Smog Fight Helps Create Environmentalism

Our Story Together: The Smog-Climate Subseries #2.2. Antecedents to Climate Action

In our first post in this Smog-Climate Subseries, I introduced The Denier’s Playbook that the Oil Industry developed to attack pollution reduction efforts.

I. Pound Home a Simple Message for Public Consumption: Deny, Deny, Deny

1. Deny there is a problem (if you can).

2. Deny we know enough.

3. Deny culpability.

II. Operationalize The Message

1. Hire scientific consultants to do “research,” propose theories friendly to Industry interests, and help proclaim the basic 3-part message of denial.

2. Attack and discredit legitimate scientists telling the truth.

3. Proclaim to media and elected officials/policymakers that we don’t know enough to act; more research is needed; the science isn’t settled.

So the first thing The Denier’s Playbook suggests is to deny there’s a problem, in this case pollution, which is too much of something in the wrong place causing harm. Denying there’s problem has worked quite well for opponents of climate action such as Exxon and their allies. But as we will see, it wasn’t possible for the Oil Industry in their opposition to smog reduction efforts.

By the time one of the heroes of this fight, Dr. Arie Haagen-Smit, took on smog beginning in the late 40s it had been occurring in Los Angeles since around the turn of the century. Its first ordinance for controlling “smoke” (as air pollution was then known) was passed in 1905.¹ But things got much worse with the population boom during and after World War II. Between 1940-1950 the population went from 7 to 11 million and registered vehicles from 2.8 to 4.5 million.²

Smog really captured the public’s attention on July 8, 1943 when it was so thick downtown you lost a sense of direction. “Blinded drivers jerked from side to side to avoid collisions. Mothers snatched up frightened children into ornate lobbies for shelter.”³ Eyes welled, faces and throats burned. Rumors spread that it was a Japanese gas attack.

As concerns continued during the coming weeks LA’s mayor, Fletcher Bowron, pledged to eliminate the problem in four months – the first of many unfulfilled promises about smog.⁴

There were two very basic problems that Mayor Bowron and nearly everyone else failed to grasp.

First, there was a lack of proper jurisdiction; no government entity had the power to reduce pollution everywhere it was occurring; restricting pollution sources in the city wouldn’t prevent it throughout the LA basin.

Second, and even more basic, no one really knew what made up LA’s version of smog – and, as we will see, here is where Prof. Haagen-Smit would come to the rescue. If you don’t know what it is, you can’t properly regulate it.

Their failure to grasp these points is understandable once we recognize that, unlike today, there was no environmental consciousness and its outgrowth, the environmental movement and its national organizations. Nor were there government agencies like California’s Air Resources Board or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).⁵

Precursors to the LA Smog Challenge

To be sure, by the 1940s our country had a strong conservation tradition focused on land stewardship and preservation. And for thousands of years people the world over had complained about smoke and unhealthy air in relation to cities. This included here in America beginning as early as 1823. Complaints turned into action after the Civil War due to the explosive rise in coal use, which went from 20 million tons in 1860 to 650 million tons in 1918, a 3,200% increase. Most of this coal burning occurred in and around cities using the more polluting bituminous coal rather than the less smokey anthracite coal.⁶

In response, for over 50 years before the LA smog fight three types of groups across the country fought for “smoke abatement”: (1) activists; (2) engineers; (3) civic/business leaders.

Women’s groups were the initial leaders, who were joined by engineers and civic organizations – including local chambers of commerce. Most efforts began by targeting polluters like a specific plant for direct action. When that proved insufficient, they moved on to the courts and the passage of laws, the first of which were quite ineffectual or were struck down by the judiciary, requiring proponents to try, try again. Pittsburgh passed its first ordinance in 1869, and other cities like Chicago followed.

By 1916 such efforts achieved some modest success. First, the vast majority of major cities had “smoke abatement bureaus.” Second, after numerous setbacks in the courts, a series of court rulings beginning in 1900 affirmed the government’s authority to regulate. Third, an important achievement was in the area of public attitudes. At the beginning of the struggle many found it hard to overcome the argument of industry that pollution was a positive sign of economic progress. “As Harper’s Weekly noted in 1907, no longer was a visibly active stack a ‘badge of great prosperity.’ Perceptions had changed, as many urbanites looked upon the dark clouds and saw no progress, only pollution.”⁷

However, enforcement mechanisms were weak, cumbersome, or non-existent, and many of the engineers put in charge of the smoke abatement departments preferred to educate and persuade rather than enforce. Standing on the outside, the women activists wanted more. The efforts of the men, the engineers and businessmen, led to mixed results.⁸

In addition, these early efforts by activists were episodic, flaring up when pollution got worse, and then fading when a decision was made, such as passing or defeat of a local ordinance. This was due in part because the women reformers had a wide variety of issues they were fighting for, not just smoke abatement.

The reformers/activists were crucial as catalysts. But another lesson to take from these early years was that when it comes to chronic, systemic problems like air pollution, permanent organizations that remain true to the movement’s goals are needed to help ensure pollution gets reduced. Action proponents need staying power.

