Aunty -- nobody is running around like the sky is falling, but remember the two choices aren't abject panic and actively obstructing any forward progress. This seems to be the two positions you see...

What I'm for is prudent governmental policy that incentivises market to develop creative solutions. Hopefully we can sell those solutions to the Chinese, since they'll obviously need them too. Your amusing anecdotes about slimy scum and chunky air are again the classic "actively obstruct" arguements... Entirely emotional and anecdotal. How about some data... CLICK HERE for the data on Puget Sound air quality, flip past the cover page to the very first chart... (I'm exerpting at ~9 year intervals)

Number of "GOOD" air quality days/year:
1980 - 73 (!!!)
1989 - 231
1998 - 317 (a pretty large outlier in the data set, in a positive way)
2007 - 285

So you go on remembering the good 'ol days with the same make-believe lenses that cause you to believe all the junk the Texas school board is doing to their textbooks.

And again, I'm all for local projects too--and commend you for the work you've done on fisheries as an example. But one need not exclude the other. They BOTH matter, even though the national/global stuff is much more challenging politically and logistically.