There’s Money to Be Made From Virtue : Clean air: The federal plan isn’t a burden for industry; it’s an exciting, potentially lucrative technological challenge.
In 1972, when Johnny Nash released his classic, “I Can See Clearly Now,” L.A. disc jockeys played it sardonically. Our air basin was the filthiest in the country, and smog and Los Angeles were synonymous.
Our air basin is still the nation’s dirtiest, exceeding federal air quality standards 180 days a year on average, but it’s a good deal cleaner than it used to be. Keeping us on this improving course is the purpose of the Environmental Protection Agency’s federal implementation plan for air quality in Southern California. The plan offers a smorgasbord of regulatory measures to further reduce pollution from both industrial and residential sources, supplementing state and local measures.
The goal, of course, is improved health and air quality. Clean air will actually cut the death rate. And clean air means Los Angeles schoolchildren will no longer suffer a 20% reduction in lung capacity compared with children raised elsewhere.
There are some who argue that the new federal standards will cost too much and will hurt rather than help business. They argue that Los Angeles will lose cargoes to other ports, that railroads will require two sets of locomotives--one for California only--that airline operations may be restricted; in short, that we can’t afford it. To the contrary, we can’t afford the $9 billion a year in lost productivity that smog brings with it, or the $1 billion lost when commuters sit idle in traffic.
We also know that a clean-air plan has to offer more than blue skies to attract the support of the business community. California’s environmental technology industry produced revenues of $18.2 billion in 1992 and employed nearly 150,000 people. It is the fastest-growing sector of the California economy. By the turn of the century the international environmental technologies market will be $300 billion a year, and California’s clean-air entrepreneurs will be well-placed to capture much of that burgeoning world market.
Managed properly, the federal mandates could lead to a new wave of public works projects that would dramatically alter California’s transportation infrastructure. Federal funds earmarked for pollution cleanup could be used to support non-polluting mass-transportation systems such as electric rail and trolley buses and for the development of an electric-vehicle industry using advanced transportation technologies created in Southern California.
The advanced transportation industry alone could yield as many as 24,000 jobs by 2003 and revive California as a high-tech manufacturing center, according to a study by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. By 2010, Project California predicts, an electric-vehicle industry could create 70,000 local jobs.
The Southern California Assn. of Governments also projects growth in the electric-vehicle industry, creating high-skilled, high-wage jobs. It’s a an industry where equal opportunity has real meaning. A Rockefeller has yet to emerge in the field; it is open to all daring entrepreneurs.
In addition to aiding creation of a new industry, the federal mandates can help justify continued federal support for the Alameda Corridor, the nonstop railroad route that will connect Los Angeles’ seaports with Downtown, allowing increased, cost-effective movement of goods in an environmentally sound fashion.
We have an opportunity to make good on the promise of sustainable economic development. It is a chance to end the state’s dependence on “imported” cars, whether from other countries or other states and break free of the oil industry monopoly on transportation fuels. Diversification will lead to competition, which will ultimately lead to higher efficiencies and lower costs.
None of this is to say that there will be no controversies, or even sacrifices in return for clean air. But this is our chance to form a new paradigm, in which clean air has a consensus value so high that businesses will voluntarily change to meet community needs. “I Can See Clearly Now” wouldn’t have to be a joke.
