Air

The Early Years My asthma is returning, after 68 years of life, the last 12 years spent in smoggy Los Angeles. It was a regular acquaintance of my whones' early years, not perhaps a friend but something with which I had a ten-year functional relationship, from ages five to fifteen. It was gifted to me, I remember, each summer in my preteens by 'cotton dusters' – 1940s biplanes – flying low above the cotton and vegetable fields which began a hundred yards east of my open bedroom windows, spraying drifting clouds of DDT (a pesticide which has since been banned in the U.S.). My six-year-old granddaughter, who has lived all her years in L.A., has also begun to show signs, still occasional and hopefully false, of asthma. We both have a pressing need for truly clean air. So do other Angelinos. Mother Earth reminds me that air is the most pervasive and intimate substance in human existence. It is to us as water is to fish. We can survive only a few minutes without breathing it. If it were suddenly taken from us altogether, leaving behind the vacuum of space which lies just beyond Mother Earth's atmosphere, we would instantaneously explode. And yet we have chosen to abuse this substance unconscionably and cling to the associated benefits as though they were indispensable, akin to violent men who beat and sometimes kill their wives and children. The assault upon our air is even worse, since it is visited upon everyone in our communities. This message from our Mother is about that air, especially the bottom of her atmosphere in which we live, and about how Los Angeles has been and remains one of its greatest abusers. The heart of the nightmare, which began in Los Angeles only 240 years ago, lies in the European-inspired choice to substitute human tools for her wild creation. Those who made, and make, this choice make another – to forget that they are one species in Earth's creation, inextricably embedded in her. This audacious, willful amnesia characterized the European-ancestored humans who began settling in Los Angeles in 1769. With the aid of their tools, these humans expected to overwhelm the wilderness here and to see themselves grow in number and power; and to this they expected, and still by-in-large expect, no end. The air has been one of their victims from the beginning. To be sure, a combination of smoke and fog has been a feature of Los Angeles over the many millennia during which the Pacific Ocean's California Current has brushed the coast of the region. The fog, or at least haze, is driven on-shore by westerly winds off the cool arctic waters of the Current. It is held in place near the ground by the air's own weighty temperature, a layer of warmer air above, and by the mountains which form L.A.'s northern, eastern and southern rim – creating together an endemic temperature inversion layer, a durable characteristic of the region. Before the arrival of humans, the smoke came almost entirely from lightening-ignited blazes in the dry and warm summers. With the beginning of human settlement at least ten thousand years ago, the smoke was supplemented daily from the home wood fires of the native people, and occasionally from grass which they set aflame to drive rabbits into long willow bark nets, providing for them an important source of food, clothes and bedding. Whatever the cause of the smoke, this smog was evident to the first Europeans visiting the region, a Spanish expedition in 1542, which named San Pedro Bay the "Bay of Smokes." [The First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles, by William McCawley. A Malki Museum Press/Ballena Press cooperative production, 1996, p.4] Recently it has been pointed out that smoke from the burning of wood and other vegetable matter is a highly toxic air pollutant, and many argue that in order to obtain clean air willful burning of these substances should be banned entirely. If this were the whole story, then Mother Earth and the Tongva (Gabrielino is their Spanish derivative name), together with their Los Angeles neighbors the Cahuilla and Serrano, were guilty for millennia of a most deadly smog. However, in Mother Earth's creation, quantity and quality are inextricably linked. What is good in small or moderate amounts becomes terrible if it grows larger. John Cooper, a researcher and critic of wood smoke, wrote in 1980, "Man has been exposed to a large number of complex and hazardous chemicals from forest and domestic fires throughout his evolution. Thus, environmental concern over increasing use of wood as a residential energy source is not exposure to a new form of air pollutant, but is, instead, concern over the level of exposure and its impact on public health, current and future ambient air quality standards, and industrial growth."