Super Blog 2 - Eric Brummett

 Five more sources for research

I recently decided to make a good part of my research of the smog policies and effects in California on how these policies affected the automotive industry. Specifically I wanted to research how much extra money has to go into making a car “CARB” legal and what special measures go into this process. I of course want to use this information to tie it back to the history of the emission standards of California.

Barringer, Felicity. “California's Vehicle Emissions Fight Continues a 50-Year Struggle.” Stanford Earth. Accessed February 18, 2021. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/californias-vehicle-emissions-fight-continues-50-year-struggle#gs.twk2lh. 

This source helps lay out a timeline for what has been happening in the automotive industry with the California restrictions. While the federal government has planned to loosen restrictions against manufacturers, California fights back. This has been something that has been going on for over 50 years because even with all the new regulatory systems California has put in place, there is still heavy pollution. The source points out that there has been less concentrations of gas and emissions from vehicles since the 1980’s, however 8 SoCal air basins are still on the list of worst in the whole country from the American Lung Association. The important arguments about cost and technology restraints of the 1970’s are also addressed. The 1970 Clean Air Act caused the then president of General Motors, E.M. Cole, to state that it was “impossible” because the tech did not exist. The cost of the new regulatory systems like catalytic converters also added more to the cost of research and development as well as the consumer cost to buy a car.

George, Patrick E. “How the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Works.” HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks, September 12, 2008. https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-economy/carb2.htm. 

This source goes into how the California Air Resources Board works and how they approve certain regulatory systems on vehicles. California’s standards are more strict compared to the EPA’s federal standards for the rest of the country. California actually has classes of emissions for different vehicles that range from LEV’s which were low emissions cars that started to be sold in 2004 all the way to ZEV’s which are plug-in electric vehicles. It is important to reference sources like this to get an idea of why CARB has its limitations on vehicles and what those limitations are. The reason manufacturers even have to worry about making their vehicles CARB legal is because California has one of the larger populations in the country. If automakers ignored California’s regulations then they would lose a lot of car sales.

Yee, Krista. “‘A Period of Consequences’': Global Warming Legislation, Cooperative Federalism, and the Fight Between the EPA and the State of California” 32, no. 1 (2008): 190–92. https://doi.org/10.31228/osf.io/y8ejh. 

This source is important to look at because it talks about the California Waiver. This Waiver was put into place by congress and came from the Air Quality Act of 1967 and the Clean Air Act of 1970. Congress put this in place because they felt it was important that the state had some power, especially sense in the acts it was local governments responsibilities to control the air pollution. The California Waiver makes it to where there are only two different standards that an automaker has to abide by instead of 50 different standards from every state. California was chosen for this waiver because of the unique smog situation California has. It is pointed out that these problems come as a result of climate and the topography. In SoCal specifically, there is also the issue of dense population. 

“History of CARB.” California Air Resources Board . Accessed February 18, 2021. https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/about/history. 

I wanted to use this source as more of a primary source. The reason why I see this as a primary source is because it is a breakdown of the history of CARB from the CARB website itself. This source goes into the history of discovering what was the main cause for the smog in California. Vehicles were found to be the main cause because of the emissions from engines and the dense population of cars in city areas. In 1966, California made the first tailpipe emission standards in the whole nation. Then it explains how California worked to get statewide control on the air pollution situation by having stricter-than-federal vehicle emission regulations. CARB also instituted the zero emissions standards (1990) for vehicles and pioneered the development of the catalytic converter that reduces smog emissions from cars (1970’s). California even went as far as to eliminate lead from gasoline that was sold in the state. Along with this, CARB used this cleaner fuel to help clean up the transportation system in california and plans to have 1.5 million plug in cars by 2025.

Grace, Francie. “Smog Alert.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, June 1, 2002. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/smog-alert/. 

This source helps add more context to how bad the smog has been in SoCal over the years. This is a news alert from CBS in 2002 talking about the top ten polluted places in the country. Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange County in southern California; Bakersfield, Fresno, Visalia, Tulare and Porterville, California; Houston, Galveston and Brazoria, Texas; Atlanta; Merced, California; Knoxville, Tennessee; Charlotte, North Carolina, and neighboring Rockville, South Carolina, and Sacramento, California were the top places according to the 1998 - 2000 report data from the EPA. It is an interesting source that shows that there are other places that have smog alerts, however most of the smog alerts are from the middle of california, down to SoCal where the population and topography affect the air pollution the most.