Dec. 2016

President Obama announces that 98 percent of U.S.-controlled Arctic waters (115 million acres) and 3.8 million acres of underwater canyon along the Atlantic coast will be permanently withheld from any future oil and gas leasing under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act

President Obama noted that “[These actions] reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited… By contrast, it would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region — at a time when we need to continue to move decisively away from fossil fuels.” Simultaneously, the Canadian government announces it will withdraw all oil and gas leases in Canadian Arctic waters.* The Wall Street Journal’s editorial response: “This rule even purports to be ‘permanent,’ unchangeable by any future President for all time. We’ll see about that, but in the meantime spare us the liberal panic about Donald Trump’s supposed authoritarianism… No policy decisions are engraved in stone as if through holy stenography, and they’re definitely not beyond democratic consent on the basis of a 63-year-old law.”**

^*Samantha Page, “Obama Permanently Protects Huge Portions of Arctic, Atlantic from Offshore Drilling,” ThinkProgress, December 20, 2016, https://thinkprogress.org/permanent-protections-arctic-atlantic-e6978298eae1#.xukkcm6dm
^**Editorial Board, “Obama’s ‘Permanent’ Drilling Freeze,” Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2016,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-permanent-drilling-freeze-1482364429

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The Trump transition team announces a plan to strip NASA of funding for its Earth Science Division

The Earth Science Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration works on temperature, ice, clouds, and other climate phenomena; the Trump transition team wants to shift efforts to exploration of deep space. Senior Trump campaign official Bob Walker comments, “climate research is necessary but it has been heavily politicized, which has undermined a lot of the work that researchers have been doing. Mr. Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.” Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, responds that the elimination of Earth Sciences would be “a major setback if not devastating”: “It could put us back into the ‘dark ages’ of almost the pre-satellite era… It would be extremely short sighted… We live on planet Earth and there is much to discover, and it is essential to track and monitor many things from space. Information on planet Earth and its atmosphere and oceans is essential for our way of life. Space research is a luxury, Earth observations are essential.”* These plans will play out in the 2017 NASA Transitions Authorization Act, and future Trump Administration budgets, and will face some pushbacks from Congress. **

* Oliver Milman, “Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on
‘politicized’ science,” Guardian, November 23, 2016,
**Orion Rodriguez, “Trump plans to strip NASA’s earth science division, promote mission to Mars,” inhabitat, March 22, 2017, ; Scott Waldman, “Congress May Shift Climate Research Away from NASA,” reprinted from E&E News in Scientific American, February 17, 2017, ;
Ethan Siegal, “Trump’s Plan To Destroy NASA Science Laid Bare In FY2020
”țłÜ»ćČ”±đłÙ,” Forbes, May 22, 2019,

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The Reagan Administration cuts energy R&D funding by more than half; numerous battles erupt in Congress over the Department of Energy’s attempts to reduce its climate research budget and the content of climate research programs; the Reagan Administrative is supportive, however, of two major developments related to climate policy:Ìę the international treaty to protect the Ozone layer, and the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

As Karen Fischer-Vanden comments, public dissatisfaction with some of the Carter Administration’s R&D funding decisions “fed an already existing national trend toward more conservative views—including the desire for less government and industry deregulation where preferred actions of private businesses are induced through market mechanisms.”*Ìę“Carter had earlier asked us to lower our thermostats and wear sweaters.” wrote Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, “He wore one himself. Reagan, who succeeded Carter in the White House, wore only a smile. For him, there was no energy crisis. Whereas Carter had insisted that only the government could manage the energy crisis, Reagan, in his first inaugural, demanded that government get out of the way. Speaking of general economic conditions at the time, he said, ‘Government is not the solution to our problem.’ He went on to call for America to return to greatness, to ‘reawaken this industrial giant,’ and all sorts of swell things would happen.”** The Reagan administration is instrumental, however, in supporting the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer [see 1985] and the creation of an international organization to assess scientific and socio-economic information related to global climate change [see 1988].

