On the afternoon of 29 January 1969, a Union Oil platform six miles off the Santa Barbara coast suffered a blowout.  Over the next eleven days, workers struggled to cap the rupture while hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spread into an 800 square mile slick that killed wildlife and tarred beaches along 35 miles of pristine coast.

The Hickel Senate confirmation hearings at been bitterly controversial; they set new levels of political acrimony that, finally, even embarrassed some of the interlocutors.  When the vote was finally taken after RN’s inauguration —making Hickel the last confirmed Cabinet member— the new President called and suggested that the new Secretary relax for a weekend at Camp David.

In a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation in 2003 with Charles Wilkinson and Patricia Limerick —co-founders of the Center of the American West— Wally Hickel recalled those events:

So I was confirmed and the president called and said, “Wally, go to Camp David. You’ve been through a terrible thing.” So I went up to Camp David, I left my chief of staff in Washington. I was up there one day and he called me. He said, “Mr. Secretary, they’ve had a terrible oil spill down in Santa Barbara.” He said, “It’s really bad.” And I said, “Well, get me a plane, let’s get out there.” And I hadn’t even been in my office yet. I got down there and we flew out to California and the Coast Guard met me and God, the people. It was rough.

They flew me out to see that. There’s pictures of that. I saw this tremendous flood of oil. And the people were saying, who was in office, and they were saying, “Take that Union Oil thing. Do this. Do that.” I was at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara that night. It was 1:30 in the morning. Fred Hartley was there, Union Oil. I didn’t know what authority he had. It didn’t make any difference. I said, “Fred, I’m going to shut you down.” And he said, “Mr. Secretary, you don’t have the authority to shut me down.” That stopped me for about a second and a half. I walked over and looked him right in the eye and said, “Fred, I just gave myself the authority.”

I walked out of there. I got on the phone and called the attorney general’s office and got the answering service. It was very early in the morning there in Washington, about 5:30 or so. I said, “You find me a way that I can shut them down, I just did that.”

I got on a plane and went back to Washington and got back there about ten o’clock the next morning. The Attorney General called me and said, “Mr. Secretary, we think we have something that will really please you. We found a regulation that was put in in 1834 that says that the Secretary of Interior is responsible that our natural resources not be wasted.” I held on that and won the case.

The problem with that was I got the regulations sent to me the first day down there in their office and the previous administration had given them [Union Oil] the right to drill offshore, and I didn’t mind that. But the regulations they used were the same as on land. So in reality, Union Oil didn’t break any regulations.

So I go back out to Santa Barbara and it was really wild. We had a meeting in a convention hall; there were two to three hundred people. They were saying, “Get Union Oil. Do this.” I said, “Wait a minute. They didn’t break any laws. We didn’t have the right regulations.” And they calmed down. I said, “That is not Union’s oil. It belongs to us. It’s the commons.”

I closed them down and we had hearings later. But those hearings were tough. I had no animosity. I sat there. God must have caused that spill in Santa Barbara because it brought the commons in to me.

Alaska was the commons. I had had that battle since 1951 when I took it to Washington. It started the environmentalist thinking. It started that thinking and it became a busy two years. But that was part of the hearing. Long story, but I don’t know how to make it shorter.

With Governor Hickel’s passing, George P. Shultz (Secretary of Labor, 1969-1970) and Melvin R. Laird (Secretary of Defense, 1969-1973) are now the last living members of the Cabinet that entered office with RN.

“The conservationists cheered me when we fought against pollution or when we preserved park lands; they attacked me when we advanced the Alaska Pipeline and the North America energy grid. My friends and associates in business were equally perplexed. I was not their guy. I was not anyone’s guy.”

December 11, 1968: RN announces his appointment of Alaska Governor Walter Hickel as Secretary of the Interior.

Former Alaska Governor and RN Interior Secretary Walter Hickel died today. He was 90.

Hickel was a trail blazer for President Nixon’s environmental agenda early on, leading the cleanup after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil rig explosion and conservation efforts for the Florida everglades . He was also a proponent for the first Earth Day, celebrated 40 years later at the Nixon Library this past April.

The AP has more:

An “Alaska boomer” with complex views on environmentalism and developing the state’s oil-rich resources, Hickel railed against “locking up” the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and used settlement money from the Exxon Valdez oil spill lawsuit to help repair Prince William Sound.

He frequently described Alaska as an “owner state” and advocated that the state’s wild frontier should be developed responsibly to preserve its value.

Hickel’s political career started in the early 1950s as a crusader for Alaska statehood, both at home and in Washington. He was also involved in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act which helped pave the way for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Hickel’s was a quintessential Alaska rags-to-riches story. Born in Kansas, he arrived nearly penniless in the small city of Anchorage in 1940, taking advantage of the city’s rapid growth following World War II to build a multimillion-dollar construction and real-estate fortune.

“I used to think about all the great countries of the world where I might want to go, because there was no room or opportunity in Kansas for me to do the things I wanted to do,” he wrote in his 1971 book, “Who Owns America.”

Through the years, Hickel never lost the “can-do” attitude that made him a rich man, nor did he stop thinking about ways Alaska could further develop its natural wealth.

It wasn’t until recently, though, that I learned that it was President Nixon who standardized observance of Arbor Day by proclamation in 1970, fixing it on the last Friday of April. Here’s an article about the ways in which the day is observed.

This week, the disaster that released enormous quantities of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, near southeastern Louisiana, is threatening the fishing and shrimping industries of five states. This has been the big story, at a time when the Gulf region, like the rest of America, is trying to get on the road to economic recovery. But the environmental aspect also looms large, as Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation points out in the New York Times:

Oil, however, is too complicated for simple solutions. Whether this spill turns out to be the result of a freakish accident or a cascade of negligence, the likely political outcome will be a moratorium on offshore drilling. Emotionally, I love this idea. Who wants an oil drill in his park or on his coastline? Who doesn’t want to punish Big Oil on behalf of the birds?

