GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

48THE POLITICS OF AIR POLLUTIONcritiques of urban air quality did not explicitly or implicitly critique industrialcapitalism nor the socioeconomic structure that it yielded. In the following,Stradling (1999) describes the political outlook of anti-smokeactivists at the turn of the century:Progressive reformers, including anti-smoke activists, rarely offered a comprehensivecritique of the industrial order that lay at the root of the diverseproblems they hoped to solve. Some reformers did organize against specificindustries and even specific companies, but for most progressives the objectof reform was to preserve the industrial system that had so enriched theircommunities and themselves. (2)Given the upper class position of the women leading the anti-smoke movement,such an outlook should not be surprising.CONCLUSIONThe central argument of this chapter (and book) is that locally oriented economicelites have historically provided the key political capital forwardingthe ecological modernization of U.S. society as it relates to the issue of airpollution. This position is predicated on two factors. First, that air pollutionis perceived as an economic negative by these elites. Indeed, as noted above,members of local growth coalitions have historically emphasized the negativeeconomic impact of such pollution. The second factor my argumentation isbased upon is that locally oriented economic elites have viewed technologicalcontrols as an appropriate response to the economic negative of air pollution.Such a response can help manage air pollution without directly affectingthe amount of economic growth that accrues in an urban region.As I explained earlier, the case of Chicago during the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries takes on specific historical and theoretical significance.It was here where locally oriented economic elites sought to transformtheir concerns about air pollution into regulatory policies. These policiessought to address the acute air pollution of the city through thedeployment of technology. The inherent political and technical difficulties,however, associated with such technology led these elites to end their effortsto control smoke. The political difficulties resulted from the opposition ofrailroad firms to the forced electrification of their lines. The available technologyto control smoke created by the burning of coal was of limited useand expensive to employ. Given these political and technical difficulties,areas like Chicago, which suffered from extremely poor air quality during thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, simply lived with the severeair pollution associated with economic activity and growth. Cities such asNew York, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis were just as pro-growth as Chicago duringthis period, and continue to be so (Belcher 1947; Pred 1966; Eisinger