[Burning Issues] Those humans whom the Spaniards found living here were of a very different ancestry and culture than the Europeans, a hunting and gathering people, without metals, living within and at ease with the wilderness. Their contribution to toxic smog was small, that of less than 10,000 people spread over the entire region, consuming per person little energy, generating the pollutant from only one source, the burning of biomass. The wild lightening fires could be individually larger, but they were infrequent and widely spread. Equally important, the living vegetation covering the mountains and - except in the dryer east - valleys and basins below provided a powerful antidote to the smoke, by exhaling oxygen and inhaling carbon. The healthy, abundant, and typically well-watered trees, bushes and grasses were also fire resistant, limiting the extent of wild fires. Further, the numerous natural waterways, most of them now buried, absorbed and washed away the heavier-than-air particulates composing the bulk of the toxins. Despite the smog reported by the Europeans during their brief visit in 1542, the usual result, especially away from the villages at cooking time, was clean air. The Spaniards, once they began building the San Gabriel Mission in 1769, began a process which would change all that. Among the native people living in this region, the Tongva inhabited the most verdant valleys and basins, and they suffered the greatest from the assault of the new occupiers. They were conquered – the guns of the Europeans were most helpful - enslaved, and nearly driven to extinction. During the first century of Spanish and, after 1846, American occupation, from 1770-1870, the forests, chaparral and savannah were savaged, diminished in the mountains and increasingly replaced in the valleys by buildings, roads, irrigated agriculture, and water consumption demands from the burgeoning population of European ancestry, including that of the swelling town of Los Angeles. The billions of wild plants which were exterminated had been one body with the clean air above them, a reality which the settlers ignored. They also ignored a similar bond between the air and the water, the wild streams and rivers flowing from the mountains to the Pacific, and the great and small wetlands in between. The wetlands were drained and converted into other, human uses. The streams were diverted or reduced by irrigation ditches, or channels to quench the thirst of villages and towns. Further, the damage to mountain forests disrupted the steady flow of the wild water which remained. The elimination of this abundant, comparatively stable, flowing water lowered the absorption rate of toxic particulates in the air and the regular aqueous transport of these particles to the sea. It also caused a fall in the air's humidity, especially when dry desert winds blew from the east and fire hazards were greatest. It was like cutting off feet and expecting the legs to continue their good work. Mother Earth takes her own time, and the consequences of this amputation were not immediately evident. Any dramatic effect on Los Angeles's air, from a tool-infatuated human perspective, was infrequent and easily dismissed. Most of the days in 19th century Los Angeles were not sufficiently smogged to elicit recorded comment (until the 1850s, very few records were kept), although the conditions for unprecedented if occasional levels of air pollution were certainly in place and no doubt made manifest. One incident was reported, in 1903, at the beginning of a century in which smog was to become a household word [Smogtown, p. 44. For a complete reference, see below]. It seems that a haze appeared in downtown Los Angeles that many mistook for an unexpected solar eclipse. Like other impressive smog events before it, the haze soon dissipated. A brochure produced by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) with the self-serving title The Southland's War on Smog: Fifty Year's of Progress Towards Clean Air, had the following to say about the subsequent four decades: "From 1905 to 1912, the Los Angeles City Council adopted several measures to combat dense smoke emissions. As the century progressed, the city sprawled and industry boomed, overwhelming those first primitive air pollution control measures. "World War II dramatically increased the region's industrial base and resulting air pollution. The city's population and motor vehicle fleet grew rapidly as well. As a result, according to weather records, visibility declined rapidly from 1939 to 1943." The European-inspired choice in favor of tools, and against wilderness, was undeniably beginning to interfere on a more regular basis with the most precious of human necessities – the opportunity to breathe. It was in 1943 that smog finally ground itself into the core of Angelinos' awareness. In early July of that year, a dense cloud of polluted air formed over the Los Angeles basin, including the City of Los Angeles, and it did not leave gracefully. Instead, it lingered off and on for much of that month, and for months following. So began in earnest the schizophrenic struggle of Los Angeles communities between the Earth-given need of humans to survive and be well, and the power of humans' bond with artificial, poisonous tools. In July of 1943, and for decades to come, the air in these communities was frequently not only difficult to breathe, but difficult to see through, driving people indoors, closing schools, endangering the orderly progress of automobile traffic through translucent streets and freeways, and causing ill-health and death among those most unlucky or vulnerable to befouled air. It is important to add that the damage which this air pollution does to wilderness, and the consequences for humans, has yet to become a matter of widespread public concern, even though it has recently been