It's Earth Day. Breathe Deep
Happy Earth Day, everybody! Let's clear the air.
As is usual at my age, I woke up at 3:30 a.m. Plenty of time to solve the world's problems before I get up and turn on the coffee machine. Lying there, I took in a deep breath, feeling the air fill the deepest recesses of my 75-year-old lungs.
"Oh, what a luxury to breathe deeply again without coughing up mucus for weeks," I thought, taking in a few more restorative draughts of air. Those mullein drops I found work so much better than the tea I make from mullein harvested in my yard. Either way, it is a wonder plant. And the honey added to the drops doesn't hurt either. For decades, a yearly bout with bronchitis has weakened my lungs to the point where the slightest sore throat turns into a major illness. Now that the grandchildren bring home the "bug of the week," it's become a chronic condition.
A few years ago, I landed in the hospital with bronchitis and a falling oxygen level. The doctor told me if my numbers reached 90, I could go home.
"Oh, and by the way, how long have you been a smoker?"
"A what? I've never smoked in my whole life," I exclaimed, crossing my fingers regarding the three cigarettes I choked on during my exploratory years. He insisted I had smokers' lung. X-rays taken that morning proved it. I didn't fess up, but how could three measly cigarettes cause smokers' lung? Something was amiss.
Then I remembered living in 1970s Salt Lake City. I hacked and coughed for months at a time during winter. Not only was the air frigid; it was filled with copper dust from Kennecott's smelter. Filthy air would hover in the bowl-shaped valley, hemmed in by the Wasatch and Oquirrh mountains. Only a hurricane-force breeze could clean out the sludge. That right there was a good candidate for my condition.
To back it up, I found most of my deceased high school classmates had died of cardio-pulmonary diseases. The second killer was cancer of various kinds undoubtedly abetted by pneumonia-plagued lungs. It was a thing!
We can't rise in protest against Kennecott, however. Fifty years ago, they erected a monumentally tall smoke stack that scrubbed the smoke before thrusting it higher into the atmosphere. In recent visits to my hometown, though, I still observed smog hanging over the entire valley. The view from Big Cottonwood Canyon was shocking. A well-defined blanket of brown muck lay under the pristine desert skies. Temperature inversion, they called it.
A web of vehicle-crammed freeways connect a growing megalopolis from Ogden to Provo. Traffic has increased exponentially along the Wasatch Front as well as the frantic speed of the drivers. Everybody's got to get somewhere right now and public transportation built to serve Olympic events in 2002 just doesn't get them there fast enough.
As a result of this frenzy, smog from Kennecott's smelter has been replaced by exhaust from millions of vehicles churning out tons of pollution as well as angst. Obviously, ride-share programs, electric vehicles, and bicycle lanes haven't quelled the human urge to move at will.
Sorry, I don't have a solution other than stay home. Gee, that seemed to work during the COVID pandemic. Working from home made a lot of nice things possible for families. While urban businesses suffered, Nature itself wandered into city streets devoid of human threat. The air cleared and traffic woes declined.
Would it be possible to return to that era in some way where cities could still thrive, but commuting long distances would become a thing of the past. Even improved mass transportation and special lanes for cars carrying more than one person can't empty the parking lots we call freeways. Most vehicles still just carry the driver during rush hours.
Maybe managers who require people to return to the office need learn how to manage remote workers effectively. Perhaps the first action item on the agenda could be to winnow out the unproductive workers or train them to be more productive. I don't want to encourage the present "show them the door" methods of our present leadership, but blanket “return to office” edicts create unhappy and unhealthy employees.
Let's clear the air, literally as well as productively, with our office workers. We do have the technology if not the will.
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Very smart article, Sue. It's a complicated issue. Something needs to be done, but who knows what the solution is, as Americans are not inclined to get out of their cars. And this current administration will only exacerbate it by looking backward instead of forward. Sigh
If people saw video of the dense smog that covered the skies of all metropolitan areas in the country during the 60s and 70s, maybe they'd understand the need for pollution regulation. But sadly, too many would rather drive their giant, diesel fume spewing trucks through nature instead of actually getting out of the damn vehicles and take a walk through it.
If Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, or any of the Republicans from the 70s who helped pass the environmental laws back then, were all alive now, they'd be thoroughly disgusted with what's going on in America.