Word: smog
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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George Bush was under fire as "the environmentalist" President in campaign pledge only. But last week he managed to confound his critics. He broke a decade-long impasse by proposing major steps to reduce acid rain, smog caused by auto exhaust and toxic chemicals discharged into the air. In a political tour de force, he managed to draw at least grudging acceptance from almost all sides. Environmentalists were pleased that the plan met their minimum goals. Industry grumbled about heavy costs: $14 billion to $19 billion annually by the end of the year 2000. But utility executives sighed with relief...
...combatting smog, Bush conveniently opted to develop alternative-fuel cars in the future rather than move quickly to require costly reductions in tail- | pipe emissions; the controls he did propose nationally for gasoline-driven cars are less stringent than those that California has already enacted. Use of the new fuels would require an expensive redesign. For example, because a car can travel only about half as far on a gallon of methanol as on a gallon of gas, automakers would have to build cars with bigger fuel tanks. Worse, motorists would probably not want to buy methanol cars until...
...first gray-brown stains appeared in the azure skies above Los Angeles before the outset of World War I. During World War II, the summer haze was beginning to sting the eyes and shroud the mountains that ring the city. By the mid-'50s, Los Angeles' smog, as the noxious vapor had been dubbed, was sufficiently thick and persistent to wilt crops, obstruct breathing and bring angry housewives into the streets waving placards and wearing gas masks. Oil companies were urged to cut sulfur emissions. Cars were required to use unleaded gas, and exhausts were fitted with catalytic converters...
...proposal, referred to simply as the L.A. plan, is 5,500 pages long and 3 ft. high, and was five years in the making. It calls for elimination of 70% of smog-producing emissions in the Los Angeles area by the year 2000. In the plan's first five-year phase, 123 separate regulations will ban the use of aerosol hair sprays and deodorants and require companies, regardless of the cost, to install the best antismog equipment available. But one of the plan's primary objectives is to break the city's addiction to the internal-combustion engine. First...
ENVIRONMENT: An immodest proposal to banish smog...