Brown clouds over Phoenix, Planet Earth

Phoenix, you are not alone: brown clouds are engulfing most of the eastern hemisphere as well.

Andrew Jacobs of the NY Times lays it out in this story today:

A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.

The clouds are a product of automotive exhaust, emissions from coal-fired power plants, wood-burning stoves and slash-and-burn agriculture, Jacobs writes.

He continues:

The brownish haze, sometimes more than a mile thick and clearly visible from airplanes, stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to the Yellow Sea. During the spring, it sweeps past North and South Korea and Japan. Sometimes the cloud drifts as far east as California.

Sounds like it’s headed our way…

Anyhow, we here in Arizona already have our own pollution problems, namely the famous “Phoenix Brown Cloud,” that toxic stew of dust, tailpipe emissions and other organic compounds that forms in response to seasonal atmospheric changes over the central valley.

To get some perspective on our own “brown cloud,” I chatted up Ed Phillips, the former state senator and meteorologist who chaired the Brown Cloud Summit, established by former Gov. Jane Dee Hull in 2000.

According to Phillips, emissions from car tailpipes are responsible for fully half of the particulate matter in the cloud. Dust, construction equipment, power plant emissions — even lawn mowers and leaf blowers — contribute much of the rest.

Diesel fuel pollution is probably the worst culprit, with looser regulations on emissions for vehicles and more particulate matter emitted per engine. Think: idling semi trucks by loading docks, etc…

What’s the bottom line? Phillips has a solution: ban cars that pollute.

“The single best thing we could do is get rid of the internal combustion engine. Much of our overall problem would be solved if we had completely clean tailpipes,” he says.

Phillips stresses that he is not being flippant — he understands as well anyone that there is no magic wand to be waved to instantaneously remove the millions of gasoline-burning cars from Arizona’s roads and replace them with emissions-free vehicles, trains or other mass transit.

But I appreciate his willingness to say what needs to be said: the internal combustion engine is killing us all (some of us — like asthmatics — faster than others). The same could be said with coal-fired power plants.

What do we do about it? Well, the new light rail system in Phoenix and Tempe is a good start. Use it. Ride your bike. Drive less. Support solar power and other renewable energy projects on a municipal, state and federal level.

Use less water — the amount of electricity it takes to move water from the Colorado River to Phoenix and Tucson is absolutely obscene.

Got any better ideas? Let me know.

John Collins Rudolf

(Photo of the Phoenix Brown Cloud courtesy of Flick)