recognized that the poisoned air weakens mountain forests and chaparral and exposes the plants' diminished immune systems to killing disease, insect infestations, and fire. The resulting increased susceptibility of mountain and foothill vegetation to devastating wildfires is a concern, but not enough to strengthen existing policies aimed at reducing urban pollution. Except for the humans who have chosen to reside in or on the fringes of these areas, Angelinos simply aren't interested. They are not aware that they and the air are whone. Even when only the narrowest of visions about the threats to urban human breath is at issue, the history of L.A.'s response to smog since 1943 is a story of unresolved contradictions which are so blatant that it would be comic, were the failures not so harmful. The most obvious of these is that many knew the machines of the day were responsible, but held firmly to the position that they could not be done without. At most, they should be improved. The fractured ground upon which our potent culture stands was exposed, and yet defended ferociously. The details of this tragic farce are better told in a book entitled Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, by Chip Jacobs & William J. Kelly. Here, Mother Earth is satisfied with a simpler rooting out of the basic themes of this history, and its meaning for us now, in 2009. Science Knows Something About Machines

Los Angeles smog on a random day, early afternoon, in October, 2009 What creates smog? The first serious inclination in the 1940's was to assume that, as in earlier decades, it was a combination of smoke and fog rolling in off the Pacific. Eliminating smog became a matter of removing man-made smoke, from backyard incinerators, barbeque pits, smudge pots used to protect citrus crops from occasional winter frost, open-air burning in garbage dumps, smoke from factories, electric power generating stations, and oil refineries. Led by newly-created government organizations called Air Pollution Control Districts (APCDs) in each of the region's counties - the first was the Los Angeles County APCD in 1947, followed by the Orange County APCD in 1950, and Riverside and San Bernardino counties' APCDs in 1957 - these efforts to remove or reduce stationary smoke sources were not entirely wrong-headed. But the smog nevertheless remained. The owners of these smoke generators, whether individuals burning their garbage at home, or major corporations like Southern California Edison (electric power stations) and Chevron and ARCO (oil refineries), vigorously resisted eliminating their smoke, and in some cases for decades enjoyed considerable success. This was made easier by the tactic of blaming others for the smog, and pressing the local politicians who ran the APCDs, most of whom were keenly sensitive to such pressure. The fact that the smoke and smog both persisted made more durable than it might otherwise have been the notion that stationary generators (rather than vehicles) were the cause of smog . It took a scientist, a determined biochemist professor at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in Pasadena named Arie Haagen-Smit, to reveal that the principal culprit did not stay still. It moved. Haagen-Smit had been hired in 1949 by the Los Angeles County APCD as a consultant on the origin of smog. He was chosen mainly because early attempts at smoke reduction had produced no significant reduction in smog, and the APCD, fearing accusations of failure and even corruption, knew that Haagen-Smit, at his own initiative, had taken a different if somewhat alarming approach that might prove helpful. Haagen-Smit had reached his initial conclusion about smog in 1948, announced to a committee of the state legislature. After being openly attacked by the Stanford Research Institute, a newly formed agency funded by major oil companies, and his hiring soon thereafter by the Los Angeles APCD, he and his assistants began a period of more intense research at Cal Tech. The outcome was a December, 1950, article titled "The Air Pollution Problem in Los Angeles," appearing in the Cal Tech journal Engineering and Science. Though couched in a carefully argued scientific presentation, his article contained at its core a simple and powerful statement. Although smoke of various kinds made their contribution, the great bulk of the smog, its essential cause, had become a chemical interaction between hydrocarbons in fumes from gasoline, diesel and other oil refinery fuel products, nitrogen oxide produced by the burning of these fuels in internal combustion engines, and sunlight. The end product is ozone, for Los Angeles enormous quantities of ozone, as well as visible particulates, trapped in the centuries-old atmospheric inversion layer. Since the hydrocarbons came from evaporation of any refined crude oil fuel, any place where such fuels were stored became sources of the fumes, including oil refineries and fueling stations. More importantly, since internal combustion engines were not and are not perfectly efficient, some of the fuel passing through them is unburned and emitted, in heated gaseous form, from the exhaust pipes of the vehicles they power. The nitrogen oxide comes out the same pipes; motor vehicles were thus smog's main source, along with stationary combustion