Gordon M. Sayre, “Fordism in Detroit, Consumerism in Los Angeles: A Brief History of Automobile Emissions Regulation and Lessons for Greenhouse Gas Pollution” in: Imagining Air: Cultural Axiology and the Politics of Invisibility. University of Exeter Press (2023). © Gordon M. Sayre. DOI: xxxxxx 1 Fordism in Detroit, Consumerism in Los Angeles: A Brief History of Automobile Emissions Regulation and Lessons for Greenhouse Gas Pollution Gordon M. Sayre Te problem of global climate change caused by greenhouse gases (GHG), chiefy carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane, has changed conceptions of air pollution. Poor air quality was long considered a regional problem caused by sources such as forest fres, coal-burning industries, and—the topic of this chapter—emissions from internal combustion engines. Tat older form of pollution still exists, of course, and yet today CO 2 emissions are an addi- tional threat, measured on a global scale and expected to cause long-term global consequences. Reducing GHG emissions involves ameliorating a global commons by balancing shared efort and sacrifce among hundreds of sover- eign nations and millions of emission sources, with many controversies over historical inequities and relative risks. Tis chapter ofers a history of air pollution caused by automobiles in the United States in the twentieth century, as a case study of the challenges of regulating both industrial and consumer sources of pollution. It links two major economic and industrial ideologies of the twentieth century, Fordism and consumerism, to the changing forms of pollution caused by cars and trucks, and the methods of controlling and regulating this pollution. I argue that air pollution is not an unintended or unwelcome by-product of the car industry. It is in fact closely bound up with the ideologies of modern automobility and political economy, and I focus on cars because they are the largest cause of air pollution attributable directly to individual consumers. Te regulatory policies that have, with notable