Former EPA Chiefs Rip On Bush Regarding Global Warming
Posted at 2:42 pm on Friday, January 20, 2006, in Uncategorized, and tagged bush.
The Bush administration’s stance on the effects of global warming is that the science behind the phenomena is still up in the air (and it may be, to a point; but the majority of scientists believe there is a significant and damaging level of artificial warming of the earth). Well, that is the opinion of one GOP’s administration; how about the thoughts of former GOP administrations…
Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford‘s EPA chief Russell Train: “We need leadership, and I don’t think we’re getting it. To sit back and just push it away and say we’ll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive.”
Richard Nixon‘s first EPA chief Bill Ruckelshaus: “I don’t think there’s a commitment in this administration.”
Ronald Reagan‘s EPA chief Lee Thomas: “If the United States doesn’t deal with those kinds of issues in a leadership role, they’re not going to get dealt with. So I’m very concerned about this country and this agency.”
George H.W. Bush‘s EPA chief Bill Reilly: “The time will come when we will address seriously the problem of climate change, and this is the agency that’s best equipped to anticipate it.”
Even the sitting president’s first EPA chief, the moderate Christie Whitman, who resigned from office in disgrace, had disparaging comments for the Bush administration: “You’d need to be in a hole somewhere to think that the amount of change that we have imposed on land, and the way we’ve handled deforestation, farming practices, development, and what we’re putting into the air, isn’t exacerbating what is probably a natural trend. But this is worse, and it’s getting worse.”
The science is there, the money isn’t; that is the problem. The Bush team feels that the signing of aggressive environmental pacts, e.g., Kyoto Protocol, would unfairly hurt the U.S. economy, which it may. It is a valid argument. State it, then, and just that. Don’t hide behind the idea that the science isn’t there when we all know it is. Unless we listen to Ben Stein, that is, you know, of Comedy Central’s now-defunct game show “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” the film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and those Visine commercials, and former speechwriter for Nixon, who insists… “There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists.” He must be right, right?
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