engines such as those used in some electric power generating facilities. Later, Haagen-Smit summarized it this way: "When automobiles and the petroleum industry are controlled, smog won't bother us anymore." [Smogtown, p. 79]. It was not clear what he meant by controlled, but the auto industry and the oil industry were not amused. Contradictions Unfold The struggle which Haagen-Smit's revelation provoked, beginning even before his Cal Tech article, became more intense afterwards, and continues to this day, almost 60 years later. A basic contradiction was revealed between polluting machines, especially the private automobile and everything used to create, sustain and move it, and human health. Unfortunately, most Angelinos wished to keep both their own heath and their deadly cars. The product of this refusal to resolve the basic problem was a variety of lesser but frustrating contradictions within the dominant culture, in Los Angeles, in California, in the U.S., and globally. One of these is the desire of the politicians who controlled the APCDs, and the AQMD which replaced APCDs at the end of 1976, to satisfy the popular insistence that smog be substantially diminished if not banished; and the politicians' equally strong desire to ensure the prosperity of polluters such as Chevron, ARCO, and General Motors who were large employers of voters and/or funded in part the politicians' periodic campaigns for election. Politicians and political scientists tell us that politics is the art of compromise. These folk do not cause or promote revolutions. Instead, basic contradictions remain, and their lesser satellites are resolved, if at all, by taking something from both sides and then pressing them together. Sometimes this is called regulation. So it has been with air pollution in Los Angeles. First, it was decided that local or regional boards were too small to regulate moving vehicles or the companies which made and sold them. Perhaps the State of California could, however, do it. Thus in 1967 the California legislature created the California Air Resources Board (ARB), whose responsibilities were and are: to "attain and maintain healthy air quality" (no reference to clean air here); "conduct research into the causes of and solutions to air pollution;" and "systematically attack the serious problems caused by motor vehicles, which are a major cause of air pollution in the State" (not "the major", but "a major"). From its inception until now, the ARB has been the major government agent in the pursuit of air pollution compromises in California and in Los Angeles. Air quality activist groups, demanding more or less clean air, and the major interested corporations, demanding no change or inexpensive change, have provided the motivating pressures. The first major focus of the ARB was the catalytic converter, which in 1975 became a requirement for most new vehicles sold in California. This device had first been proposed in the 1960's, and initially labeled by the car manufacturers, according to ARB, as technically impossible and extremely expensive. It was neither, and these converters do remove some of the hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides from tailpipe emissions. In order for the converters to function, the additive lead had to be removed from gasoline, and this was done in the early 1970's by the oil companies under the compulsion of new federal and ARB regulations. However, the converters deliver an imperfect control, and in practice eliminate none of the pollutants completely. The result is that as the number of cars has increased, the overall level of pollution reduction from catalytic converters has been partially offset. Worse still, convertors are actually designed to increase the amount of carbon dioxide and water vapor emissions, both of these key contributors to human-generated global warming. The second major initiative which emerged from the ARB, beginning in 1990, was its effort to enforce the production and sale of Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs), that is battery-powered vehicles. In addition, Partial Zero Emission Vehicles (PZEVs), hybrid vehicles powered by a combination of batteries and internal combustion engines, have been encouraged as a technological bridge to ZEVs. Finally, electrically-powered vehicles which derive their electricity from on-board fuel cells, in effect fuel-cell powered vehicles, are being promoted by the ARB on the grounds that their gaseous emission is water vapor, not one of the gases which has been accepted as a cause of smog. It is unclear to me whether or not the ARB actually considers fuel-celled powered cars and trucks to be ZEVs, since they will certainly emit large quantities of water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas. Predictably, these post-converter initiatives were also strongly resisted by the car manufacturers, and the manufacturers have thus far won. In 2009, there are very few ZEVs on the roads and highways of Los Angeles and other parts of California, and only a handful of experimental fuel-cell powered vehicles. The ARB has been forced to accept these results, both from legal battles which it has essentially lost, and through its acceptance of the old argument from the manufacturers that there remain technical barriers to overcome.

