On Oct. 28, 1948 Donara PA was blanketed by a deadly smog inversion, killing at least 20 citizens of the town run by US Steel, which claimed the pollution was an act of God. This environmental disaster forced people to rethink the control of clean air standards and led to the creation of the EPA. Donora’s population shrank from 14,000 to the present-day 4000 plus with the closure of the steel mills and Fox News is warning the same economic downturn will occur, if the Obama administration’s mandate to cut coal-burning power plants’ emissions by 30% is enacted in 2030.
According to AP states are expected to be allowed to require power plants to make changes such as switching from coal to natural gas or enact other programs to reduce demand for electricity and produce more energy from renewable sources.
They also can set up pollution-trading markets as some states already have done to offer more flexibility in how plants cut emissions.
If a state refuses to create a plan, the EPA can make its own.
Governors from the coal belt have responded by signing their own laws to prevent the federal government’s harsher restrictions. East Coast states have long sought relief from the smog drifting from the Ohio Valley power plants, but Fox News argued that the ruling will result in the loss of 224,000 jobs every year through 2030 and impose $50 billion in annual costs.
Readers of CNN and Fox News reacted to the news of an event sixteen years in the future with fear and terror, claiming that this mandate to clean the air is another step of the federal dictatorship seeking to take away guns, force abortion on Christians, and end Christmas.
Earlier this year I was in Paris during a hazardous smog inversion. The city shut down the roads and highways to cars and trucks. The Metro was free and the streets of the City of Light were quiet without the rumble of internal combustion vehicles.
Parisians complained about having to walk, but the choice had been that or trouble breathing.
China is facing a similar choice.
Its multitude of factories burn coal. The air is often unbreathable. People are getting sick and dying.
Their emissions circle the globe, but Americans for the most part fail to recognize the danger.
My landlord graduated from a very good college. AP scoffed at Global Warming like many other educated Americans.
Three days ago I was standing by the East River. The tidal flow surged through the Williamsburg Narrows. I estimated the speed to be about 5-6 knots. I am not scientist, but I had never witnessed the river run that fast.
“You happened to be there at the right time.”
In my mind the right time will happen more often in the years to come and while Obama’s initiative to curb coal emissions will take many years to implement, better to start now, because beer bellies don’t get there in one day and they don’t go away one day either.
