GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

98THE POLITICS OF AIR POLLUTIONpolicymaking process CARB officials would not have the same incentives toreduce emissions from automobiles.One of my respondents acknowledged that the CARB and the automobileindustry have a type of “symbiotic” relationship, with the industry beingthe primary source of CARB’s technical knowledge on emission control technologyand alternative-fuel automobiles, and in return the CARB only setsemission standards that the industry can comply with (White 2000; alsoCackette 2000 and Scheible 2000). This same person also explained that theenvironmental lobbying community attempts to keep these actors “honest.”In other words, this lobbying community works to apply “pressure” and serveas a “check” to a potentially cozy relationship between the CARB and theautomobile industry (White 2000). Moreover, to the extent that the Californiaenvironmental lobbyists advocate policies that would force the development,mass production, and distribution of alternative-fuel automobiles, myrespondents from this community felt that they were moving the CARB andthe automobile industry into a technological direction that these actorswould not pursue on their own.Whether the inclusion of environmental activists into the policymakingprocess actually results in the increasing ecological modernization of theautomobile is unknown, however. As I pointed out in chapter 5, policiesadvancing the ecological modernization of the automobile preceded theinclusion of environmental activists into the policymaking process. The firstCalifornia law requiring the installation of emission control technology inautomobiles was enacted in 1960. Environmentalists were not incorporatedinto the policymaking process on this issue in California at least until the1970s (Roberts 1969, chap 3; Krier and Ursin 1977, chap. 14; Fawcett 1990,91–93; Dewey 2000, chap. 5).As I also pointed out in the chapter 5, early ecological modernizationefforts in California were led by economic interests that monetarily benefittedfrom local economic and population growth and increasing land values.It was the Los Angeles Times and its owner, Norman Chandler, that led theoriginal campaign in the 1940s to ecologically modernize business andindustry in the city of Los Angeles. This campaign resulted in the creationof the state’s first pollution control agency, the Los Angeles Air PollutionControl District.Additionally, it was an economic elite-led policy-planning organization,the Air Pollution Foundation, that in the 1950s politically established theautomobile as a major source of smog in Los Angeles, and advocated the creationand application of pollution control technology to it. As noted in chapter5, the Foundation board of trustees was composed almost entirely of representativesfrom business and industry. Many of these individualsrepresented firms that directly benefitted from economic growth in the LosAngeles basin, as well as firms involved in the production and sale of auto-