Cricket: You are correct about smog in LA and San Diego in the 1960s and 1970s. Vehicles then were totally uncontrolled and all belched pollution.
The first efforts to clean them up were introduced gradually, with Detroit required to ramp up controls over the years. They squealed, of course–who wants to absorb higher costs and pass them on to the consumer. But they came up with the technology and now over 90% of pollution is eliminated via catalytic converters on new cars, at a cost, I believe, of something like $500 per vehicle. In retrospect, it was worth it.
Now the question is how much do we want to spend to go from 90% to 95%, or 99%. I suggest diminishing returns has set in with a vengence, and we could get much more pollution reduction by, say, confronting the uncontrolled Mexican cars crossing our borders daily, or lawnmowers (seriously–they are big polluters), or some other sources of pollution.
We have pretty clean air in San Diego and L.A. Let’s take some credit for that and go on to the next easiest and cheapest form of pollution reduction. I, and others, suggest AB 32 is a wasteful and uneconomic approach that is not worth the true costs.