Moratoriums have a moral problem, though. All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria — places without America’s strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them.

Sponsored jointly by the Nixon Library and the Richard Nixon Foundation, we held another of the Nixon Legacy Forum’s, “Richard Nixon and the Rise of the Environment.” The panelist were three men who were a part of the events of the day, the Honorable Chris DeMuth, the Honorable William Ruckelshaus and the Honorable John Whitaker.

The panel “streamed live”, worldwide, from the Nixon Library Theater. It was great. You can see it for yourself on the Nixon Foundation You Tube channel or youtube.com/nixonfoundation.

Again, I learned so much about what was going on at the time. We were reminded that our environment was just plain dirty, smelly and awful back then. President Nixon knew that drastic measures were badly needed and he made the issue a major domestic priority when he declared in his first State of the Union address that we make “the 1970’s a historic period when, by conscious choice, we transform our land into what we want it to become.” This bold action lead to the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and more than 80,000 acres of National Parks. WOW! So how come people say that President Nixon was only a foreign policy president?

Think back to 1970. We didn’t know enough to think about thinking “green.” It wasn’t until raw sewage flowed into our waterways, rivers caught on fire, medical waste washed ashore, and beaches were closed that we began to wake up and smell the yellow air. One of my favorite lines of the panel was when Bill Ruckelshaus, the first EPA Administrator, said it wasn’t until polluted air was so bad that the people in Denver wanted to be able to see the mountains and the people in Los Angeles wanted to be able to see each other, that citizens began demanding change. The impetus came from the people and the President responded.

However, the Nixon administration took its licks on that first Earth Day. John Whitaker, in his book, Striking a Balance, reminds us that Walter Cronkite on a one hour CBS-TV special said, Earth Day crowds were “predominantly white, predominantly young, and predominantly anti-Nixon.” In 1970, Theodore White, writing an essay in Life magazine, “The two natural containers of the environment, the air and the water, finally vomited back on Americans the filth they could no longer absorb.” That’s harsh!

Christopher DeMuth, then a young 22 year old Harvard graduate, who had been brought to the White House by Patrick Moynihan, was very involved in the work of the task force who formulated the administrations environmental policies.

We’ve seen a huge improvement in our environmental quality since 1970.

Air is twice as clean now, despite that fact that twice as many cars are traveling twice as many miles. Peak smog levels are one-third as high as they were 40 years ago.

Recycling is common place now and every where we turn, we are reminded to think green. This year on Earth Day, school children at Disneyland released 140,000 ladybugs throughout the resort as part of the 12-year old integrated pest-management program. Ladybugs eat 4-5,000 aphids during their lifetime. Now that’s truly a creative way to celebrate a bug’s life at the Magic Kingdom in a way that helps Mother Earth. Way to go, Mickey!

A green apartment complex of 132 units here in Orange County, California, held their grand opening on Earth Day. Most cities in America are probably planning like projects.

However, we have to keep finding new, innovative ways to continue to make a difference. The job will never be over. Also, not all green, innovative products are as good as the old, wasteful ones. Showers for instance. It’s really hard to get warm in the Coyote Base huge, cavernous marble shower with it’s weenie little low-flow, water-saver shower head. Now, please don’t mess with my shower in our Jackson Hole cabin. It is old and perfectly wonderful. The fire-hydrant-like blast of hot water is a welcome luxury. Sorry, but we aren’t completely green and we gotta have some of our favorite comforts of life left to enjoy.

And speaking of showers, when you have your own blog, you get to choose what you want to write about, so my complaint in the shower category is directed at shampoo and/or conditioner container designers. Since I can’t exactly wear my glasses while showering, it is very difficult to tell which is which. Come on folks. Make it easier, will you please?

Remembering Dorothy Height: During the years that we lived in Washington, DC, I often attended events and had a chance to visit with Ms. Height, who died recently. Her leadership was legendary, and it is true that when she entered a room, she commanded attention. She was always a vision from heels to hat, and just as friendly and gracious. She never failed to act glad to see me, but I was always a bit intimidated and awed to be in her company. She is called the “god mother of civil rights” and she worked tirelessly her entire 98 years for the cause. I think of her today with gratitude, and salute her for all she did for our country and for humankind.

Below is Frank Gannon’s interview with Christopher DeMuth that took place after the panel:

Not to be overlooked: It was Richard Nixon who was in office during the first Earth Day celebration; he facilitated the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts and the conversion of more than 80,000 acres of government property into national parks during his term of office.

Three former Nixon administration heavyweights offer proof of it all Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif. One-time urban and environmental policy adviser Chris DeMuth; the first EPA administrator, William D. Ruckelshaus; and former Undersecretary of the Interior John C. Whitaker will discuss “the original goals of the first Earth Day celebration” and “President Nixon’s ambitious environmental agenda.”

The event can be seen live online at www.nixonfoundation.org from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. – and that’s Pacific time, so plan accordingly.

Although environmental awareness has been a long-running theme in American culture from Henry David Thoreau’s books like Walden to the present, and while Theodore Roosevelt’s initiatives to preserve the beauty of large portions of the American wilderness increased this awareness, concerns over environmental pollution are of more recent origin. Warnings about the dangerous effects of chemicals and other pollutants on wildlife began to be sounded when industrial production increased as part of the effort to fight and win World War II, and it was just after that war that the legislation now administered by the EPA and other Federal agencies began to be enacted, or, in some cases, replaced earlier bills restricting pollution. It is worthwhile to note that such legislation as the Water Pollution Control Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act emerged from a Republican Congress.
But it was with the serialization of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the New Yorker in the summer of 1962, and its publication in book form that fall, that public awareness of the adverse effects of chemicals in the environment gained momentum. The following year, Congress enacted the Clean Air Act; in 1964, the Wilderness Act; and during the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in 1964-1968, a half-dozen more major bills addressed these concerns.

