Republican Presidents on Environment

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Debbie Elliott.

When leaders of the group of eight industrial nations hold their summit in Germany this week, climate change will be high on the agenda. European leaders want the U.S. to take stronger action to combat global warming. After he took off as President Bush took the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol, but in the days leading up to the G8 summit, he's been signaling readiness to reengage in the fight to curve greenhouse gasses. He briefly outlined his plan in his Saturday radio address.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: Under my proposal, by the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gasses. And to meet this goal, we must help developing countries harness the power of technology.

ELLIOTT: President Bush has been a lighting rod for criticism from environmentalists, but historically Republican presidents have played an important role in promoting environmental causes.

J. Brooks Flippen has written about this. He's professor of history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and the author of the books "Conservative Conservationist" and "Nixon and the Environment."

He joins us now. Professor Flippen, let's begin with Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican president with a legacy of conservation. Was he the first American politician to bring the environment into the public consciousness?

Professor J. BROOKS FLIPPEN (History, Southeastern Oklahoma State University; Author, "Conservative Conservationist" and "Nixon and the Environment"): Indeed, he was, Miss Elliott. Teddy Roosevelt was president in the early 1900s; the West was closing up. It was obvious that we might run out of the resources we need; and so a movement grew to use the resources we have wisely, and this is the dawn of the conservation movement.

And he pushed Congress to enact some important legislations - the Newlands Reclamation Act provided for the construction of dams and canals. He used antiquity's(ph) act to expand - acreage in the national forests. It went from 42 million to 172 million during his presidency. He added 51 national wildlife refugees, and he organized the first conservation conference. So he really put it high on the national agenda.

ELLIOTT: And where did it go from there?

Mr. FLIPPEN: Well, for much of the 20th century, when the problems of urbanization and industrialization became apparent, we became more of an ecological concern - more of a - concern to protect nature from man. Throughout this entire period, it was bipartisan largely. And this led to Richard Nixon and thought of what we consider the peak of American environmentalism.

ELLIOTT: You know, I think a lot of people don't think about Richard Nixon in the context of his stewardship of the environment, that's not the first thing that comes to people's minds when they think of President Nixon. But he did preside over the creation of the EPA. Tell us a little bit about his administration and environmental policy.

Mr. FLIPPEN: Richard Nixon cared first and foremost about foreign policy and sort of delegated much of his domestic policy. But he recognized that environmentalism was sweeping the public, and he saw this is the way to win votes, particularly among young people who were alienated from his administration because of the Vietnam War.

So he embraced environmentalism and through that embrace we see the passage of the monumental National Environmental Policy Act. We have new clean air legislation, clean water legislation, pesticide legislation, legislation to protect ocean mammals and all these new regulations slowly begin to alienate business. He began to back away from his embrace of environmentalism, and began to assume that environmentalism was a wide issue but not deep. By that mean I mean, yeah, people care but they'd always vote on pocketbook issues.

And with the energy crisis in '73, '74, he really saw to sped up this retreat, and what I would argue is that this retreat is the beginning of a split in the party's role on environmental issues.

ELLIOTT: Where did the Republican presidents who followed Nixon fall along that path? Did they fall away from environmental issues? I'm thinking Ford, Reagan, and the first President Bush.

Mr. FLIPPEN: Gerald Ford sort of inherited the energy crisis, and he remained sort of a moderate, but Ford sort of continued Nixon's retreat. When you get to Reagan, Reagan assumed environmentalism was not an important issue - political at all, and he rhetorically and otherwise attacked environmentalism. But happened was the membership in environment groups tripled, and it became apparent that the environment would not fade as an issue.

And so what Reagan began to do in his second term, is Reagan began his own sort of retreat from his attack on environmentalism if you will. Bush, the elder, came in and was indicative of the moderate Republicanism; we see the Clean Air Act strengthened. And when you come to our present president, George W. Bush, I would argue that Bush has embraced environmentalism rhetorically but in actual policies, whether the healthy forest initiative or the clear skies proposals are the recent promise to combat global climate change. I think we need to approach this with a healthy degree of skepticism given his record.

ELLIOTT: Were you surprised to hear him shift his stance on global warming this past week?

Mr. FLIPPEN: Not really. He isn't running for election, and any of the implementation of any agreement that's reached will be for the next president. Undoubtedly, he's worried about his legacy on global warming. For much of the science, there's been a consensus that man contributes to global warming. But in the public's eye, it's only been fairly recently that we see a consensus that we're contributing. So a lot of pressure is coming to bear on the administration to act, and I think that sort of forced his hand.

ELLIOTT: J. Brooks Flippen is the author of "Conservative Conservationist" and "Nixon and the Environment." Thank you for speaking with us.

Mr. FLIPPEN: Thank you for having me.

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