Word: smog
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...written to everybody about smog," she continues. "First I wrote my representatives; then I wrote the county supervisors and I wrote to Lyndon Johnson; and then I read where Nixon was gonna declare war on pollution, so I wrote him. I wrote Ronald Reagan and I wrote Mayor Yorty. I wrote the airlines, the car manufacturers and J. Edgar Hoover. Sometimes I picket. We had a couple of breathe-ins downtown; we wore health masks into the county supervisors' offices. There isn't much time left. We make more smog, inside our houses, you know, from all those jet cans...
...force that binds them together, the soul of California, is the search for a better life carried on by 20 million individuals, a tenth of the U.S. population. The will-o'-the-wisp?Californism?propels the matron to the massage parlor, impels the petitioner or protester to demonstrate against smog or close a campus in the name of students' rights. It fuels the rage of the blacks and the Chicanos and the newly militant Chinese, who are all more conscious than minorities anywhere else of deprivation in the midst of fantastic plenty. It is the fear of losing their place...
...most ardent conservationists, they have nonetheless allowed untold pollution and desecration of their land, air, waters and wildlife. The nearly five million automobiles that churn through the Los Angeles megalopolis spew exhaust from 8,000,000 gallons of gasoline every day ?thanks in large part to the inefficient smog-control devices that the cars are required to carry...
...euphemism. Something slightly disguised here, contrived there. And yet, and always, throughout the state there is something more. Somewhere between the cosmetics above and the San Andreas fault below, there is a kinetic energy and what can only be described as a sense of angry optimism. Earthquakes and the smog will not destroy California; perhaps the only thing that could is stasis?and no one has ever been able to say that California is standing still...
...thinkers and doers in this experimental human laboratory are immensely busy. Having created so much smog, they are bound to be the first in the alleviation of it, perhaps by perfecting the carbonfree auto engine, perhaps through more stringent traffic legislation. Little by little, they will assume firmer control over environmental deterioration by creating bigger units of government that can act on a regional rather than a local basis...