A leading figure in Congress in pushing such legislation through was Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. In late September 1963, Nelson had accompanied President Kennedy on a five-day, 11-state trip intended to raise public awareness of pollution and environmental issues. Although that effort had failed to produce the impact intended, because the press was more interested in questioning Kennedy about foreign policy and the economy, Nelson continued to push for more legislation through the 1960s. In this effort, he was strongly supported within the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall.

During the 1968 campaign, Richard Nixon devoted comparatively little time to speaking on environmental issues, focusing his speeches more on foreign policy and how to deal with the increase in crime and violent radicalism. But eight days after he took the oath of office and became the 37th President, on January 28, 1969, an event in California nearly swept all other news off America’s front pages and suddenly put environmental questions into the forefront of America’s consciousness to an almost unprecedented degree.

This event was a rupture of one of Union Oil’s platforms, off the Pacific coast, eight miles from Santa Barbara. 100,000 barrels of oil flowed out in the spill, polluting a 60-mile stretch of coastline from Goleta, just northwest of Santa Barbara, to Ventura in the south; disrupting the natural balance of the Channel Islands offshore; and wreaking havoc on fishing and other activities which formed an important part of the local economy.

The public’s reaction to the oil spill spurred Sen. Nelson and a group of like-minded colleagues to quick action. Just three weeks after the spill, Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington introduced the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Initially, President Nixon had some reservations about the sweeping nature of the bill, which called for action on a far broader scale than anything undertaken by the Federal government before.

But broad action, in the wake of the Santa Barbara spill and other much-publicized environmental mishaps like the Torrey Canyon tanker disaster of 1967 in England, was what the electorate wanted, and the Senate responded by passing the NEPA unanimously on July 10. Two months later, the House passed the bill by 372 votes to 15.

In June 1969, President Nixon set up the Environmental Quality Council by executive order to address the public’s concerns on these issues. During this time, Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel and Undersecretary of the Interior Russell E. Train (who had headed the environmental task force in Nixon’s 1968 campaign) were the leading White House figures discussing such issues in the media. Later that year, Nixon asked John Ehrlichman, at that time White House counsel, to head a White House committee examining the current status of environmental policy in the executive branch.

At the time, such policy was the responsibility of various offices, particularly in the Interior and Agriculture Departments, although other Cabinet departments, such as Health, Education and Welfare and Transportation were also involved. The lack of efficient coordination and the expensive overlap between these departments convinced Ehrlichman, a man with strong feelings about nature and ecology (to use a word rapidly becoming familiar to Americans in 1969), that the White House needed to consolidate these efforts into one strong unit to administer environmental initiatives.

After the House and Senate versions of NEPA were reconciled in committee, and President Nixon signed the finished bill on January 1, 1970, the Council on Environmental Quality, as provided for by NEPA, replaced the Environmental Quality Council. Russell E. Train became the chairman of the new Council and it set about examining the question of how to put together a high-level agency to deal with ecological and pollution issues. The public demand for increased education and awareness about ecology was answered when Sen. Nelson proposed Earth Day, an occasion for “teach-ins” (a favorite concept of the counterculture of that day) and promotion of environmental awareness. The first Earth Day was scheduled for April 22, 1970.

By this time, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Massachusetts, who had become the front-runner for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, had made dozens of speeches focusing on ecology, and it was evident that the issue would be a major one in the 1970 congressional and gubernatorial elections. President Nixon, well aware that before the 1960s nature and wildlife issues had been ones where Republicans had taken a strong initiative, decided to support Train and Ehrlichman’s recommendations, sent Reorganization Plan No. 3 to Congress on July 9, 1970.

This plan followed up on several important initiatives launched by the White House, particularly its 37-point action program which had been announced on February 10. The plan called for the establishment of an Environmental Protection Agency which would “set and enforce standards for air and water quality and for individual pollutants,” and would have as its “principal roles and functions:”
The establishment and enforcement of environmental protection standards consistent with national environmental goals.
The conduct of research on the adverse effects of pollution and on methods and equipment for controlling it, the gathering of information on pollution, and the use of this information in strengthening environmental protection programs and recommending policy changes.

Assisting others, through grants, technical assistance and other means in arresting pollution of the environment.
Assisting the Council on Environmental Quality in developing and recommending to the President new policies for the protection of the environment.

One natural question concerns the relationship between the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality, recently established by Act of Congress. [From the text of the President's Special Message to Congress concerning Reorganization Plan No. 3.]

This plan was received with much enthusiasm and praise not only by legislators of both parties, but by many enviromental activists and the general public. On November 9, William D. Ruckelshaus, Assistant Attorney General, was nominated by the President as the EPA’s first Administrator, and was quickly confirmed by the Senate. On December 2, 1970, the EPA started operations.

During its early years in Nixon’s first and second terms, the EPA quickly established itself as an agency that worked with an authority and effectiveness that met the expectations of its supporters, and in the forty years since it has continued to be regarded among President Nixon’s finest contributions to American life. Today, as the Internet and other forms of mass communication make Americans even more aware of the sometimes fragile nature of life on the planet than was the case in 1970, the EPA is an essential part of the effort undertaken to preserve our natural resources.

In 1968, Mr. Train, an attorney with a long record of public service and environmental pioneering, was asked by President-Elect Nixon to serve as Chairman of a Task Force on the Environment.  During the early years of the Nixon administration, Mr. Train was Undersecretary of the Interior (1969-70) and Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (1970-73).

In September 1973, RN appointed him second administrator of the new Environmental Protection Agency (replacing William Ruckelshaus).  He served in that capacity under RN and Gerald Ford until January 1977, when he joined the World Wildlife Fund — first as President of WWF-US and then as the organization’s Chairman, until 1994.

Among his many worldwide honors are the US Medal of Freedom for his work in the field of conservation (1991) and the Heinz Awards Chairman’s Medal (2006).

Mr. Train opened his article with a general survey:

In his State of the Union Address of January 22, 1970, President Nixon declared: “The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, our land and our water? …. Clean air, clean water, open spaces — these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now they can be.” Expansive rhetoric to be sure, but the rhetoric was matched by a remarkable record of achievement.

