The whole country's air cleaned up from the 70s, not just Cali.Good read - thanks! Not surprising though.
For all its faults SoCal did clean up air pollution back in the 60s, 70s and 80s but I'm not sure what the current results of cap & trade are on actual cleaner air. It was brutal when I was a kid - it literally hurt to breathe at times and mostly couldnt see the 10,000+ foot mountain range less than 10 miles away in the summer months.
When we moved to SLC we were really taken back by the horrible air quality - the inversions in the winter are pretty bad. I'm not a fan of much regulation at all but I wish Utah would take a few small steps to clean the place up being all pro-family and pro-kids and all that.
As for Utah, they've already gone level stupid since I lived there growing up, but it's the Wasatch Front that controls it, not the emissions. Robert Redford racing around Orem and Provo in his black H1 Hummer screaming about Geneva Steel being oh so bad, got it shut down after they invested many millions into the highest level scrubbers on the market at the time.
But hey, want Utah air cleaner? Stop driving, stop heating your home, lead by example. Take the bicycle to the capitol and lobby to close the airport and kick Delta out of the state. Have them turn 15/215 into a green space. Get rid of the NSA's energy gobbling data center, as well as Google all the rest of big fucked up tech that ruins good places like locusts.
Or, just move back to California and stop trying to Californicate Utah.