* Karen Fisher-Vanden,Ìę “International Policy Instrument Prominence in the Climate Change Debate: A Case Study of the United States.” ENRP Discussion Paper E-97-06, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, August 1997, 3.
**Richard Cohen, “Wish Upon A Pump,” The Washington Post,

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President Jimmy Carter climbs to the roof of the White House to mark the installation of 32 solar panels to heat water for the White House

At the dedication ceremony for the White House solar panels on June 20, 1979, President Carter announces a “new solar strategy,” to reach a goal to obtain 20% of the nation’s energy from renewables by 2000.Ìę He observes, “In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy 
 A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”* [see 1986]

*Michael J. Graetz, The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America’s Environment, Security, and Independence (Cambridge:Ìę MIT Press, 2011) at 118; David Biello, “Where Did Carter’s White House’s Solar Panels Go?” Scientific American, August 6, 2010,

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The National Climate Program Act increases federal funding for climate research, under the National Climate Program Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The law includes a Congressional finding that:Ìę “(1) Weather and climate change affect food production, energy use, land use, water resources and other factors vital to national security and human welfare.Ìę (2) An ability to anticipate natural and man-induced changes in climate would contribute to the soundness of policy decisions in the public and private sectors.Ìę (3) Significant improvements in the ability to forecast climate on an intermediate and long-term basis are possible.Ìę (4) Information regarding climate is not being fully disseminated or used, and Federal efforts have given insufficient attention to assessing and applying this information.” ÌęIt directs the President to develop a five-year plan for, among other actions, “basic and applied research to improve the understanding of climate processes, natural and man induced, and the social, economic, and political implications of climate change;” Ìę“global data collection, and monitoring and analysis activities to provide reliable, useful and readily available information on a continuing basis;” and “measures for increasing international cooperation in climate research, monitoring, analysis and data dissemination.”*

*National Climate Program Act of 1978,Ìę Pub.Ìę L.Ìę 95-367,

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President Jimmy Carter sends Congress a comprehensive National Energy Plan with 113 legislative proposals, including new taxes on automobiles, on utilities that burn oil or natural gas instead of coal, and a gasoline tax intended to create a floor on gasoline prices

President Carter’s National Energy Plan is called “as ambitious and complex as any legislative proposal a president has ever sent to Congress.” ÌęPlan architect James Schlesinger describes the Carter Administration’s goals: Ìęto transition away from “cheap and abundant energy used wastefully without regard to national and international imperatives to an era of more expansive energy with concomitant regard for efficiency, conservation, international and environmental concerns.” ÌęThe proposal includes dramatically expanding federal regulatory power over energy producers, suppliers, and consumers.Ìę President Carter describes his energy initiative as “the moral equivalent of war.” ÌęThe American people, however, continue to regard cheap gasoline, inexpensive electricity, and low heating prices as an entitlement.Ìę The legislation finally enacted included virtually none of President Carter’s proposed taxes to stimulate conservation and the production of alternative fuels.Ìę Schlesinger: Ìę“The basic constituency for this problem is in the future.”Ìę President Carter: Ìę“We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems.Ìę There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.”*

*Michael J. Graetz, The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America’s Environment, Security, and IndependenceÌę (Cambridge:Ìę MIT Press, 2011) at 106, 110, 141.

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1971

Development of supersonic transport raises concerns about impacts on climate, and the Climate Impact Assessment Program is created under the Department of Transportation

Described as “the first major project in integrated assessment of an environmental issue,” the mission statement of the Climate Impact Assessment Program (CIAP) states that “in order to determine regulatory constraints on flight in the stratosphere such that no adverse environmental effects result, CIAP will assess … the impact on man, plants, and animals of climatic changes which may occur from the operation of a worldwide stratospheric fleet as projected to 1990.” The project has a $20 million budget and a three-year deadline and involves hundreds of researchers. The impact on climate is part of their charge, but concerns focused on the effect of supersonic transport on depletion of the ozone layer. The final report of the project clearly endorses international regulation of supersonic transport, but refrains from specific recommendations on the form of regulation.^*

^*NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, “Thematic Guide to Integrated Assessment Modeling,” ; Karen Fisher-Vanden, “International Policy Instrument Prominence in the Climate Change Debate: A Case Study of the United States.” ENRP Discussion Paper E-97-06, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, August 1997, 2,Ìę

Photo: A page from the PDF of proceedings of the survey conference sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, held in Cambridge, Mass., on Feb. 15-16, 1972.