Environmental protection represented without doubt in my mind the single most significant area of domestic policy accomplishment of the Nixon administration. The extraordinary number of legislative, administrative, and institutional initiatives dealing with environmental matters far exceed those in any other area of domestic policy. Moreover, the initiatives in this one field were remarkable not only for their sheer quantity but also for their scope and innovativeness.

The Nixon environmental program dealt with both domestic and international policy, institutional reform, pollution control, tax policy, wildlife protection, land use policy, parks and open space (particularly urban open space), historic preservation, and many other facets of the environmental equation. It was truly a comprehensive effort that stretched from 1969 through 1973, probably peaking in 1972, and later giving way to energy concerns that arose from the several Arab oil embargoes. In large part, the results of the Nixon initiatives remain in place today and form the foundation for the country’s ongoing environmental programs.

While environmental initiatives by President Nixon on the international front tended to be obscured by other more dramatic foreign policy accomplishments, during his administration the United States provided the principal leadership for both bilateral and multilateral international efforts in the field of environmental cooperation.

He concluded by noting that:

Whatever the president’s personal predilections in the area, the Nixon administration not only recognized and responded to the ground swell of public concern over the environment, but it was out front on the issue, the essence of political leadership. Indeed, in some aspects of its environmental initiatives, such as land use policy, the administration was well ahead of its time. In the international arena, the United States under the Nixon administration cajoled and prodded the nations of the world to cooperate in addressing critical environmental It has been a hard act to follow.

The entire article may be obtained here.

EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus with Julie Nixon Eisenhower and assistant Richard Fairbanks. Ruckelshaus will participate in a panel at the Nixon Library on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.

Although Richard Nixon’s pre-presidential speeches and writings sometimes had passages referring to his love of the varied landscape of his native state of California, it still came as a surprise to many when, in his State of the Union address on January 22, 1970, he outlined the first steps in the series of programs that made his presidency the most significant in the history of environmental affairs since Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1965, a Gallup poll found 25 percent of Americans citing pollution and other environmental matters as constituting as an important national issue. By the end of 1969, this figure had increased by 75 percent. There were a number of reasons for the rise. Concern over the indiscriminate use of pesticides had loomed large in the national consciousness since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Environmentally minded writers and champions of “small is beautiful” such as Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold formed part of the curriculum of the “counterculture.” The nation’s embrace of suburban development and new technology in the 1950s had been replaced by apprehension about the effects of untrammeled growth on wildlife, the waterways, and the atmosphere.

As these concerns came to the fore, a movement arose which sought to address them. In the early days of 1970, plans were fully underway to celebrate the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. This event was intended by its organizers to be a moment calling for new laws to guarantee clean air and water and to safeguard the integrity of natural landscapes, like forests, seas, and lakes.

Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.

President Nixon, in his First State of the Union Address, January 22, 1970.

The first mainstream politicians to embrace the Earth Day message were mostly Democratic, such as Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Senator who took the initiative among his colleagues in helping to organize events connected with the day. Soon Sen. Edmund Muskie from Maine, the 1968 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, was calling for quick legislative action in the field of the environment. Liberal columnists and commentators, at the time, seemed to take it for granted that the Nixon White House would drag its feet on the matter.

But in his first annual address to Congress, RN took note of the nation’s worry over the future of its resources, and called for the passing of laws to protect the environment, pledging to use $10 billion to ensure clean air and water for Americans.

Six months later, in July 1970, RN set up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This was a Cabinet-level agency; its head reported directly to the President. $1.4 billion was redirected from other Cabinet departments for its budget (primarily the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare), and it started operations with 5,650 employees. Within a short time the EPA, under its first director William Ruckelshaus, launched a series of important initiatives. In the same year, the passage of the Clean Air Act, with the support of the White House, marked the most comprehensive antipollution legislation to date.

The President followed this with another far-sighted idea. Having grown up in a family of modest means, he was aware that visiting major national parks such as Yellowstone or Yosemite was beyond the financial reach of many Americans. He therefore promoted the idea of creating new national parks from Federal land unused for other purposes, and during his Administration 642 such parks were created. He also made it a point to confer on a regular basis about the environment with two of his staffers with strong interests in the subject, chief domestic advisor John Ehrlichman and aide John C. Whitaker.

In April 1971, the President marked the first anniversary of Earth Day with a proclamation establishing Earth Week, an event which helped further education and awareness of environmental issues, especially among schoolchildren.

From 1970 until the end of his Presidency, Nixon made 36 different environmental proposals, including ones addressing such issues as noise pollution and oil spills. One matter to which he devoted considerable attention, and which was close to his heart as a Californian, was the cooperation of federal and state agencies in maintaining the integrity of coastlines.

Two events marked a divergence between the President’s views and those of many environmentalists. In 1971, the EPA recommended standards for the Big Four automakers (at that time General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and AMC/Jeep) to decrease fuel emissions. Nixon felt that the requirements were too stringent, and agreed with automakers who feared that manufacturing cars to conform to these standards would raise car prices and considerably decrease sales.

And, in 1972, Nixon vetoed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments. Again, this action was motivated by concern that to enforce the legislation as written would put American manufacturers at a disadvantage compared to their overseas counterparts.

But while keeping American business competitive, the Nixon White House was also able to lay the groundwork for the effective environmental infrastructure Americans rely on today to ensure clean air, clean water, preservation of wildlife and plant life for future generations, and a safer, healthier environment.

Below is an interview with John Whitaker, conducted by former RN Special Assistant Frank Gannon, on the environmental initiatives of the Nixon years:

Hon. William Ruckelshaus is sworn in as the first Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. On the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, April 22 at 1:30, Ruckelshaus will be a apart of a special panel that will examine President Nixon’s environmental record.

