to protest smog, donned gas masks. So did businessmen gathering for their regular Optimists Club meeting, although the gas masks did make it hard to eat lunch. Behind them, a big placard grimly declared “Why Wait Till 1955—We Might Not Even Be Alive.” Something had to be done.
But then, at the end of October, the smog disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. “City Revels in Nearly Perfect Smog-Free Day,” reported the Times. A few days later, it declared outright victory: “clear, bright skies” were back. The attack was over—but only until the next smog attack.5
THE AIR RESOURCES BOARD
The smog attack of 1954—“the worst attack ever”—was the turning point. If smog was going to be banished, government regulation would have to launch a protracted counterattack on automobile emissions. The war against smog was a long one. Over the next decades, Los Angeles was still registering more than a hundred days a year of smog alerts. One smog attack was so severe that Governor Ronald Reagan went on television to urge the public to “limit all but absolutely necessary auto travel.” The smog problem was made even more difficult by the continued flow of new residents; between 1950 and 1980, California’s population literally doubled, and the area was said to have “the greatest concentration of motor vehicles in the world.”6
In 1967, Governor Reagan signed legislation setting up a new agency, the California Air Resources Board. CARB, as the agency became known, was the true successor to the Bureau of Smoke Control. Reagan appointed as its first chairman none other than the “Father of Smog,” Professor Arie Haagen-Smit. No longer seen as a “scientific Don Quixote,” Haagen-Smit had achieved what was described as a “worldwide reputation as the prime authority on air pollution.” Now, as chairman of CARB, he could do something about the pollution. He would become, as one auto executive put it, “judge and jury” for the auto industry, a role that the agency has played ever since.7
That same year, California’s severe pollution problems, along with its rapidly growing political heft, persuaded the U.S. Congress to grant California unusual authority. The state was given the right to regulate emissions so long as its standards were higher than the federal government’s.
The powers of CARB also expanded beyond the state. For Congress granted other states the unusual option of choosing whether to adhere to either federal emission standards or those set by CARB for the state of California. This made Sacramento, along with Washington, a national regulator of air quality.
Eventually its position would also turn the California Air Resource Board into the de facto national authority. This role stems from the fact that, by itself, California represents about 12 percent of the nation’s car market. Other parts of the country, particularly the Northeast and Florida, take their cues from CARB. The overall result is that CARB’s ability to regulate auto emissions covers a third of the nation’s auto sales. And if a third of the fleet is under orders, the other two thirds will follow, as it is very hard for automakers to make two different sets of the same model. Thus, if CARB issues an order with major impact on automobile design, it is likely to be a quasi-national regulation. And, given the scale of the U.S. market, the impact would be felt on the rest of the world. As the head of the agency said, with some modesty in 2011, “CARB punches above its weight.”
CARB, along with another agency, the South Coast Air Quality District, sought to reduce emissions with what were called technology-forcing regulation, compelling industry to come up with solutions by certain deadlines. Over time the technological solutions were found. The most important was the catalytic converter, which assured a thorough burn of the gasoline and thus much reduced smog-inducing emissions. By the 1990s the number of annual smog-alert days had dwindled to fewer than ten. And by the end of the 1990s, the smog-causing emissions coming out of the tailpipe of a new car were only 1 percent of what they had been in the 1970s; 99 percent had been eliminated.8
Technology-forcing regulation had worked on smog. CARB also wanted to exercise its mandate in an effort to eliminate all tailpipe emissions. It did so by ordering the introduction of the ZEV, or zero-emissions vehicle. The aim was nothing less than to find a replacement for the internal combustion engine or set in motion a transition to alternative fuels. In 1990 CARB issued its most ambitious technology-forcing regulation