More Los Angeles smog on a random day in October, 2009 Since there have been functional, low-cost battery-powered ZEVs in operation throughout the last century, either ignored or suppressed by the major car manufacturers, it must be concluded that the real issue is the long-standing alliance between the manufacturers and the oil companies. True ZEVs do not use refined oil except as lubricants, and a thorough conversion to such vehicles would destroy the existing market for the oil companies' most important product, gasoline and diesel fuels. However, the corporations which compose this alliance are slowly coming to recognize that the 20th century contradiction between clean air and the internal combustion engine may not prevail in the 21st century, despite their great economic and political power. They are beginning to consider that ZEVs and fuel-cell vehicles may become the dominant means of transportation in the next few decades. But not yet. The compromised efforts which began in the 1940s of the APCDs, the AQMB, and the ARB have resulted in a substantial reduction of Los Angeles smog when compared to those early years. The ARB boasts that new cars in 2009 produce 99% less smog-generating emissions than did cars thirty years ago. Exactly which new cars they do not say. The ARB also goes on to say that "over half of the state's current smog-forming emissions come from gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles." We still have damaging smog in Los Angeles. Clean air is still a remote prospect in this culture. And although smog has many machine sources, the most important remains, as it was in the mid-20th century, our hydrocarbon vehicles. Fire

After the Station Fire, Big Tujunga Canyon, October 19, 2009 The Station Fire. Started by one or more as yet unknown arsonists on August 26, 2009. Burned, as of mid-October, 2009, approximately 161,000 acres, the largest single fire in the recorded history of Los Angeles County, destroying, for a time, the heart of the San Gabriel wilderness. Not fully contained until October 16, made possible by two days of unusually early rains. Two firefighters died in the fire, and though I did not know them or their families, I regret their loss. Sixty-six homes were destroyed, among a total of 202 structures, and I recognize the painful loss this entails for the homeowners affected, though I know none of them. These losses have been reported in the media in considerable detail. I did know, in some small way that was important to me, a few of the millions of wild others – trees, chaparral, animals large and small, wild water courses and much more - who were burned, poisoned, uprooted or smothered to death by the fire, and by the human efforts to stop it with bulldozers and tons of chemical fire retardant, directed mainly at saving human lives and property. Their awful loss, and our loss from their passing, drew little or no attention from radio, television, or the press. A number of the wilderness pictures which appear on the pages of this website, full of vibrant life, are of those now dead. Fire, it is said, cleanses, and a new wilderness will spring up in the center of the San Gabriel Mountains, beginning with the next rainy season; but this process of rebirth and maturation will have only just begun in my time remaining as a human. When Mother Earth soon removes the culture now dominant here, or, reversing our present disinterest, we take the steps needed to replace it, this new wilderness will be too young to sustain us, perhaps any of us. A great part of what might have been our future home has been taken away. Other, unburned stretches of wilderness remain in Los Angeles, including outside the fire's reach in the San Gabriel Mountains. But our prospects for survival as a species in this region have dimmed significantly.