LA Smog Challenge Helps Create Environmentalism

It is the LA smog challenge that helps usher in an environmental consciousness/movement, including the creation of national environmental organizations fighting against pollution, and such laws as the Clean Air Act (1970) and the creation of the EPA (1971).

One reason it begins to emerge in LA During the late 1940s is because smog had reached epidemic proportions. Newspapers published a rash of letters from people leaving the area. One couple who had lived there nearly 60 years left “with pity in our hearts for all the poor souls who have to live and take it.”⁹ People were dying in traffic accidents because they couldn’t see. More and more planes were grounded.

Just as was the case decades earlier in eastern and midwestern cities, moms seized upon their moral power and began to demand action because it was making their children sick. They watched their children gasp, lose sleep, be unable to concentrate at school, and come down with infections.¹⁰ In the fall of 1946 after several smog attacks hundreds marched in protest at city hall.¹¹ Look magazine went so far as to call smog “evil.” It even showed up as a surprise “star witness” in a trial about air pollution when smog enveloped the witness stand.¹² One of Dr. Haagen-Smit’s colleagues, Margaret Brunelle, recalls driving through thick smog in Pasadena. “I’d have to pull over by the side of the road because my eyes were tearing so badly I couldn’t see to drive,” she said.¹³

In contrast to climate change, you didn’t have to convince anyone that there was smog; on a bad day, all you had to do was look out the window or venture outside. Newspaper coverage became a common occurrence. The Los Angeles Times led the way after Dorothy Chandler, wife of the publisher Norman Chandler, marched straight into his office from a smoggy drive to tell him something needed to be done.¹⁴ Such coverage helped turn it into a political issue.

For the Oil Industry, it was a front-page article on December 11, 1946 that finally pushed them into action. The paper had a huge aerial photo of one of their refineries, suggesting it was responsible for LA’s smog.¹⁵ In response a committee was formed, the “Petroleum Industry Committee on Smog,” which eventually became the “Smoke and Fumes” committee.¹⁶ Even though it had been 3 ½ years since smog captured the public’s attention, the Oil Industry was nevertheless still ahead of the game in comparison to the political process and the government’s ability to mount an effective response.

But the industry could see the writing on the wall. Because LA had a diverse economy, because it was not a “company town,” the Oil Industry couldn’t run roughshod over those with concerns. Smog was a problem for major segments of the economy: agriculture, tourism, and, to a lesser extent, the movie industry (where it interfered with shooting outdoors). It struck at the very heart of Southern California’s appeal and the area’s sunny image of itself that it projected to the wider world. The Oil Industry blamed the media for stoking such fears, as if there were no there, there.¹⁷ But at the end of the day all of this meant the Oil Industry would be unable to prevent legislation – not that they didn’t try.

At the beginning of the 1947 legislative session Assemblyman A. I. Stewart of Pasadena, one of the hardest hit areas, introduced Assembly Bill No. 1. It was designed to begin to fix the problem of the lack of proper jurisdiction by giving counties the ability to create pollution control districts with enforcement powers whose boundaries were coterminous with the county.

The Oil Companies realized they couldn’t win this fight in public, given the common belief that the problem was real and action was required. Instead, they led the charge behind the scenes to gut the bill with loopholes designed to allow them to keep on polluting.¹⁸ But when newspaper editorials exposed what they were doing to the light of day, senior oil executives met on May 19, 1946 to discuss the situation.

Harold Kennedy, legal counsel for Los Angeles County, who drafted the initial version of the bill, was in attendance.¹⁹ In his brief history Kennedy recounts the turning point that helped clear the way for the bill’s passage. One executive, whom Kennedy described as “public spirited,” provided “invaluable” leadership. His name was William L. “Bill” Stewart, Jr. His concern for the LA community was a family tradition dating back to his grandfather, Lyman Stewart, who considered life as a missionary before becoming founder and President of Union Oil, as well as founder of Biola University and Union Rescue Mission.²⁰

Bill Stewart “argued that smog was a far reaching community question affecting not only the comfort and health of the entire community, but also its future prosperity.” As such, Union Oil “believed they must make their contribution to Los Angeles County, and to Southern California …” by not trying to gut the legislation.²¹ Mr. Stewart carried the day.²²

On June 10, 1947, the first basic problem in dealing with smog, that of proper jurisdiction, began to be addressed when Governor Earl Warren (the future Supreme Court Chief Justice) signed into law an air pollution bill that gave counties the authority to create Air Pollution Control Districts with enforcement powers. This was a major turning point in the smog fight. By October 1947 the LA Air Pollution Control District or APCD was up and running. With a budget of $178,000 and a staff of 47, it quickly became the best funded and staffed air pollution agency in the country.²³

However, allowing substantive legislation to go forward didn’t mean the Oil Industry would stop their opposition to pollution control efforts that would hurt their bottom line; far from it. In other words, they continued to run The Denier’s Playbook.

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in the Our Story Together Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

1. Scott Hamilton Dewey, Don’t Breath the Air: Air Pollution and U.S. Environmental Politics, 1945-1970, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, 2000): p. 38. See also The Southlands War on Smog: Fifty Years of Progress Toward Clean Air (through May 1997).

