If they weren’t so close to sea level themselves, I think Indian Ocean islands might be the best place to find clean air in a few decades—at least the ones that haven’t gone underwater because “sea level” went up half a meter. The occasional African sandstorm might send up a dust cloud, but most of that nasty air pollution should be just to the east, and headed eastward.

California recently enacted legislation aimed at cleaning up off-highway diesel vehicle emissions, a good chunk of which involves the construction industry. What with foreclosures up, new home starts down, and most road work still in the budget-bickering stages, the timing was bad. It may not be the draconian measure the construction industry makes it out to be, but requiring wholesale changes in a couple of years to machinery built to run for decades is going to cost.

And who pays? That’s right, you and I do. Directly to the contractor, indirectly through taxes or simply by dealing with an old infrastructure, we’re gonna pay. And probably too much, given Interstate bridges not half a century old collapsing while Roman relics, constructed without aid of any modern “materials engineering” still stand two millennia later.

The chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board (known to motorheads everywhere as CARB) got so excited about the rules passing her first statement was, “We’re really breaking new ground here…” I wonder how many construction supers thought that a really poor choice of words?

But while this is happening, the newspaper and internet are full of stories about the pollution coming from China, including word from the Journal of Geophysical Research that “much “of the particulate matter in Los Angeles comes from China. There are stories about air detectors in Western mountains and lakes picking up air pollution from China.

And California is targeting freighters and tankers at the Port of L.A., the vehicles that move freight on and off them, and construction equipment. I’m thinking Arizona and Nevada should pay for this, since they will benefit the most. Maybe W should’ve signed on with that “Kyoto thing.”

China uses more coal than Japan, the U.S. and Europe combined, they open a new coal-burning powerplant more than 30 times a year, and India is growing almost as fast. Anything that doesn’t land in Pacific Rim Asian countries, or the water, ends up on the Western U.S, and you just follow the weather map east from there.

With Europe running fairly clean and the northern half of Africa not very industrialized, I’m thinking the western Indian Ocean will offer the cleanest air available in a climate more fit for humans than polar bears, and a good place to retire.

Assuming I survive enough Sino-induced smog alerts in LA to do so, and they let me in.