After the Station Fire, another vista, Big Tujunga Canyon, October 19, 2009 And even in this year, we may not be done with wildfires. Others may blossom, despite the moderate early rain in the region. Whether more rain will come soon, after three years of drought, remains to be seen. It will be Earth's choice. If it does come in quantity, substantial tracts of the burned mountainsides may be washed away, clogging the streams and rivers, causing flooding and taking near-wilderness housing away with it. This is another part of the fire's harm. The Station Fire, and other wilderness fires today, are quite unlike the healthy wild fires of the many generations when there were none but native people in Los Angeles. Air pollution, as I have already pointed out, plays a destructive role in all of these wildfires, because it weakens the ability of the wild plant cultures to resist the flames. As with the other ways in which we have weakened L.A.'s wilderness over the last two centuries and more, air pollution is a cause of these massive fires, even when they are set by arsonists. If they did not start them, lightning would. The enormous collective responsibility for the resulting wilderness genocide has yet to become rooted in the conscience of most Angelinos. Not only do we not know for whom the bell tolls, we do not yet even hear the bell. Mother Earth will restore the burned wilderness. Praise her. But she is not pleased with us, and she may bar us from the new land. One last point. For weeks, the Station Fire caused a level of air pollution in Los Angeles's urban areas which has not been seen in recent years, and this air contained not only wood smoke but also byproducts of the fire retardants used by fire fighters. Many humans living in these areas found their breathing dangerously inhibited, and, like the New York fires of 911, the effects may be felt for years. It caused my asthma to worsen, and I have yet to fully recover. There are, I suspect, many thousands who have suffered similar or worse results. What we have done to the wilderness was returned to us. It will happen again.

Manzanita burn victims, Station Fire, October 19, 2009

Global Warming Anyone with a regard for recorded history, or geological records obtained and analyzed by scientists, understands that Earth's atmospheric temperature has varied substantially, with very warm and very cold periods, including ice ages. Whatever the causes of these changes, they have been until quite recently expressions of Mother Earth, and not humans. One example is that Mother Earth's own rhythms have changed the proportion of so-called greenhouse gases to other elements in her atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide, in an ancient dance of her forests and prairies. It goes something like this. In periods of higher carbon dioxide atmospheric levels, resulting in warmer air temperatures (which may have first occurred many eons ago through great volcanic activity and release of carbon dioxide from the oceans), her land-based forests and prairies flower, thriving in the rich supply of this gas which plants require for life and growth. Over time, the resulting increase in plant numbers then lowers the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because the carbon dioxide which they inhale is retained by the plants until they decompose or burn. This same expansion in plant numbers raises the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, because plants exhale oxygen. The decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide and increase in oxygen causes a cooling of the atmosphere, and favors growth in the number and variety of animals, which inhale oxygen and require it for life. Another result of rising oxygen levels is an increase in the volatility of the atmosphere; most fires are simply the rapid combination of oxygen with other elements. Forest and prairie wildfires have this character, and lightning strikes in an atmosphere rich with oxygen produce an increase in the size and intensity of these fires. The global mass of land-based plants is thus diminished, and their burning releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while decreasing the amount of oxygen as the number of living plants falls. Global warming begins again. This planetary dance has continued, with many variations, until today. There are other characteristics of Mother Earth which cause a rhythmic warming and cooling of the weather, including her response to changes in the sun's energy output. In short, such changes in climate are part of her wild long and short rhythms. However, we humans have, especially in the last few decades, become so powerful in our numbers, the number of our domestic animals, and the size and numbers of our machines, that we are now directly affecting her atmosphere's temperatures, by increasing the amount of greenhouse gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane. Further, we are blocking the natural correcting factor of expanding wild forests and prairies which would eventually reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we are now adding. The sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are numerous, but the most important are: the mechanized cutting down and burning of forests, particularly rain forests, to be replaced by large-scale and less plant-dense agriculture; the use of the internal combustion engine; and the burning of oil, coal and natural gas for heating or in the production of electricity. In Los Angeles and more generally California, one of the principal efforts thus far to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases has been a struggle to reduce air pollution by fostering the replacement of the internal combustion engine in motor vehicles with either battery (ZEVs) or fuel cell energy systems. Unfortunately, even were most or all vehicles in California powered by these alternative systems – a distant prospect – few seem to recognize that this might not reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. It could actually raise these emissions. While the battery-powered ZEVs may have no tailpipe, and so no gaseous emissions from a tailpipe, where the standard measure of emissions is made, unlike streetcars they do have batteries, which can leak and even explode, releasing liquid and gases. If there are millions of these vehicles aging on the road, this will not be an unusual occurrence. To this must be added the many millions of discarded batteries which are likely to contribute to both air and ground pollution. ZEVs are also lubricated by petroleum products, which emit greenhouse gases. But this is small potatoes compared to the massive demand for new electricity which millions of ZEVs would produce. The greenhouse gas emissions of the additional large-scale coal and natural gas-powered electricity-generating stations which may be used to meet this demand could match or exceed that of present internal combustion engines. These power stations will not be located in polluted cities, but their contribution to global warming will still be enormous. The alternative of moving towards more nuclear-powered or renewable electricity production – solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass – none of which emit directly these dangerous gases - except for biomass - could take decades to complete. At the same time, disastrous climate change will have already swept the skin of Mother Earth, rendering such a transition unfinished at best. Solar-powered ZEVs, depending only upon the electrical production of their exterior surface, would be a better solution to the obsession with motor vehicles, but even they require materials and energy-consuming production processes that are enemies of wilderness, although perhaps not major donors to global warming. For instance, from where will come the vast quantities of sand which provide the silicon needed by most solar panels? The answer is inescapable. It will come from wilderness. As for vehicles powered by fuel cells, the strange idea that these machines will not pollute the air is based firstly upon an assumption of the innocence of water vapor. Water vapor is the gaseous emission of fuel cells, and at elevated levels, it is not harmless. It is a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide. Further, in addition to the effects of global warming, millions of fuel cells powering cars and trucks could certainly cause fog, rain and other less pleasant changes in the weather as the humidity of the air, especially in urban areas, is raised. Fuel cells also require free hydrogen as fuel, a refined substance which can only be obtained by the application of electricity. In other words, supplying millions of fuel cells with free hydrogen will require large amounts of electricity from electricity-generating stations, with the same consequences as millions of battery-powered ZEV's. And, again, where will we get the hydrogen? From water, or hydrocarbons, which is to say, directly or indirectly, from wilderness. Earth and Machines Tools made of synthetic materials such as refined metals and plastics, and with movable parts, are machines. Mother Earth does not create them. Rather, machines, together with humans, make machines. Machines made of materials that do not easily corrode, such as steel and plastic, are also difficult, once discarded, for her to absorb back into herself. So are some of the synthetic chemicals which machines produce. Nuclear wastes come to mind, although there are many others. Cars and trucks are machines, and their use has thus far done great damage to her air. This is true of other, less numerous, machines as well, including those which cut down forests, and facilitate the burning of the killed plants, and those which produce electricity by burning hydrocarbons. The solutions to this assault upon her air being offered, reluctantly, by corporations and government and often supported by green non-profit groups, an assault which now threatens the survival of our machine-based culture and of ourselves as well, may seem reasonable. End the tailpipe emissions of the internal combustion engines, and indeed abolish such engines altogether. By this means, and others, reduce human-sourced greenhouse gas emissions. Reduce or eliminate industrial and residential smoke. The truth for Earth is that none of these solutions are acceptable. She welcomes our ability to make and use tools. This is part of what we are and she forms us. But we have come to face two obstacles to her continuing the human form, and the two are related. Firstly, the machines, and the materials of which they are made, have always been a threat to her skin, and they are now so overwhelming, no matter how green we may pretend them to be, that they are for her intolerable. Those machines considered in this message may seem to be more alarming than others, and their alternatives may seem acceptable. They are not. They are instead examples of a punishing plethora of our creation that she now intends will be removed. Which takes us to our second obstacle. There are far too many humans, furiously consuming far too much food and water, materials for clothing and housing, and other less convincing necessities such as cars, and making this consumption possible requires far too much energy. Our Mother tells me that she cannot balance this human engorging against the needs of the rest of her animals, plants, rocks, mountains, deserts and other elements which are her skin, her surface wilderness, and vital parts of her changing, organic, whone. Machines make this grievous human consumption possible. Unlike our synthetic tools, humans can have a place in her future, at least for a time uncertain. But this is only if we are willing to fashion a path acceptable to ourselves that changes our billions to a few millions over the next few generations. Admittedly, this seems unlikely. This problem will be the focus of the coming essay, Humans. Bill Luttrell, one voice of Mother Earth