Let'shear it for Pittsburgh, which Tuesday made dirtyair not just California'sproblem.
The Pennsylvania city topped the American LungAssociation's annual list for the worst short-term air pollution fromparticles and was barely second to Los Angeles for year-round levels.
It's thefirst time in 10 years that a city outside California has headed any list in the yearlyState of the Air report, the lung association says.
Otherwise,the news was not good for Californiacities that historically have had no problem making the worst of the worselists.
- Five of top 10 cities most polluted by smog - Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno and Sacramento.
- Five of the top 10 for year-round soot - Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno and Hanford.
- Four of the top 10 for short-term soot - Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
- A number other cities - San Diego, Modesto, Merced, San Francisco - land in the top 24 on one or more of the lists.
- Thirty-six California counties receive failing grades for smog; 20 flunk when it comes to soot.
Seeing arush to Salinas and Redding?That could be because they're rated among the 10 least-polluted cities.
The endresult nationally, according to the lung association,is that one in six Americans live in areas with unhealthy smog levels.
If that doesn't give President Obama'scap-and-trade proposal an extra push, nothing will.
Andcap-and-trade -- a program that forces companies to pay for spewing excesspollution into the air - might be the only hope. Cleaning dirty power plants isat the top of the lung association's to-do list for curbing pollution, andcap-and-trade would strike at the heart of that problem.
Thecap-and-trade program, which focuses on big industrial polluters, couldactually help smog-choked Eastern cities more than it will aid California. Electricutilities, oil companies, large industrial plants and other such entities makeup 85 percent of the nation's emissions, GreenTech Media reports.
In anattempt to win support from coal-fired industries, though, draft legislationalso proposes national auto emission standards that are more closely align tothe restrictions Californiahas tried to implement foralmost a decade.
The stateneeds those standards. A big chunk of California'sproblem is due to "mobile sources" - vehicles.
Hearingsalready have begun on cap-and-trade - the House Energy Committee chaired byCalifornian Henry Waxman plansa markup May 11. Republicans already are girding for a fight, though PennsylvaniaSen. Arlen Specter's decision to revert to the Democratic Party leaves theGOP largely toothless in that chamber.
"Thisis the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country that I haveever experienced," Illinois Rep. John Shimkussaid at an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last week. TheNew York Times reported that Shimkussaid he feared cap-and-trade proposal more than the Iraqand Afghanistanwars and 9-11.
Rhetoriclike that practically makes party leaders look like moderates.
"Whenyou look at the final touches that are being put on this cap-and-trade policy-- or, as I like to call it, cap-and-tax -- this is going to raise costs forevery consumer in Americaand risk millions of American jobs," House Minority Leader John Boehner toldThe Wall Street Journal recently.
Boehnerseems to be overlooking the fact that that the proposal includes help businesses andconsumers, through aid to consumers hit by higher energy costs and assistanceaffected industries, according to the Centerfor American Progress.
He also seems to be overlooking the fact that thestatus quo risks the lives and health of the 186.1 million living inareas where the air is rated F. Children, the elderly, people with chronicrespiratory and cardiovascular disease. In other words, virtually all ofus at some point in our lives.