Word: smog
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...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...
Andy Lipkis, 34, a bearded, boyish, homespun half saint, knows something about delivering dreams. His life is a demonstration in respectable alchemy, creating gold from nothing. Inspired by the belief that planting trees can reduce smog, protect the ozone layer, feed hungry people and, when all is said and done and planted, save the planet, Lipkis has become a global Johnny Appleseed. The organization he founded 15 years ago, TreePeople, is directly or indirectly responsible for planting more than 170 million trees around the world. At the center of TreePeople's mission is the belief that people can save themselves...
Lipkis' revelation came 18 years ago at summer camp, where he planted his first smog-resistant trees. "It was backbreaking work that required all of our creativity," he recalls. "For me, it was a life-altering experience." Lipkis went on to study ecology and search for ways to encourage more people to plant more trees. "I started a long process of trying and failing," he remembers, as he sought to enlist public and private support for his cause. "Being able to fail is a key to the volunteer process," he adds now. "In their jobs, people aren't allowed...