Category: Environment

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Downtown LA Smog, originally uploaded by Kianouch.

If anyone had any doubts about where the rotten heart of the Bush regime is, the latest whammy concerning the abolition of California’s own emission standards should reassure the pessimists.

The EPA now is stating that California cannot regulate what it has done for the last 30 years. The smog that envelops this state (the worst in the nation) will now have to accommodate itself to the needs of Detroit’s dying auto industry.

Harry Fuller wrote in today’s Huffington Post:

Meanwhile, the Congress and White House have given the waiting nation a new energy law.

After more than three decades of stagnant mileage requirements, they’re asking the auto industry to give us more efficient cars. By 2020 American cars and light trucks must average 30 MPG, right where China requires their cars to be now. And within 5 MPG of Japan and the European Union’s current target of 40 MPG. So that puts the U.S. only 12 to 20 years behind the other dominant economies. Our leaders think we stupid American drivers care more about our comfort than cutting air pollution or curtailing our addiction to Saudi oil. We need our big gas hogs to feel safe on the road. It couldn’t possibly be that American pols are carrupted by auto lobbyists.

Just to summarize: we are fighting a war against Islamic terrorism. We fund our enemies with the very oil that we purchase from them. We invaded an oil rich country, Iraq, to establish a “democracy” to protect this resource rich region from further conflict. We just funded another $60 billion in our continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Burning oil contributes to greenhouse gases and global warming. Icebergs are melting while we drive SUV’s.

And we just decided that we are going to relax the mileage and smog standards here in the US.

For an example of what makes Los Angeles such a gruesome and greedy place, one needs to look no further than the plans to raze and destroy the 9-acre Oakie Estate in Northridge.

Jack Oakie was a comedian and actor from the 1930s and 40s who lived here in the NW Valley when the surroundings were filled with horse farms and orange groves. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were his neighbors.

Oakie, who died in 1978, watched as Northridge descended into the grotesque, un-walkable and blindingly crude big-box sprawl that it is today. The farms were asphalted over, and the mammoth shopping centers, with their baking black asphalt in the 110 degree heat, this is what we have today.

So USC owns the house, which is also a historical monument, yet the University wants to sell it to a developer, who will pave over the green land and Paul Williams designed home. Proceeds from the sale will allegedly be used to finance the film school so its students can learn those skills needed to make the future “Transformers” or “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry”. A piece of the Valley history, one that goes back to our agricultural and film industry roots, will be no more.

Is there not one government official with guts who can persuade the city of Los Angeles to buy this and turn it into a recreational and historic green space? This would be a most beautiful park, a respite from the commercial and material assault on the senses that Northridge normally is.

I can already see the vinyl windows, the Hummers pulling into the gates, the fat kids sitting in air-conditioning in front of their plasma screens, the absolute artificiality of what will be coming here…..