voting types keep on driving your cars whilst you blame the pollution on others.
There seems to be much less of the strongly seasonal offshore flow (the Santa Ana winds) reaching us at the coast. This used to be a regular thing ramping up in the late summer and fall with huge wind gusts damaging local trees etc. Now, it seems like we hear about winds up in the mountains but they run out of energy (or lift above the surface?) before reaching the coast, while we can definitely feel the grit and see the brown, dirty layer of air extend out over the ocean.
Similarly, we have all commented on the disturbance in the strongly seasonal pattern of onshore flow (June Gloom). We remember more contrast between foggy mornings with the marine layer reaching many miles inland on some mornings but retreating and burning off, tending to blue skies in mid summer. In recent years, the marine layer seems to visit randomly throughout the year and it often seems to just park slightly off shore or mere blocks inland, with haze and humidity instead of sharp boundary between blue sky and fog.
In our coastal area between LAX and Santa Monica, we haven't had the obvious wildfire smoke impact that I saw during visits to the S.F. Bay Area this year.