Ronald Reagan is as close to a secular saint as the Republican party has. Reverence for the Gipper, his policies and administrations is effectively mandatory across the GOP. Former President George H.W. Bush is held in slightly less esteem, but he and his family are still of such stature that a second of his sons conceivably could be the Republican nominee for president in 2016.
How interesting, then, to see how much current Republican orthodoxy is at odds with how the administrations of President Reagan and the first President Bush actually approached problems involving climate change and the environment.
A story published in The Washington Post on Dec. 3 revealed 11 memos from the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations discussing climate change and what the United States should do about it. The memos were released last week by the National Security Archive. They were among several documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and had been considered classified.
What the memos show is that officials in both the Reagan and first Bush administrations took climate change seriously and advocated for a strong and quick response from the United States. One memo said climate change will have “profound consequences” and that the U.S. “cannot wait” until all scientific aspects surrounding it are settled.
A memo from 1987 shows officials from the Reagan White House arguing against Cabinet members in support of a strong international treaty to guard the ozone layer. It cautioned against trying to weaken the treaty, saying doing so “would damage our international credibility, unleash major domestic criticism and probably result in unilateral U.S.” controls on chemicals harmful to the ozone layer.
In 1989, Bush administration officials argued for a strong response to climate change. A memo to then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III advocated for the United States taking the lead in battling what it called “the most far-reaching environmental issue of our time.”
In that memo, acting assistant secretary Richard J. Smith said that “If the climate change within the range of current predictions actually occurs, the consequences for every nation and every aspect of human activity will be profound.” Then he reminded Baker that he himself had said, “we cannot wait until all the uncertainties have been resolved before we act to limit greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for whatever climate change we are already committed to.”
Again, that was in 1989. How come those guys got it back then but their political heirs do not?
Republican presidential candidates mocked President Obama for trying to work out a climate agreement in Paris. Their party decries his environmental efforts as a “war on coal.” The GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted on Dec. 1 to stop the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan to clean up existing power plants and to block Environmental Protection Agency rules for new plants.
Taken together, the memos reflect what the Post story called “the moderate stance on climate change adopted by Republican leaders both in the White House and in Congress throughout the 1980s and 1990s.” It continued, reminding us that today many of Reagan and Bush 41’s successors “dispute the scientific consensus on man-made climate change and oppose efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”
What happened? All that fits is to remember the Watergate-era adage and “follow the money.”
