Monday, March 17, 2014

A Place to Clear the Air

In 1978 I sold all our few belongings and left Riverside, California, and headed north.  I had a small daughter, wife and Springer Spaniel in our old 1966 Plymouth Valiant.  The reason I left Riverside and Southern California was the decision that I was not going to raise our daughter in a place where the air was so dirty it hurt to breathe.

The EPA established the Clean Air Act to deal with this awful air we had created with our emissions of toxic substances.

Now living these many years later, in the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay, my family enjoys clean air almost 350+ days a year.  We have a few poor air quality days, but the current "poor air quality days" are nothing compared to the past.

Here is a blog where I hope to join those who want to have clean shared air and those who need to use that air to produce products and services that we need and/or want.

I hope to find voices from all sides of the issue, from members of the California Air Resources Board, to major diesel manufacturers, college professors, health, environmental, construction, and transportation professionals.  Even the governmental advocates and maybe a politician's voice from time to time.

I have been an avid blogger for almost five years in the sporting dog world ( redbirddog.blogspot.com)
and activist in the California diesel emiisons arena. This blog is a continuation of a successful Yahoo group that I ran for three years: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CARBoffroaddiesel/info

As the title of this blog suggests: Common Sense Air Emissions, I plan to focus on common sense approaches to keep and continue to clean our air in North America.  Not as a social engineering tool, but from a true health standpoint and the practical ways of living our lives using this precious gift we all own (air).

I will give this one year to see if a blog like this has a place in the crowded world of the internet.

Hope the light we shed for each other will allow for common sense to prevail in the years ahead.

Rod Michaelson.