Thinking about environmental regulations one day, Bill says to Marlene, “As the United States and state government agencies impose an exponential increase in regulations, all, of course, well-intended by compassionate bureaucrats trying desperately to save Something, Anything, Most Things, All Things, well, as I was saying, as the exponentially increasing agencies exponentially increase regulations, they will also increase their policing force to catch violaters.”
Marlene, no intellectual slouch has a degree in environmental science, so she responds, “Now, that’s a pessimistic view. What would happen if there were no oversight agencies? Imagine the chaos, the exploitation, the unbridled rape of the land—not to mention the increase in anthropogenic hazards. Look what happened before the Montreal Protocol. Runaway ozone destruction. If the governments hadn’t stopped uses of CFCs, we’d all be toast. Really, UV toast. No protective ozone layer. I’ll bet some of those CFCs are still up there destroying ozone, but not as many molecules now as before. So, stop complaining. You can go outside because agencies stopped the destruction of the ozone layer.”
Bill replies, “I’ll give you that, and I will admit that the air way back in the twentieth century was hazardous without the regulations. Jeez, I grew up in coal country when there were no scrubbers on the power plants, when cars burned leaded gasoline, when people heated their homes with coal, and when no one was paying attention to air pollution. So, yeah, you have a point. But then, as in all things, there comes a point that is the fulcrum of change, when the seasaw tips in the other direction so much that it touches the ground. A time’s coming when there will be more regulators on one side of the board than there are citizens on the other side, the government bureaucrats outweighing everyone else.”
Marlene, unable to yield, argues, “Without those regulators there would be more deaths from polluted water and air, more ecological destruction, and more…uh, uh, well just more hazards. Just because you grew up with pollution doesn’t mean that kids today have to. Think of all the particles you breathed; think of the smog.”
Unable to stop himself and willing to extend a conversation into the realm of argument, Bill says, “Marlene, I’ll grant you that some things are better now, that people saved the ozone layer they were destroying, though remember that it does fluctuate in natural cycles, but how much of living do you want to place in the hands of bureaucrats who have no personal accountability? I just read that the small pollutants that cars give off don’t account for all the so-called PM 2.5s, the particles smaller than 2.5 microns. Guess what? Trees emit them. Yeah, your beloved trees. Turns out that some scientists think that about a quarter of the PM 2.5s in the Los Angeles Basin come from 18 million local trees. * Trees, Marlene, trees. Not all kinds of trees, but certain trees. So, what’s next, tree police showing up at someone’s door saying her tree has to go because it’s the wrong species, that it’s in violation of air pollution standards, that it’s a menance to the community?”
The now agitated Marlene responds, “I don’t think first of all that you understand the dangers of breathing particulate matter that is smaller than what you can see. Two point five microns. That’s millionths of a meter. You don’t see them, but your lungs do. Leave it to you to think only of the big macro stuff you can see. You think in terms of coal soot and black smoke erupting from chimneys during your youth. You probably don’t remember telling me one time that in your youth you thought most trees had black bark and were surprised when they somehow changed their color because of reduced coal pollution when people in your town went from coal-fired furnaces to natural gas. There, is that visible proof for you? Brown tree bark, not black. Makes me think of that study of moths in England.”
Trying to prove he is not unaware, he says, “I remember that study. Peppered moths, right? They survived by producing more dark offspring when the trees where covered in coal dust and then survived by offspring that were lighter colored when rains washed the trees of their soot as England used less coal to heat homes. Okay, I see that point. But still, think of where we’ll be. If, as Ronald Cohen, one of the scientists who did the study of the Los Angeles Basin says, oak trees and Mexican fan palms produce lots of VOCs and 2.5-micron particles, does that mean some agency will send out a crew to cut down those trees? Imagine Los Angeles losing a type of tree that is iconic for the city, those Mexican fan palms. And what about oaks? Mighty oaks? What if people start blaming oak trees in the East? What’s next. No more oak trees, no more oak floors, no more oak furniture, no more poems written under mighty oaks, no more analogies about little acorns growing into those trees, and no more stories about Chicken Little. Think of the kids deprived of that story or unable to understand it because they’ve never seen an acorn. And what do we do with those polluting trees? Do we burn them? Doesn’t that give off carbon dioxide? See what I mean. So many regulations and so many regulators that we’ll go from one extreme to the other, and the regulation extreme will make life miserable. Don’t you remember that I asked you to marry me by the big oak in the park? It’s still there, still polluting your disgusting little particulates. Is that what you were thinking when I proposed? Were you looking at me or at the tree, thinking this thing ought to come down. ‘I can’t breathe all these particles. What’s he saying? Oh! Yes, Bill, I will marry you. Sorry, I was lost in environmental thought.’ Is that why you took a minute to respond. I thought you were going to say ‘no.’”