In the Wall Street Journal, William Ruckelshaus — the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency and a panelist in the Nixon Library’s upcoming forum on RN’s environmental record — writes that the Nixon Administration did much to tackle the environmental challenges addressed during the first Earth Day demonstrations:

We humans with our big cars and our big factories and our big cities were discharging terrible stuff into the air and water, and it had to be stopped or we would soon make our nest uninhabitable. The public was growing increasingly outraged. Every night on color television, we saw yellow sludge flowing into blue rivers; every day as we drove to work, we saw black smudges against the barely visible blue sky. We knew that our indiscriminate use of pesticides and toxic substances was threatening wildlife and public health.

But we didn’t do much about it. Until 1970, most regulation of industry was done by the states, which competed so strongly for plants and jobs that regulating companies to protect public health was beyond them.

Environmentally, it was a race to the bottom.

Until, that is, the public had enough and demanded action. A seminal moment: the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, when cars were buried and action was demanded from the Nixon administration and Congress.

And they both acted. President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, and Congress, starting with the Council on Environmental Quality, passed a cascade of laws designed to clean up our act.

One of my first public actions as the first head of the EPA was to bring major enforcement actions against three large cities for violations of the Clean Water Act. We followed that with additional action against the steel industry and other industrial polluters. I knew that the job of the EPA would be far more contentious in the future if we didn’t establish its credibility and its willingness to take forceful—and symbolic—action right from the start. The American people had to know we were serious about meeting their demands.

Ruckelshaus continues by outlining a new strategy for new challenges. Continue reading here.

Although last December’s Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change turned into a fiasco for a number of reasons, now is no time to retrench from the goals of the original Earth Day, which was observed for the first time at the 1969 UNESCO Conference on the Environment, and led to the enactment in 1970 of America’s Clean Air Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

Environmentally conscious senators, including Democrats Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and Ed Muskie of Maine, saw the need for the world to address the issue of pollution and they gave their all to ensure that laws were passed to clean up the environment.

President Nixon, to his credit, also established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 – a testament to the success of the early “green pioneers.” President Obama and the Congress should, on this Earth Day, continue in the bipartisan legacy of Nixon, Nelson, and Muskie and promote the cause of green, non-carbon based energy.

On April 22 at 1:30pm, The Nixon Library will host a panel with the officials  who spearheaded the goals from the original Earth Day forty years ago. The panel will be moderated by Southeastern Oklahoma State University history professor J. Borroks Flippen, and include former Nixon White House environmental executives John Whitaker and Chris DeMuth, and the first Administrator of the EPA William Ruckelshaus. Admission to the event is free and open to the public.

For more information, click here.

Waters has a Nixon connection himself. His uncle, John C. Whitaker, was undersecretary of the interior during the Nixon years. It got a bit awkward, Waters says, “during the ’60s when I was at riots and things outside the White House but now we get along great”. Whitaker, he adds, “was never part of anything like Watergate and his son, when he was 15, worked as a craft services kid on Hairspray and went on to become a big producer with Imagine Films, producing things like Eminem’s film 8 Mile.”

As previously mentioned at TNN, Mr. Whitaker, who appeared at the Nixon Library last month, was a major figure, during the early 1970s, in the shaping of the most far-ranging and farsighted environmental policies of any Presidency since Theodore Roosevelt’s, and in the initiatives in energy policy that have become especially relevant in recent years.

It’s also worth noting that his son Jim Whitaker, who Waters mentions, was a producer of another Ron Howard film, Cinderella Man. And it was Waters’s grandmother Stella Whitaker who gave him, for his sixteenth birthday, the camera which he used to shoot his earliest films. Over forty years later, he’s at work on his next feature, Fruitcake, although, as he points out to the Age’s reporter, it’s now rather difficult for even the creator of Hairspray to get backing for any feature with a budget above $1 million and below $100 million.

After his embroilment in the Nixon Administration’s only serious appointment hassle, Walter Hickel was doubly confirmed: both in his new job as Secretary of the Interior and in his new respect for the power of disgruntled conservationists. Last week, in his first important action, Hickel named as his undersecretary a man who may well set the tone for his department. He is Russell E. Train, chairman of Nixon’s pre-inaugural task force on resources and environment, and an internationally esteemed conservationist. The appointment drew praise from nearly every quarter, including the old Administration. Said Stewart Udall, Hickel’s predecessor: “I don’t think there’s anyone in the conservation movement with greater dedication or insight. He’s supported all the right causes.”

For Udall, the most important right cause is Train’s commitment to “the environmental impact of what we’re doing.” Train believes that the Federal Government must assign top priority to preserving open space and protecting wildlife—two of Interior’s traditional functions. He insists that the Government also study the wise use of all of the nation’s vulnerable natural resources, and specifically a campaign against such blights as pollution, overcrowding and planned uglification. Train, 48, an Eisenhower appointee to a tax court judgeship, first became interested in conservation as a big-game hunter. In 1961, he founded the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation to help assure that Africa’s new governments would do a better job of preserving game than their colonial predecessors had. For the past four years he has headed the nonprofit Conservation Foundation, which, under his leadership, addressed its educational and research programs to increasingly broader fields (waste disposal, the danger of pesticides, hunger).

Train’s impending appointment became open knowledge in Washington early last month after Nixon aides leaked the news in hope of offsetting Hickel’s extremely maladroit comments on utilizing natural resources rather than preserving them. In discussing Train’s Senate hearing for confirmation this week, Hickel said wryly: “I don’t think the hearings will last as long for him as they did for me.”

RN had used 1969 to organize and consolidate, and his 1970 SOTU —which is my favorite among the several notable speeches he gave as POTUS— concisely conveys the sense of confidence, energy, enthusiasm, innovation, and equanimity that characterized his first term, and particularly its approach to domestic issues.  The speech was beautifully written, and the delivery combined equal parts of buoyancy and gravitas as RN simply but eloquently sketched his vision of a new America for a new decade — and challenged Americans to join him in making that vision real.

Although the Congress had failed to act on any of his legislative proposals to date, the speech to “my colleagues in the Congress” was marked by the tone of respect, conciliation, and cooperation that characterized the beginning of his administration.

