The orange haze covering the San Diego skyline on Sept. 15, 2020, because of smoke from wildfires across California, including the Valley Fire in rural East County.
That’s when air quality was bad, really bad and it was also when the nation began turning things around.“We implemented the Clean Air Act. A handful of amendments on the Clean Air Act,” said Jeremy Porter, a lead researcher at First Street Foundation. “We started the EPA. We instituted the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. And all of those things led to a sort of historical trend where we’ve really improved air quality.
Western states like California are already dealing with more frequent and more intense heat waves and wildfires. Porter called the increasing pollution a climate penalty and that means air quality will be poor more often.