Word: smog
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Maybe it's cause to celebrate when a celebration outlives its usefulness. Back in 1970, there was lead in our paint, smog in our cities and poison in our pesticides; Ohio's Cuyahoga River was so polluted it caught fire the year before. So when Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson called for a day of protest and teach-ins, 20 million people took part. In San Francisco, activists dumped oil in the reflecting pool at Standard Oil's headquarters; in Florida, college students put a Chevrolet on trial for poisoning the air, pronounced it guilty and sentenced it to death...
...Johnson argued that California's regulations had been preempted by national fuel economy legislation just been signed into law by President Bush, which requires all new cars and trucks to meet a toughened 35-mpg standard by 2020. He also contended that CO2 - unlike the pollutants that cause smog and other local problems - causes an essentially global problem, and therefore California's request didn't meet the "extraordinary and compelling" justification needed for a state waiver under the original Clean Air Act. "The Bush Administration is moving forward with a clear national solution - not a confusing patchwork of state rules...
...Buddhist roots. A mountaintop temple is being built nearby to ensure the resort's feng shui, and reminders of modern China are everywhere within the alpine resort itself. One of those quaint Swiss chalets is, in fact, a KFC outlet, while that "mist" rising from the hills is actually smog...
...learned step by step of harmful side effects. First we learned that coal-fired power plants created acid rain, so we changed the rules of the game to insist on smokestack scrubbers to eliminate pollutants like sulfur oxides. Second we learned that automobiles produced pollutants that caused smog, so we changed the rules to insist on catalytic converters. Now we've learned that the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels is causing dangerous climate change. We'll need to change the rules of the game one more time...
There is a difference, however, between the problems of carbon dioxide emissions and those of acid rain or smog. The carbon dioxide emitted by power plants, automobiles, steel mills and home furnaces doesn't just affect our local environment or the lakes and forests a few hundred miles downwind; it accumulates in the atmosphere and affects the entire planet. U.S. emissions are changing the climate in Africa and Asia, just as the soaring emissions of China are affecting America's climate. The results are already deadly, causing failed crops in Africa, killer heat waves in Europe, extreme droughts...