To address a joint session of the Congress in this great chamber in which I was once privileged to serve is an honor for which I am deeply grateful.

After the bitter divisiveness of the 1960s, the new President held out the possibility of turning a corner together:

The State of the Union address is traditionally an occasion for a lengthy and detailed account by the President of what he has accomplished in the past, what he wants the Congress to do in the future, and, in an election year, to lay the basis for the political issues which might be decisive in the fall.

Occasionally there comes a time when profound and far-reaching events command a break with tradition. This is such a time.

I say this not only because 1970 marks the beginning of a new decade in which America will celebrate its 200th birthday. I say it because new knowledge and hard experience argue persuasively that both our programs and our institutions in America need to be reformed.

The moment has arrived to harness the vast energies and abundance of this land to the creation of a new American experience, an experience richer and deeper and more truly a reflection of the goodness and grace of the human spirit.

The ’70s will be a time of new beginnings, a time of exploring both on the earth and in the heavens, a time of discovery. But the time has also come for emphasis on developing better ways of managing what we have and of completing what man’s genius has begun but left unfinished.

Our land, this land that is ours together, is a great and a good land. It is also an unfinished land, and the challenge of perfecting it is the summons of the ’70s.

RN said that the first and most important national priority was peace and an end to the war in Vietnam.  At this point, the new President was still confident that his determination to negotiate an equitable settlement would end the war this year.  His undiminished optimism is reflected in his words; he had not yet accepted that the enemy wasn’t interested in negotiating anything; that their non-negotiable terms involved a unilateral US withdrawal combined with an overthrow of the Thieu government.

He outlined the basic points of the Nixon Doctrine he had announced at Guam in July ’69 — that America would continue to provide military aid and supplies to our allies, but that they would be expected to provide the manpower for their own defense that it expected its allies to assume responsibility for providing the manpower for their own defense— and said that foreign policy would be the subject of a separate paper.

Moving on to the domestic front —the State of the Union— RN discussed the economic imbalances that had been created by several years of unrestrained spending.  The solution for such problems was clear: restrain spending and balance budgets.

But in this speech, RN was thinking far more broadly and boldly.

I now turn to a subject which, next to our desire for peace, may well become the major concern of the American people in the decade of the seventies.

In the next 10 years we shall increase our wealth by 50 percent. The profound question is: Does this mean we will be 50 percent richer in a real sense, 50 percent better off, 50 percent happier?

Or does it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this place will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people lived in metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog, poisoned by water, deafened by noise, and terrorized by crime?

These are not the great questions that concern world leaders at summit conferences. But people do not live at the summit. They live in the foothills of everyday experience, and it is time for all of us to concern ourselves with the way real people live in real life.

The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?

Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.

Clean air, clean water, open spaces—these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.

We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.

The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America’s history.

It is not a program for just one year. A year’s plan in this field is no plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but five years or 10 years—whatever time is required to do the job.

Thus RN put his mark on the emerging issue of the environment — and challenged the Congress (the same Congress he had already gently chastised for inaction at different points during the speech) to join him on a decade-long commitment to reclaiming America’s natural heritage.

The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America’s history.

It is not a program for just one year. A year’s plan in this field is no plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but 5 years or 10 years–whatever time is required to do the job.

I shall propose to this Congress a $10 billion nationwide clean waters program to put modern municipal waste treatment plants in every place in America where they are needed to make our waters clean again, and do it now. We have the industrial capacity, if we begin now, to build them all within 5 years. This program will get them built within 5 years.

As our cities and suburbs relentlessly expand, those priceless open spaces needed for recreation areas accessible to their people are swallowed up–often forever. Unless we preserve these spaces while they are still available, we will have none to preserve. Therefore, I shall propose new financing methods for purchasing open space and parklands now, before they are lost to us.

The automobile is our worst polluter of the air. Adequate control requires further advances in engine design and fuel composition. We shall intensify our research, set increasingly strict standards, and strengthen enforcement procedures-and we shall do it now.

We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor’s yard.

This requires comprehensive new regulations. It also requires that, to the extent possible, the price of goods should be made to include the costs of producing and disposing of them without damage to the environment.

Now, I realize that the argument is often made that there is a fundamental contradiction between economic growth and the quality of life, so that to have one we must forsake the other.

The answer is not to abandon growth, but to redirect it. For example, we should turn toward ending congestion and eliminating smog the same reservoir of inventive genius that created them in the first place.

Continued vigorous economic growth provides us with the means to enrich life itself and to enhance our planet as a place hospitable to man.

The speech’s peroration and conclusion deserve quotation in full:

Two hundred years ago this was a new nation of 3 million people, weak militarily, poor economically. But America meant something to the world then which could not be measured in dollars, something far more important than military might.

Listen to President Thomas Jefferson in 1802: We act not “for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race.”

We had a spiritual quality then which caught the imagination of millions of people in the world.

Today, when we are the richest and strongest nation in the world, let it not be recorded that we lack the moral and spiritual idealism which made us the hope of the world at the time of our birth.

The demands of us in 1976 are even greater than in 1776.

It is no longer enough to live and let live. Now we must live and help live.

We need a fresh climate in America, one in which a person can breathe freely and breathe in freedom.

Our recognition of the truth that wealth and happiness are not the same thing requires us to measure success or failure by new criteria.

Even more than the programs I have described today, what this Nation needs is an example from its elected leaders in providing the spiritual and moral leadership which no programs for material progress can satisfy.

Above all, let us inspire young Americans with a sense of excitement, a sense of destiny, a sense of involvement, in meeting the challenges we face in this great period of our history. Only then are they going to have any sense of satisfaction in their lives.

The greatest privilege an individual can have is to serve in a cause bigger than himself. We have such a cause.

How we seize the opportunities I have described today will determine not only our future, but the future of peace and freedom in this world in the last third of the century.

