San Seattle

Yesterday I took the two-hour drive from my little corner on the west side of Puget Sound down through Tacoma, crossing the Sound at the Narrows Bridge, then proceeding up the east side of it to Seattle. (See Google Maps: "Puget Sound.")

Ordinarily I take the ferry, but the wait for a boat was over two hours yesterday, what with vacationers and weekenders returning to the city, so it was easier to take the long way.

It turned out to be a revelation as well. The air pollution on the Seattle side is shocking right now.

I hadn't been to the east side of the Sound since before the big heat wave started about July 27. The hottest day -- Wednesday the 29th -- broke all records when Seattle hit 104 degrees in the middle of one of its worst air inversions ever.

I didn't think I'd ever live long enough to see the atmosphere in this region look exactly like Southern California's, but right now there's no difference. Coming up the freeway through the Kent Valley yesterday, I looked at the surrounding hills, obscured by that same gray-brown haze that has given the hills of SoCal their characteristic look for decades.

Population growth and the associated activities collectively know as "development" have reached and then surpassed their limit in this area, and we can be grateful that the environmental degradation that accompanies "progress" has now slowed somewhat, thanks to the recession. I keep hearing talking heads on TV and reading economists on line chirping about "recovery," which not only isn't going to happen, but is an outcome to be dreaded and feared. We don't need more of what got us here.

Anyway, as wiser heads such as the Angry Bear (angrybear.com) understand and have pointed out, this isn't a recession, but a collapse. Now that we've established that, can we please have our air back?