2. Arnold Thackray and Minor Myers, Jr., Arnold O. Beckman: One Hundred Years of Excellence, Chemical Heritage Foundation and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation (Philadelphia, 2000): pp. 216-217.

3. Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly, Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, Overlook Press (NY: 2008), p. 13.

4. James E. Krier and Edmund Ursin, Pollution and Policy: A Case Essay on California and Federal Experience with Motor Vehicle Air Pollution, 1945-1975 (University of California Press, 1977): p. 53.

5. In the late 1970s Dr. Arnold Beckman himself reflects upon this in a keynote tribute to Haagen-Smit:

“In these days of multibillion-dollar budgets for the Environmental Protection Agency and huge pollution-control bureaucracies at federal and state levels, controls of auto exhaust emissions and industrial pollutants are accepted without question. They are simply part of our way of life. I wonder whether the current generation of environmentalists and air-control devotees has any idea of how vastly different the situation was thirty years ago, when Dr. Haagen-Smit did his pioneering work. … Before the early 1940s, there was little public concern over atmospheric pollution in the Los Angeles area.”

See “Zus (Maria) Haagen-Smit,” interview by Shirley K. Cohen, Archives, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena (March 16 and 20, 2000): p. 20.

6. David Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951 (Johns Hopkins: Baltimore, 1999): pp. 12-13.

7. Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives, p. 77.

8. See Stradling, “Trouble in the Air: The Movement Begins,” chap. 3, and “The Atmosphere Will Be Regulated,” chap. 4 in Smokestacks and Progressives, pp. 37-60, and 61-84; R. Dale Grinder, “The Battle for Clean Air: The Smoke Problem in Post-Civil War America,” chap. 4 in Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930, ed. Martin V. Melos I (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980); and Robert Dale Grinder, “From Insurgency to Efficiency: The Smoke Abatement Campaign in Pittsburgh Before World War I,” The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, vol. 61, no. 3 (July 1978): 187-202. Historian Frank Uekoetter takes a more optimistic view, arguing that cooperation between the smoke inspector engineers and industry helped reduce the need for prosecution of violators in court. Such cooperation included providing technical advice to industry on how they could use technology to improve their efficiency. “What really changed was not punishment as such, but its function: no longer the only instrument of control, punishment now had as its sole purpose to compel unwilling entrepreneurs to cooperate. ‘The Department has continued to prosecute violators, when all other methods have failed to accomplish the desired results,’ reported the responsible official in St. Louis. Uekoetter concludes: “the smoke inspectors’ recipe for success was that they knew how to combine the demands for effective antismoke action, including credible enforcement, with the concerns of entrepreneurs.” See The Age of Smoke: Environmental Policy in Germany and the United States trans. Thomas Dunlap (University of Pittsburgh Press: 2009): pp. 34-35.

9. Jacobs and Kelly, Smogtown, p. 35.

10. Jacobs and Kelly, Smogtown, p. 34.

11. Krier and Ursin, Pollution and Policy, p. 56.

12. Jacobs and Kelly, Smogtown, p. 49.

13. Fifty Years of Progress Toward Clean Air.

14. Dewey, Don’t Breathe the Air, p. 87.

15. Vance Jenkins, “The Petroleum Industry Sponsors Air Pollution Research,” Air Repair, Vol.3:3 (Feb. 1954): p. 146. Jenkins was the Executive Secretary (senior staffer) of the American Petroleum Institute’s Smoke and Fumes Committee.

16. Jenkins, “The Petroleum Industry Sponsors Air Pollution Research,” p. 146.

17. Jenkins, “The Petroleum Industry Sponsors Air Pollution Research,” p. 146.

18. Jacobs and Kelly, Smogtown, p. 36.

19. Krier and Ursin, Pollution and Policy, pp. 60-61.

20. Along with his brother, Lyman Stewart also financed the publication of a series of articles called The Fundamentals to combat the influence of modernism in the Church, from whence comes the term “fundamentalism.”

21. LA Counsel Harold Kennedy’s history of the smog fight, as quoted in George A. Gonzalez, The Politics of Air Pollution: Urban Growth, Ecological Modernization, and Symbolic Inclusion, (SUNY Press, 2012): p. 79.

22. In a 1951 speech to the API in Tulsa, Stewart would recount that during the smog fight “we, the Los Angeles refiners, felt considerably put upon. We were being persecuted; we were being attacked; we were on the defensive, and we didn’t seem able to get out of the corner. … things got to a point where an oil man was afraid to open his morning paper. ” See W. L. Stewart, Jr., “Laws, Morals, and Manners,” Addresses Delivered at Sixteenth Mid-Year Meeting, Division of Refining, Tulsa, Okla., April 30 to May 3, 1951 (American Petroleum Institute: New York): p. 11. Special thanks to Inside Climate News for finding and posting this address and other documents. See their article on smog, Neela Banerjee, “For Oil Industry Clean Air Fight Was Dress Rehearsal for Climate Denial,” Inside Climate News (June 6, 2016).

23. Dewey, Don’t Breathe the Air, p. 44.