May God give us the wisdom, the strength and, above all, the idealism to be worthy of that challenge, so that America can fulfill its destiny of being the world’s best hope for liberty, for opportunity, for progress and peace for all peoples.

It has become conventional wisdom that RN actually had little interest in the environment, and that his proposals were principally intended to outflank his political opponents on their left.  Whether this is true or not —or whatever elements of truth it may contain— it is an easy copout to hold harmless the  many,  in Congress and the media and the academy, who were more interested in having the environment as a stick with which to beat the President than as a legislative program that could begin to address the problem.  If RN is to be criticized for bluffing, there should be no less criticism for those who failed to call his bluff.

In fact, the Nixon administration’s environmental record —which started from scratch— has lately been acknowledged as impressive and important.  RN established the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the landmark Clean Air Act.  He signed the Coastal Zone Management Act; the Ocean Dumping Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Federal Insecticide, Fungide, Rodenticide Act; and the Toxic Substances Control Act.   In his 1971 SOTU speech he proposed his Legacy of Parks program.  At the end of 1973 he signed the Endangered Species act; and he supported the Safe Drinking Water Act that was signed by President Ford at the end of 1974.

RN’s first term was one of the most efficient, innovative, and effective periods of presidential leadership — four years when everything seemed possible and many things were accomplished.   The 1970 SOTU is a memory and a microcosm of the spirit that animated the the Nixon administration 1969-1972.  It commands respect.  It deserves attention.

You can see and hear RN deliver this seminal 1970 SOTU message here.

I have become…convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.
—President Nixon’s Signing Statement for the National Environmental Policy Act,             1 January 1970

One of the most important, forward-thinking, and lasting achievements of the Nixon administration has been its environmental legacy.  RN, typically, took a serious, practical, and comprehensive approach to this emerging issue.

That is why he chose to sign the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 on 1 January 1970, at the beginning of a new decade and the start of the second year of his presidency.  The bill was largely the work of Democratic Senator Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson of Washington State; RN embraced it and, before very long, greatly expanded on it.

In fact, he felt so strongly about the environment as a landmark issue that he had wanted to sign the bill at midnight on 31 December — but Bob Haldeman pointed out that an early morning ceremony would make more sense in terms of the reporters’ and staff’s plans for New Year’s Eve.

So the signing was at 10 am on New Year’s Day in the President’s office at the Western White House in San Clemente.

And RN emphasized its importance to him by prefacing the signing with some remarks.  He was at ease —he even joked a bit with the reporters— but there was no mistaking how seriously he took the legislation and the occasion:

As you know, the bill we are signing today is the environmental bill. There is one line in there that I am particularly stimulated by, when I said we had to work on the environment because it is now or never.

If you look ahead 10 years, you project population growth, car growth, and that means, of course, smog growth, water pollution, and the rest.

An area like this will be unfit for living; New York will be, Philadelphia, and, of course, 75 percent of the people will be living in areas like this.

So unless we start moving on it now-there is a lead time–unless we move on it now, believe me, we will not have an opportunity to do it later, because then when people have millions more automobiles, and, of course, the waters and so forth developing in the way that they do without plants for purification, once the damage is done, it is much harder to turn it around. It is going to be hard as it is.

That is why I indicate here that a major goal, when you talk about New Year’s resolutions, I wouldn’t say for the next year but for the next 10 years–and I don’t mean that I intend to run for a third term–for the next 10 years for this country must be to restore the cleanliness of the air, the water, and that, of course, means moving also on the broader problems of population congestion, transport, and the like.

A Signing Statement was also issued on 1 January, and it was equally eloquent and no less urgent.  RN graciously credited the sponsors of the bill, but he also served notice that now his administration intended to do something about the issue — not just to talk about doing something.

It is particularly fitting that my first official act in this new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act.

The past year has seen the creation of a President’s Cabinet committee on environmental quality, and we have devoted many hours to the pressing problems of pollution control, airport location, wilderness preservation, highway construction, and population trends.

By my participation in these efforts I have become further convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.

I, therefore, commend the Congress and particularly the sponsors of this bill, Senators Stevens and Jackson and Representative Dingell, for this clear legislative policy declaration. Under the provisions of this law a three-member council of environmental advisers will be appointed. I anticipate that they will occupy the same close advisory relation to the President that the Council of Economic Advisers does in fiscal and monetary matters. The environmental advisers will be assisted by a compact staff in keeping me thoroughly posted on current problems and advising me on how the Federal Government can act to solve them.

In the near future I will forward to the Senate names of highly qualified individuals to help both the Cabinet and me in the critical decisions that will affect the quality of life in the United States for years to come. I will then take the necessary executive action to reconstitute the Cabinet committee and its staff to avoid duplication of function.

On the latter point, I know that the Congress has before it a proposal to establish yet another staff organization to deal with environmental problems in the Executive Office of the President. I believe this would be a mistake.

No matter how pressing the problem, to over-organize, to over-staff, or to compound the levels of review and advice seldom brings earlier or better results.

We are most interested in results. The act I have signed gives us an adequate organization and a good statement of direction. We are determined that the decade of the seventies will be known as the time when this country regained a productive harmony between man and nature.

Later in January, RN devoted a considerable portion of his State of the Union Message to his proposed environmental legislation.

In February, he submitted to Congress the most comprehensive message on the environment ever proposed by a President of the United States.

In March he upgraded the Environmental Quality Council to the status of a Cabinet Committee on the Environment.

In July he created the EPA.

And —as a fitting bookend to 1970— on 31 December, he signed the Clean Air Act, which has been called one of the most signifiant pieces of environmental legislation ever passed.

All these —and the other environmental landmarks throughout 1970 will be considered chronologically here at TNN throughout 2010.

One of the speakers at the first Nixon Legacy Forum — to be held in the East Room of the Library in Yorba Linda next Friday (8 January, from 1.30-3.30 PM)— will be the Hon. John C Whitaker.   John, who was one of RN’s closest friends and advisers from the early 1960s, was a scientist and engineer by training.  He concentrated on environmental issues and policies as Associate Director of the Domestic Council (1969-1972) and as Undersecretary of the Interior (1973-1975).  He is the author of Striking a Balance: Environment and Natural Resource Policy in the Nixon-Ford Administrations.  At the Legacy Forum he will discuss RN’s environmental record.

