Weather

There is a smog alert posted at the moment, justifiably so really. I left work at about 12:30AM last night and visibility was noticeably different from earlier in the day, and for the first time that I can remember the air tasted bad.

The weather service says this is due to smoke from various wildfires getting trapped in the weather system we are experiencing as well as from pollution, and I wonder how much is contributed from each.

There was a time when smog was a problem facing many of our large cities, you see pictures from that period now and again and there are people still alive who remember. This wasn't so long ago.

In a way it is encouraging, this was a problem that was, if not fixed, at least ameliorated, and it was done within a single lifetime.

The EPA has been perhaps the greatest force for positive environmental change we have ever seen, certainly in America, and perhaps the world, the protections and rules it instituted have saved waterways and species, and improved the health of all Americans.

And it is perhaps the most hated of government agencies by those on the right. The Tea Party weirdos hate it because of their own general dislike for government telling anyone what to do, but the corporatist wing of the party has long been working against it due to the fact that it prevents them from making quite as much money from the traditionally horribly damaging industries that are part of it.

The lasting damage from this administration is going to be literally incalculable. The EPA is now run by the very people who want to destroy it, and there is basically nothing that can be done about that until a change of White House leadership happens, congress can't fire the head of the EPA after all, only the president can.

So while it is possible to reverse the trend, we have to get a new administration in to do it and the priority for doing so has to be higher than it ever has been. I feel like history would indicate that this is something we can do though, so long as the will is there.