“Don’t be silly, Bill. Of course, I was paying attention to you. I wasn’t even concerned that you might be giving me a blood diamond.”
“See, there we go. How was I supposed to know where the diamond came from? Let’s not get into that. I was talking trees and regulators. I was talking about the tipping point when there are more regulators than there are people and processes to regulate. I honestly don’t worry about tree pollution. It’s part of the planet. Trees have been around for hundreds of millions of years, so we invaded their space. Are we supposed to fault them because we have instruments so sensitive we can detect the smallest particles? You have to see where we’re headed. Sure, it was good to stop the CFC destruction of the ozone layer, but there has to be a limit on runaway regulation. I know that air pollution isn’t good, but it’s unavoidable in some forms. What’s the next target beyond 2.5-micron tree pollution? The 180 million tons of Sahara Desert dust that waft across the Atlantic from Africa to the Antilles and South America? I thought that dust was good because it enriches soils in Brazil’s declining rainforests. Oh! Wait. I get it. Stop the dust from Africa, and the trees in Brazil will die off naturally and eliminate the species that give off those 2.5 micron-size particles and the volatile organic compounds. I can’t wait to see the line of regulators standing between Sahara’s dust and the trees of the Americas. There will probably be some UN committee in charge, the International Panel on Dust Control. I can imagine a dust brigade armed with Swifters and another young Greta, this one carrying a nonaerosol can of Pledge and a dust cloth. Hmmn. Does Pledge give off volatile organic compounds? Okay, no pledge, just a dust cloth and maybe a vacuum sweeper.”
Marlene, wishing to end the conversation, says, “You always take things to the extremes. Pull in here, I need to pick up some bread, milk, and eggs.”
Bill, whose voice she hears fading as she walks away from the car, continues, “Sure, you’ll see. But don’t come to me when an army of regulators cuts down that big oak and denudes the town’s parks in the name of saving the planet. Might as well live in the Mojave, but then there’ll be that dust problem.”
*Sanders, Robert. UC Berkeley. Phys.Org. 23 Mar 2021. Clara M. Nussbaumer et al., Impact of OA on the Temperature Dependence of PM 2.5 in the Los Angeles Basin, Environmental Science & Technology (2021) DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c07144 Sanders online at https://phys.org/news/2021-03-la-vehicular-aerosol-pollution-vegetation.html Accessed March 24, 2021.
Marlene, no intellectual slouch has a degree in environmental science, so she responds, “Now, that’s a pessimistic view. What would happen if there were no oversight agencies? Imagine the chaos, the exploitation, the unbridled rape of the land—not to mention the increase in anthropogenic hazards. Look what happened before the Montreal Protocol. Runaway ozone destruction. If the governments hadn’t stopped uses of CFCs, we’d all be toast. Really, UV toast. No protective ozone layer. I’ll bet some of those CFCs are still up there destroying ozone, but not as many molecules now as before. So, stop complaining. You can go outside because agencies stopped the destruction of the ozone layer.”
Bill replies, “I’ll give you that, and I will admit that the air way back in the twentieth century was hazardous without the regulations. Jeez, I grew up in coal country when there were no scrubbers on the power plants, when cars burned leaded gasoline, when people heated their homes with coal, and when no one was paying attention to air pollution. So, yeah, you have a point. But then, as in all things, there comes a point that is the fulcrum of change, when the seasaw tips in the other direction so much that it touches the ground. A time’s coming when there will be more regulators on one side of the board than there are citizens on the other side, the government bureaucrats outweighing everyone else.”
Marlene, unable to yield, argues, “Without those regulators there would be more deaths from polluted water and air, more ecological destruction, and more…uh, uh, well just more hazards. Just because you grew up with pollution doesn’t mean that kids today have to. Think of all the particles you breathed; think of the smog.”
Unable to stop himself and willing to extend a conversation into the realm of argument, Bill says, “Marlene, I’ll grant you that some things are better now, that people saved the ozone layer they were destroying, though remember that it does fluctuate in natural cycles, but how much of living do you want to place in the hands of bureaucrats who have no personal accountability? I just read that the small pollutants that cars give off don’t account for all the so-called PM 2.5s, the particles smaller than 2.5 microns. Guess what? Trees emit them. Yeah, your beloved trees. Turns out that some scientists think that about a quarter of the PM 2.5s in the Los Angeles Basin come from 18 million local trees. * Trees, Marlene, trees. Not all kinds of trees, but certain trees. So, what’s next, tree police showing up at someone’s door saying her tree has to go because it’s the wrong species, that it’s in violation of air pollution standards, that it’s a menance to the community?”
