Before I tell you the story about how California is taking on the Trump administration,

fighting it out over air quality and emissions, I got to tell you a different story.

Los Angeles suffers the worst blanket of smog in its history.

It's a story that explains why California is in this fight in the first place,

and how one state became powerful enough to take on the federal government.

The giant California city is shrouded by the ugly mist.

It's a story about smog.

Yes, California just happened to be the state that was smogier and more polluted than anybody else.

Tim Pucco is going to help me here. He reports on energy policy at the Wall Street Journal.

And by this quirk of history, they now have more authority than anyone else and have leveraged that in a way that gives them nationwide power.

When this pollution first rolled into Los Angeles, it was the 1940s, no one really knew why it was there.

You can find pictures from this time.

Women in crisp skirts dabbing their eyes when the air started to sting.

People wearing goggles to protect themselves.

Motorcyclists rolling down the street wearing gas masks.

California had no idea how to fix this.

One of the first suggestions and it is constantly being repeated, is that giant fans be

mounted on the rim of the basin, fans that would blow the pollution away.

This newscaster is literally showing a drawing of two giant fans on top of the mountains that

surround Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough electrical energy in the world to propel those fans.

And if there were, the concentrated smog that they would push out would kill every living thing

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