The Nixon Legacy Forums are jointly sponsored by the Richard Nixon Foundation and the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, and are free and open to the public.

Dust off your old Orwellian “newspeak” dictionary, where words are set free from actual meaning. There is a new code in town and it is worthy of being broken – a barely cryptic puzzle, but one that may, in fact, deceive many. Socialism is not only on the comeback trail via a full frontal political assault in our country (never mind that is has never actually worked anywhere), it is also on the march under a new banner – though to see this we must look through the looking glass. Not only has terminology been tweaked, the political color chart is being revised, as well – while too few actually notice.

Green is the new Red.

The actual practical application of so-called socialist dogma since the days when its seeds were hydrated in the bloodbath of the French Revolution has never come close to living up to its utopian promises. The goals of equality and liberty – noble concepts themselves – have never been achieved through coercive collectivism. Countries have certainly tried to level the playing field – or, if you prefer “spread the wealth around” – but it has always been done at the expense of personal freedom, not to mention the fact that wealth has tended to disappear in the process of that “spreading.” Some of the wealth did, of course, survive – for a time at least – in the coffers of those who happened to be the ruling elite du jour.

In other words, although socialism has regularly been presented as the cultural and political pathway to fairness and prosperity for all, it has had a poor record in history. In fact, it has tended to actually make matters worse. But never mind that: let’s give the tired doctrine one more try. After all, we have smarter people in charge now and the fact that the math still doesn’t add up is irrelevant.

It’s the same with environmentalism. As the world watched what happened this past week in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, the mantra was about saving the planet. But lurking beneath and behind the machinations and rhetoric of this latest climate-change-kum-by-ya moment is the same old ideology, albeit with a leafy facelift. Saving the planet, we are regularly told by the smart people, requires more centralization of power and less individual liberty.

And if there is any doubt as to this agenda, we need only look back to a few days ago when Environmental Protection Agency Czarina, Lisa Jackson, told us all that the EPA regards carbon dioxide as a grave threat to mother earth and that the pollutant must therefore be controlled by government guardians. They’ll be the people wearing those special biohazard suits – yep, you guessed it, the ones made of wool.

It is emerging that there are plans, if the Congress doesn’t do the bidding of the new greed reds, to simply do a smack down on the economy with a method described as “command-and-control.” This is a management style popularized in the now deceased HBO series, “The Sopranos,” as in that memorable line, “I got your ‘command-and-control’ right here – badda bing, badda boom.”

You say, “cap-and-trade,” others say, “command-and-control,” why don’t we call the whole thing off?

Please don’t miss the significance of what Jackson has said. Our entire economy is based just as much on carbon as it is the dollar. A “command-and-control” approach is another way of saying: “You think a take over of health care is a power grab? Wait until you see this!”

What does this have to do with socialism? Environmentalism relates to socialism in much the same way that Marxism relates to Leninism – and for the same reason. Neither is really about giving people a better life or saving the planet. The ultimate agenda – the wolf in sheep’s clothing – is political power and the micromanagement of individual lives through collectivism, with all the strings pulled by an emerging political aristocracy made up of the “really smart” people. And I use that word “aristocracy” deliberately, though with tongue-in-cheek, because the word comes from the Greek and literally means: “the rule of the best.”

The problem is that this latest group of “the best and the brightest” has a clear and present problem with priorities. We are facing some very great crisis-level challenges in America, the top two being, 1. It’s the economy, stupid, and 2. The war against Islamism (or, reverse the order, if you like). But the body language of those “really smart” people is all about matters that, well, don’t actually matter to most Americans – at least not right now.

Seventeenth century British preacher, Thomas Fuller, a man who would have done well in the age of the sound bite, once said: “He that is everywhere is nowhere.” This is the same idea Steven Covey and other management gurus talk about when they warn that the “urgent” can be the enemy of the “important.” And Americans right now are living under a new tyranny – that of the neo-urgent. However, the present “urgent-priority” is being orchestrated by those who seem to simply want power centralized and personal liberties marginalized.

Oh, by the way, Thomas Fuller also famously said, “It is always darkest just before the day dawneth,” which gives me some comfort. That is, until I recall one college professor of mine many years ago – a particularly and regularly befuddled man – who once botched this quote while giving us a pep talk before a major exam: “Now, uh, class, uh, always remember what Thomas Fuller said, ‘It is always darkest before the storm.”

US Chamber letter urges action on climate change, need to test whether this is a Nixon to China moment.

The Hill explains from their Twitter room:

He referenced President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China, which has lent itself to a saying meant to describe an uncharacteristic political act.

The Chamber in June opposed the House’s version of climate change legislation, calling it a “job killing measure.” The business group has recently found itself between the White House’s crosshairs for its opposition to its key legislative initiatives, including the cap-and-trade climate bill.

Republicans on the EPW committee have attempted to stall the negotiations by boycotting committee hearings on the bill, saying it needs more study from experts. Chairman Boxer has said she would like her panel to pass a bill before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

The test about which Kerry spoke may be in response to a warning from top Chamber lobbyist Bruce Josten. He wrote in the letter:

The Chamber will continue to oppose bad policies that resemble the failed climate proposals of the past, such as bills that jeopardize American jobs, create trade inequalities, leave open the Clean Air Act, open the door to CO2-based mass tort litigation, and further hamper the permitting process for clean energy.

He concluded, however:

But the Chamber believes Senators Kerry, Graham, and the other named Senators have taken a constructive and positive stand on global climate change and energy security, rising above partisan politics and opening a real discussion on how to address this important issue.

Josten’s letter also praised an October New York Times op-ed by Kerry and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) that called for “aggressive reductions in our emissions of the carbon gases that cause climate change.”