I was surprised to read recently that the first administration to raise an alarm on global warming was - Nixon’s.
Way back then, Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo:
“This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit,” he wrote. “This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
“Moynihan received a response in a January 26, 1970 memo from Hubert Heffner, deputy director of the administration’s Office of Science and Technology. Heffner acknowledged that atmospheric temperature rise was an issue that should be looked at.”
This was decades before this was a widely recognized issue.
Of course, Nixon is also the one who set up the EPA. Not exactly the image people have of Republicans.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
Go read Nixonland. Creating the EPA didn’t actually do anything other than shuffle around some federal agencies that already existed. iirc overall the total level of funding ended up declining.
Agree with the second point, disagree with the first.
The agencies in place had conflicting goals, conflicting leadership, and were pretty do-nothing.
Industrial pollution was incredibly bad at the time, and no government agency was doing anything about it. Within a few months of the formation of the EPA, they went after Cleveland, Detroit, and I believe Atlanta and fined them and served them with lawsuits. Within 6 months they established the first national air quality standards. There was a ton of changes and improvement that resulted from that unified agency with the mission that they had.
