GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

AUTOMOBILE EMISSION STANDARDS 81experts—through the device of research or service contracts—who will provideinformation and advice for the shaping of future policies and action”(Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 8–9). Therefore, the Foundation, and theeconomic elites that composed its leadership, hoped to collect informationand technical analysis to develop public policies to manage the Los Angelessmog situation.Throughout its existence, the Foundation examined studies and sponsoredits own research with regard to the issue of air pollution. A particularfocus of its investigation centered on the automobile. Here the Foundationconsidered studies put forward by such organizations as the Automobile ManufacturersAssociation, the Franklin Institute (for the American PetroleumInstitute), the APCD, the University of California, and the University ofSouthern California (Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 22). The Foundationalso conducted its own research on the role of the automobile in the formationof smog in Los Angeles.As a result of this work, by the end of 1956 “it became apparent to theFoundation that motor vehicles were the principal contributors to smog inLos Angeles” (Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 25). Significantly, shortlyafter the Foundation reached this conclusion, Krier and Ursin (1977) pointout that “consensus on this point grew quickly” (86). In particular, the automobileindustry dropped its longtime position that the automobile was not amajor contributor to the formation of smog in Los Angeles (Campbell 1953;Ford 1953; Chayne 1954; Krier and Ursin 1977, 89). Soon after this consensuswas reached, California in 1960 enacted legislation requiring the installationof pollution control technology in automobiles (Krier and Ursin 1977,chap. 10; Dewey 2000, chap. 4).After the Foundation determined that the automobile was a majorsource of smog-causing pollutants, its leadership then decided “that the futureprogram of the Foundation would be directed almost completely to a study ofmotor vehicle exhaust and its control” (Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 26).In terms of the control of automobile exhaust, the Foundation’s answer wastechnology. It centered its “research program” on the “development of scientificprinciples upon which effective exhaust control devices could be used”(Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 29). By relying exclusively on technology toaddress the smog derived from automobile emissions, the Foundation alsodefined the problem in a way that served the economic and political interestsof its membership and donors. By proffering technology as the sole solutionto automobile emissions, the problem is then defined or framed (Baumgartnerand Jones 1993; Laird 2001) as a lack of effective emission control technology,and not a problem caused by too much economic and populationgrowth or too many automobiles in the Los Angeles basin.When automobile emission standards were established on a statewidebasis in 1967, it was under the guidance of Dr. Arie J. Haagen-Smit, who