So I wanted to know more about smog. In case you haven’t heard, I am apologizing for Obama over smog lately. Except I’m not. I have also been lying about the sources of smog. Except that I haven’t.
What I said the other day — that smog pollutants come from tailpipes — is true. It was a post about transportation policy, which is vital to reducing pollution in general and smog in particular. It is true that smog’s ingredients also come from other sources. Critics are telling me that industry is more responsible for smog than vehicles, but that’s not what the EPA says.
Smokestacks have gone out of style, which is bad news for the American worker but good news for smog reduction. Less industrial activity means less industrial smog. Coal, meanwhile, is a dying form of electric generation. No new plants are being built. The energy industry is phasing out plants, and the green movement is celebrating. Coal’s share of electric generation in America has dropped from 52% to 45% in the last sixteen years.
Meanwhile, America is not running out of electricity because we have improved efficiency and new sources. We have stopped putting more particulate matter in our air, and overall are seeing less smog. This is a success for environmentalism. Yet the number of communities where smog is a problem has grown.
The green movement cares very much about reducing smog further. So do I, though I differ with some on the most effective means of doing it. Researching the subject of smog’s sources, I went to the EPA website and found this (.PDF):
Hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides come from a great variety of industrial and combustion processes. In typical urban areas, at least half of those pollutants come from cars, buses, trucks, and off-highway mobile sources such as construction vehicles and boats.
That’s dating from 1997. Which brings me to my next point: here’s what happened to smog in Southern California during the same time America actually got less smoggy. Remember, smog is soot and ash and gases that come from carbon use — smokestacks, tailpipes — as well as other sources. But the big one was vehicle emission standards:
As the great exurban expansion of the last decade peaked, cities like Houston began to have worse problems than Los Angeles because that city was getting cleaner. Changes in American transportation efficiency (i.e., fuel economy standards and cleaner fuels) were kicking in, and California was leading the way on controlling automotive emissions.
The geography of a region or zone affects its weather: see the hills of LA.; Mexico City is a bowl. Also, macroclimate counts:
“Our air quality this summer may not be as good as it was in 1997, when El Niño’s cooler temperatures and unsettled conditions brought unusually clean conditions,” Cassmassi said. “But we should see a return to the long-term trend toward reduced peak levels of ozone and fewer days violating federal health standards for the pollutant.”
There’s also “smog alley” of eastern North America. Add countless variations in local industry, transit opportunities, and so forth, which make smog sources variable by region:
See the big red wedge marked “consumer solvent”? The EPA regulates Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in your hairspray, flooring, cleaning supplies, and car paint. Along with floor wax, paint, and other everyday products, VOCs produce household ozone. Even under current regulations, American consumers can produce more smog pollutants than American industry:
Here’s a national ozone map. The red blobs experienced more than one reported unhealthy day of ozone per year in the years 2002-2006; the brown is ozone mixed with ragweed.
Consider smog relative to population density; this is what you would expect to see when smog is created by (1) where we live, (2) how we get around, and (3) where our industrial centers are. Exurban living has spread the smog around not because of new industry — there has been precious little of that — but because of suburban sprawl and the hourlong commute.
In fact, here’s another chart that shows a correlation between density and ozone. More people, more pollution:
Below is a map of EPA ozone “nonattainment” counties from WikiPedia. See how the data matches up? EPA head Lisa Jackson wants to lower the threshold for nonattainment, which would essentially make this map look more like the two previous maps — following the same exurban and regional patterns.
I have found maps and charts that suggest sprawl and driving are responsible for the spread of smog, and that congested roads are responsible for increased smog levels. What I haven’t found — and don’t think I’ll ever find — is a chart that says American industry, including power generation, bears more fault than transportation. In fact, quite the opposite:
“Power plants account for less than 20 percent of total NOx emissions in this region,” Kim explains. Even a “50 percent reduction of power plant NOx emissions means less than 10 percent overall decrease in the total NOx budget.” In other words, pollution spewed from tailpipes in the urban Northeast dwarfs–and swallows up–the reductions produced by cleaning up belching coal smokestacks in the Midwest. (Emphasis mine)
By email, tweet, and comment, I have received many accounts of how outrageous it is to delay new EPA standards. I get their frustration. What no one has shown me is any proof that industrial sources are more responsible for smog than fuel-burning engines — which are best cleaned up through transportation policy — or consumer uses, for that matter. Omitting so much as a link, they say I have lied by omission, and that I am supposed to apologize for it. Until someone can prove the assertion with data, I’m not going to.
From the EPA website:
Mix VOCs and nitrogen oxide, combine in the presence of sunlight and stagnant air, and you have ozone. Mix in sooty particles, known as particulates, and you have smog. But you need all these ingredients, and transportation is at least half the source of them, so far as I can tell. To be sure, continued improvement in vehicle emissions mean that industrial sources will become a larger part of the smog picture — but that’s only assuming America keeps improving transportation policy.
