Nixon, Obama, and Earth Day Offer a Study on Challenges of Being Green
Brad Bannon is president of Bannon Communications Research, a political consulting firm that works for Democrats, unions, and progressive issue groups.
Does Earth Day mark the dawn of a new environmental era in the United States? The answer is yes if President Obama and Carol Browner, his environmental and energy czar have anything to say about it.
Despite public indifference and worry about the threat that new environmental regulations pose to a struggling economy, Democrats in D.C. are charging ahead. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has already announced that it will limit carbon dioxide emissions. The Democratic chairmen of the two key House committees that have jurisdiction over the environment, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California, have already said they will get their legislation to the floor by Memorial Day.
It hasn't been easy being green in Washington, D.C., since the golden age of environmental protection in the early 1970s while Richard Nixon was president. Yes, that Richard Nixon. There is an entire room in Ripley's Believe or Not Museum devoted to Nixon's environmental presidency.
Before his presidency was so rudely interrupted by Watergate, Democratic Congresses passed several environmental initiatives that Nixon signed into law. These laws included the National Environmental Act of 1969, the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and last but certainly not least, the Safe Drinking Act of 1974. It wouldn't surprise me if Al Gore had a portrait of former president Nixon hanging in his office next to Jacques Cousteau's.
Not only did Richard Nixon sign all this legislation but he took a big step on his own when he signed an executive order creating the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
The big question is why a conservative like Nixon created EPA and why did he sign the green legislation passed by Congress. There are any number of explanations.
To begin with, Nixon was much more interested in foreign policy than he was in domestic policy. And Nixon wasn't the first president to allow Congress to take domestic policy initiatives as long as it left him alone to act as commander in chief. And the president was busy fighting the war in Vietnam at the time and making overtures to the communist governments of the Soviet Union and China.
And there was a tradition of progressive GOP environmentalism in the form of Teddy Roosevelt. It's hard to believe but, in the 1970s, there were moderate Republicans. Of course, they should have been put on the Endangered Species list before they died off, became Democrats, or were herded into re-education camps during the Ronald Reagan's presidency. These upscale and suburban Republicans were swing voters who were green, wealthy, and influential. So Nixon catered to them on environmental policy.
Finally, most presidents want to expand the scope of the federal government and their own power even if they campaigned as small government conservatives. Federal power just goes to their heads. Just look at the administration of the most recent former President Bush. George W. Bush took control of education policy from the states and school districts with the standardized test system in his No Child Left Behind law. The 43rd president expanded the federal Medicare program to include prescription drugs and he gave the federal government the power to listen in on the conversations of Americans with the Patriot Act. Conservative Republican presidents just can't help themselves after they move into the White House. It must be something in the water cooler in the Oval Office.
Which brings us back to the Obama administration. When the economy is so bad and there is so little concern about the environment, why is the Obama administration planning to take such bold action to clean the environment up and fight global warming?
The reason is that solving environment problems like global warming will help the new administration solve pressing diplomatic, health, and economic problems. If we burned less oil, we would have to depend less on unstable Middle Eastern countries for fuel. Some health experts believe that the increasing number of children with autism is a function of environmental impurities. And most importantly, we could follow New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's advice and create a new environmental technology industry that would be a source of new jobs, more exports, and higher incomes for America.
Conservatives argue that the United States should move slowly because we don't have conclusive evidence that greenhouse gases produce global warming. But a friend of mine who is a biochemist and environmentalist activist told me "by the time we have conclusive proof, the eastern seaboard will be under water."
Reader Comments
Reply to Brad
Brad,
We don’t know if your friend the “biochemist with 30 years of experience in the environmental field” has valid scientific arguments to support your position, because you don’t articulate those arguments here. You seem unfamiliar with the arguments on either side. Do you really care about global warming? If you did, you would be prepared to make your case instead of continually citing your anonymous friend, and vague fears of rising sea levels and icebergs. Please read this peer-reviewed article from a journal of science and show understanding its arguments.
http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/GWReview_OISM600.pdf
Unlike you, I have cited numerous sources, and providing the names of each scientist, who make their cases persuasively. I also summarized some of their arguments previously. But you have not indicated that you read or understood any of these scientific arguments. The public notices this repeated pattern here and everywhere. So man-made global warming hysteria looses its effectiveness, and fewer people worry about it, as previous readers have commented below. They feel that you have insulted their intelligence.
Artic ice is continually growing and breaking off, as part of a natural process predating Man. Using this fact to worry your readers only calls into question your actual motivation, especially when you don’t provide data quantifying the specifics, so that readers can independently evaluate your claims. Your 8-year time frame is kind of amusing also, as if ice started melting as an immediate result of a presidential election. I can assure you that the sun does not request permission from any federal agency before rising each day. Furthermore, you know Clinton never submitted the Kyoto Treaty to the Senate for ratification. He knew that the Senate had already voted 98-0 for a resolution to reject it.
Proponents of your man-made global warming theory (like your friend) began trying to spread this fear more than 30 years ago, as a means of attacking the free market. It gives them an excuse for government to further tax and regulate business. Since all of us are the customers and/or the employees of business, this is an indirect way of taxing and regulating us all. A firm only remains in business to the extent that it is able to pass on all costs to its customers, and make a profit beyond that. Therefore whatever the government does to a business, it is really doing to the customers of that business paying the entire cost of the taxes and the cost of complying with the regulations. Directly taxing and regulating these customers and employees on that scale by targeting their expenditures and paychecks would be far more difficult, as they would surely vote against such measures in self-defense.
Reply to Barry
I am happy you live on high ground but not everybody enjoys that luxury. You may not have read my aricle carefully but the expert I cited is a biochemist with 30 years of experience in the environmental field. It is also a fact that hundreds of thousands of acres of Artic ice have melted in the last 8 years while the Bush administration with its knee jerk right wing ideology stood idly by. Another big piece of the Artic ice mass broke off last week.
Reply to Brad of DC
Brad,
First I have to take issue with your reasoning as you repeatedly say:
"By the time, we have conclusive proof of global warming, the pacific Coast will be underwater, too. . .
Proof-by the time we have conclusive proof, the eastern seaboard will be underewater. . .
But a friend of mine who is a biochemist and environmentalist activist told me "by the time we have conclusive proof, the eastern seaboard will be under water."
We can't prove that the world won't be hit by a giant asteroid this afternoon. We can't prove that we won't be invaded and exterminated by aliens from outer space. We can prove that a deranged Russian madman won't get a hold of the nuclear codes and launch what remains of Russia’s whole arsenal at us. We can't prove that something like the bubonic plague won't return in a new form to wipe out our entire species.
Simply imagining an apocalyptic disaster scenario and not being able to conclusively prove it won't happen does not justify forcefully redirecting trillions of dollars of other people's money and resources. It is necessary to calmly contemplate the likelihood of such scenarios actually happening, and to not exaggerate their likelihood. That would be irresponsible.
In fact, an early proponent of the man-made global warming theory, Al Gore's mentor and former university professor, Roger Revelle concluded shortly before his untimely death by heart attack, “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time,” He published that three month before he died:
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/msheppard_20060630.html
His co-author of that paper, S. Fred Singer, continues to make that case, and has recently published a book on the subject “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years”, in which he attributes observed variation in climate to natural causes:
http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Every-Years/dp/0742551172
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html
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