Los Angeles' Clean Air Saga - Spanning the Three Epochs

Abstract:     
Tracing the path that Los Angles has followed in significantly curbing its air pollution under the Federal and State Clean Air Acts over the course of four decades, this chapter illuminates both the struggle this has entailed and the importance of the three epochs developed in Chapter 1 of the book in interpreting it. The chapter focuses primarily on the evolution of the region’s efforts through the regulator and market-based epochs of the modern environmental movement, and its recent aspiration to enter into a more sustainable third epoch. The relative success of the effort is placed in the context of the tremendous growth in the size of the region’s population, economic growth, and continuously increasing number of cars, trucks, ships, and planes experienced during the
decades covered.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 39

Keywords: clean air policy, Los Angeles, environmental epochs

working papers series