Diagram:

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1970

Congress enacts the Clean Air Act, in a near-unanimous endorsement of strong environmental protections

In a remarkable show of bipartisanship, the Senate vote for the Clean Air Act is unanimous, the House vote 374 to 1. The New York Times describes the legislation as “far broader in its reach, far tougher in its deadlines and penalties than any of its three predecessors.”^* The principal architect of this law is Maine’s Senator Edmund Muskie, a Democrat, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on the Environment; he partners with Tennessee Senator James Baker, a Republican, to develop and promote the legislation.ÌęThe law gives broad powers to the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set national “ambient air quality standards,” for specific pollutants, and charges the states with writing “implementation plans” to achieve those standards.ÌęIt provides for regulation of both “mobile sources” — cars, trucks, aircraft — and “stationary sources” — factories, refineries, power plants.ÌęGreenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane are not among the “criteria pollutants” listed in the law for immediate regulatory attention, but the law provides for periodic reassessment of and additions to the list of regulated pollutants.ÌęIf the EPA determines that new pollutants “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” it must regulate them.ÌęThe law’s definition of effects on “welfare,” “includes, but is not limited to, effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, manmade materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate.”^**ÌęDuring the signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room, President Richard NixonÌęobserves, “I would only hope that as we go now from the year of the beginning, the year of proposing, the year 1970, to the year of action, 1971, that all of us, Democrats, Republicans, the House, the Senate, the executive branch, that all of us can look back upon this year as that time when we began to make a movement toward a goal that we all want, a goal that Theodore Roosevelt deeply believed in and a goal that he lived in his whole life.ÌęHe loved the environment.ÌęHe loved the clean air and the open spaces, and he loved the western part of the United States particularly, which will be greatly affected by this kind of action.”^*** The American Chemical Society Journal comments: “The new year 1971, the second in the seventies — the environmental decade — came in with a new air pollution control law.Ìę Without question, the new law is tough.ÌęIt is also complicated 
 With more deadlines per square inch than any other piece of legislation, [it] is the best blueprint for clean air the nation has ever had.”^****

^*E.W. Kenworthy, “Tough New Clean-Air Bill Passed by Senate, 73-0,” The New York Times, September 23, 1970,
^**Clean Air Act of 1970, Pub.Ìę L.Ìę 91-604, 84 Stat 1676, December 31, 1970, 42 U.S.C.7401 et seq., 7409, 7521(a)(1), 7602(h),
^***President Richard Nixon, Remarks on Signing the Clean Air Amendments of 1970.Ìę December 31, 1970,
^****American Chemical Society Journal, Environmental Science & Technology, 5, (2), 106 (1971)

Photo: President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the 1967 Air Quality Act — predecessor to the Clean Air Act of 1970 — in the East Room of the White House.

Photo:

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1970

President Richard Nixon establishes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 takes effect

President Richard Nixon’s Special Message to Congress in establishing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opens by noting that “[a]s concern with the condition of our physical environment has intensified, it has become increasingly clear that we need to know more about the total environment — land, water, and air. It also has become increasingly clear that only by reorganizing our Federal efforts can we develop that knowledge, and effectively ensure the protection, development and enhancement of the total environment itself.” The President proposed a “far more effective approach to pollution control [which] would: Identify pollutants. Trace them through the entire ecological chain, observing and recording changes in form as they occur. Determine the total exposure of man and his environment.Ìę Examine interactions among forms of pollution. Identify where in the ecological chain interdiction would be most appropriate.” “In organizational terms,” the President concludes, “this requires pulling together into one agency a variety of research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities now scattered through several departments and agencies. It also requires that the new agency include sufficient support elements — in research and in aids to State and local anti-pollution programs, for example — to give it the needed strength and potential for carrying out its mission.”^* Coincident with the establishment of the EPA, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 mandates, for the first time, that federal agencies “include in every recommendation or report on proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on 
 the environmental impact of the proposed action
”^**

^*President Richard Nixon, Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970, July 9, 1970,
^**National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Sec. 102, 42 USC 4332,

Photo: William Ruckelshaus swearing in as the first Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Seen from left to right: William Ruckelshaus, Jill Ruckelshaus (wife), Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Photo:

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1965

President Lyndon Johnson states in a Special Message to Congress,Ìę“This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through 
 a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels”

President Johnson’s “Special Message on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty” begins with the observation that “modern technology, which has added much to our lives can also have a darker side.ÌęIts uncontrolled waste products are menacing the world we live in, our enjoyment and our health.ÌęThe air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by the poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry.ÌęThe skeletons of discarded cars litter the countryside.ÌęThe same society which receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control.ÌęTo deal with these new problems will require a new conservation.ÌęWe must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities.ÌęOur conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation.ÌęIts concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man’s welfare but the dignity of man’s spirit.”^*

^*Lyndon B. Johnson,ÌęSpecial Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty, February 8, 1965,

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