The now agitated Marlene responds, “I don’t think first of all that you understand the dangers of breathing particulate matter that is smaller than what you can see. Two point five microns. That’s millionths of a meter. You don’t see them, but your lungs do. Leave it to you to think only of the big macro stuff you can see. You think in terms of coal soot and black smoke erupting from chimneys during your youth. You probably don’t remember telling me one time that in your youth you thought most trees had black bark and were surprised when they somehow changed their color because of reduced coal pollution when people in your town went from coal-fired furnaces to natural gas. There, is that visible proof for you? Brown tree bark, not black. Makes me think of that study of moths in England.”
Trying to prove he is not unaware, he says, “I remember that study. Peppered moths, right? They survived by producing more dark offspring when the trees where covered in coal dust and then survived by offspring that were lighter colored when rains washed the trees of their soot as England used less coal to heat homes. Okay, I see that point. But still, think of where we’ll be. If, as Ronald Cohen, one of the scientists who did the study of the Los Angeles Basin says, oak trees and Mexican fan palms produce lots of VOCs and 2.5-micron particles, does that mean some agency will send out a crew to cut down those trees? Imagine Los Angeles losing a type of tree that is iconic for the city, those Mexican fan palms. And what about oaks? Mighty oaks? What if people start blaming oak trees in the East? What’s next. No more oak trees, no more oak floors, no more oak furniture, no more poems written under mighty oaks, no more analogies about little acorns growing into those trees, and no more stories about Chicken Little. Think of the kids deprived of that story or unable to understand it because they’ve never seen an acorn. And what do we do with those polluting trees? Do we burn them? Doesn’t that give off carbon dioxide? See what I mean. So many regulations and so many regulators that we’ll go from one extreme to the other, and the regulation extreme will make life miserable. Don’t you remember that I asked you to marry me by the big oak in the park? It’s still there, still polluting your disgusting little particulates. Is that what you were thinking when I proposed? Were you looking at me or at the tree, thinking this thing ought to come down. ‘I can’t breathe all these particles. What’s he saying? Oh! Yes, Bill, I will marry you. Sorry, I was lost in environmental thought.’ Is that why you took a minute to respond. I thought you were going to say ‘no.’”
“Don’t be silly, Bill. Of course, I was paying attention to you. I wasn’t even concerned that you might be giving me a blood diamond.”
“See, there we go. How was I supposed to know where the diamond came from? Let’s not get into that. I was talking trees and regulators. I was talking about the tipping point when there are more regulators than there are people and processes to regulate. I honestly don’t worry about tree pollution. It’s part of the planet. Trees have been around for hundreds of millions of years, so we invaded their space. Are we supposed to fault them because we have instruments so sensitive we can detect the smallest particles? You have to see where we’re headed. Sure, it was good to stop the CFC destruction of the ozone layer, but there has to be a limit on runaway regulation. I know that air pollution isn’t good, but it’s unavoidable in some forms. What’s the next target beyond 2.5-micron tree pollution? The 180 million tons of Sahara Desert dust that waft across the Atlantic from Africa to the Antilles and South America? I thought that dust was good because it enriches soils in Brazil’s declining rainforests. Oh! Wait. I get it. Stop the dust from Africa, and the trees in Brazil will die off naturally and eliminate the species that give off those 2.5 micron-size particles and the volatile organic compounds. I can’t wait to see the line of regulators standing between Sahara’s dust and the trees of the Americas. There will probably be some UN committee in charge, the International Panel on Dust Control. I can imagine a dust brigade armed with Swifters and another young Greta, this one carrying a nonaerosol can of Pledge and a dust cloth. Hmmn. Does Pledge give off volatile organic compounds? Okay, no pledge, just a dust cloth and maybe a vacuum sweeper.”
Marlene, wishing to end the conversation, says, “You always take things to the extremes. Pull in here, I need to pick up some bread, milk, and eggs.”
Bill, whose voice she hears fading as she walks away from the car, continues, “Sure, you’ll see. But don’t come to me when an army of regulators cuts down that big oak and denudes the town’s parks in the name of saving the planet. Might as well live in the Mojave, but then there’ll be that dust problem.”
*Sanders, Robert. UC Berkeley. Phys.Org. 23 Mar 2021. Clara M. Nussbaumer et al., Impact of OA on the Temperature Dependence of PM 2.5 in the Los Angeles Basin, Environmental Science & Technology (2021) DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c07144 Sanders online at https://phys.org/news/2021-03-la-vehicular-aerosol-pollution-vegetation.html Accessed March 24, 2021.
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