So much for us

Years ago on the southern California coast, certain beaches were often covered with tar. It was just part of going to the beach. One thing that had to be included with the beach balls, towels and plastic shovels and buckets was a can of turpentine. That was to clean off the tar before going home.

Also Catalina Island, famously 26 miles off the coast (at least according to the song) was often obscured by a dirty brown band of pollution that blew over the channel from Los Angeles.

In 1957, the International Geophysical Year marked greenhouse gases as one of the environmental dangers in the futur...