Nixon's Inner Circle Took Global Warming Seriously In 1969
There's not a lot of great things to say about Richard Nixon but there is this: He is the environmental movement's greatest president to date. If Obama has any hope of eclipsing him with a legacy of climate legislation, he may do well to look to Tricky Dick.
Before Nixon's tenure, our land, water, air and wildlife had practically no legal protections. By its fateful end, we had the whole alphabet soup of laws we know and love today: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act...I could go on. I doubt Nixon ever intended the environment to be the high watermark of his legacy, but there it is.
Now, 10,000 new documents released by the Nixon Presidential Library on Friday reveal his top advisers talked global warming shop too. Nixon adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a future Democrat senator from New York, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide carbon dioxide monitoring system back in 1969, fearing that rising carbon dioxide would warm earth by 7 degrees and raise sea level by 10 feet.
"Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter," he wrote.
He got a response from higher ups revealing scientific confusion about the topic. Back then, global warming and global cooling doomsayers formed two camps. "One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise," wrote Hubert Heffner, deputy director of the administration's Office of Science and Technology. He said he'd get the science staff to look into it further.
Now, forty years and thousands of researchers later, this battle is long settled. A consensus of thousands of top scientists can say for certain the world already has warmed and will continue to warm at unprecedented rates if nothing is done. Sea level rise, drought, floods, death...all of that follow. We know a lot more than we did in Nixon's time. There's no excuse anymore to scratch our heads and say, hmm, let's study this some more before we do anything.
Yesterday, a big coalition of "deeply frustrated" environmentalists asked Obama to step up to the plate. The Senate is bickering itself to total inaction on climate and energy legislation this year. Obama has yet to lead, yet to truly engage on this issue. Just like with the health care debate, he needs to take the reins, go on a national campaigning tour, and convince average Americans of what's good for them. He also needs to piece together the language of a strong bill that can make it through this summer.
If Obama doesn't shepherd this to the finish line, Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund, said, "everything he’s done so far will lead to nothing," according to The Hill.
Of Nixon, Lee Talbot, an adviser to Nixon, Ford and Carter said back in 1998, "No president since or before, except maybe Teddy Roosevelt, has been willing to put as much political muscle into environment." Well, it's probably fair to update that to now. Clinton was a good environmental president, but didn't do too much historic. Bush, I won't even go there.
That leaves you, Obama.
Photo Credit: DBking, Flickr User
Jess Leber
is a Change.org editor. She most recently covered climate and energy issues as a reporter in Washington, D.C
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