Ever since its discovery in Teddy Roosevelt’s administration in 1903, the White House has had the potential to wield tremendous power in the fight against climate change.[1] In the intervening years, the White House made a series of minor steps to combatting the dire threat that they had uncovered. A few decades after the initial private revelations, under the Johnson administration in 1965, the President publicly acknowledged that climate change was real in a message to Congress.[2] Johnson appeared to have hoped that more widespread information would create a climate of action. However, in the long run, the White House’s public introduction of climate change transformed it from an important-but-wonkish policy issue into a divisive political one.
For a few years after its acknowledge of climate change, the executive branch of government remained above the partisan fray and supported various efforts aimed at stemming the negative consequences. From 1964 to 1992, six subsequent administrations spanning both political parties took a series of steps to protect the environment. After Democrat Johnson’s warning to Congress, Republican Nixon took arguably the most significant step in countering climate change by creating the Environmental Protection Agency.[3] Though Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford did not actively promote policies aimed at combatting climate change, he did little to roll back his predecessor’s initiatives, paving the way for further advancements under President Jimmy Carter’s administration.[4] Perhaps as a result of a lack of awareness among the general public—the Johnson message to Congress, while public was generally only common knowledge to D.C. politicos—climate change legislation was largely uncontroversial and uncontested by either party. In fact, declassified documents reveal that conservative hero Ronald Reagan and his Vice President George H.W. Bush were gravely concerned with climate change.[5] Furthermore, Reagan, overruled his own cabinet on a measure that would protect the ozone layer.[6]
In 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton, however, climate change lost its apolitical stature. Some scholars have pointed to the Clinton administration as the root of America’s profound modern political polarization.[7] This was certainly true with regard to climate change legislation, which quickly transformed from discussion among a handful of policy specialists into a national dialogue. Under Bill Clinton, the United States—represented by Vice President Al Gore—publically signed the Kyoto Protocol, a massive agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in thirty-seven countries, with some aides branding it as defining Clinton’s legacy.[8]
A few months after the Kyoto Protocol, which the Clinton administration had marked as a victory in public opinion, the opposition began to mount a campaign against climate change legislation. Led by oil giant ExxonMobil, a variety of groups attempt to politicize the issue by disputing the science behind the government’s plans.[9] Soon after, petitions of “scientists” purporting to oppose action against climate change began to surface.[10]
By the 2000 election the already-politicized issue of climate change became partisan. The Republicans nominated of former oilman George W. Bush and the Democratic nominated of Al Gore, who would go on to write the famous climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. As President, Bush would go on to question the scope and depth of scientific knowledge of climate change, famously using it as an excuse to undo the United States’ involvement in the Kyoto Protocol.[11] Later, during Bush’s re-election bid in 2004, opponent Sen. John Kerry attempted to use Bush’s support for Arctic oil drilling as a way to prove his lack of commitment to environmental issues.[12] This wedge paved the way for the 2008 presidential campaign in which Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin famously turned “Drill, Baby, Drill!” into a rallying cry for the Republican ticket. Given this evolution of the perception of climate change, it’s easy to see how we got to the point we are in today, where one Presidential candidate is proposing the largest clean energy program in the country’s history and the other has referred to climate change as a “hoax.”[13]
As a result of this intense division, the White House’s role in fighting climate change has become less policy-oriented and more politically oriented. Scholars have noted that both modern progressives and conservatives alike prefer political posturing over actual tangible action. Consider the simple solar panels that adorn the White House. The thirty-two panels have a miniscule actual impact on the White House’s energy consumption, let alone the country’s, yet President Jimmy Carter made sure that their installation was met with ceremony and fanfare.[14] Similarly, when they were taken down a few years later by a Republican successor, the administration made sure that the lack of solar panels was well publicized.[15] Though the Obama administration has publically signed the Paris Accord in a very visible ceremony, some critics say that the administration has refused to take necessary measures to stem climate change when they are not politically expedient, such as a tax on gas or banning of certain industries with excess influence in Washington, such as hydraulic fracturing.[16] The reality is that the intense partisanship surrounding climate change has led to a dramatic fall in the White House’s ability to take concrete action in fighting it—a phenomenon that is also due to Congress, a topic we will cover in the next installment of “Cloudy with a Chance of Armageddon”.
[1] https://thinkprogress.org/a-graphical-look-at-presidents-environmental-records-f232f07005d0#.ah8efijka
[2] http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2015/02/president-johnson-carbon-climate-warning
[3] https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-history
[4] https://thinkprogress.org/a-graphical-look-at-presidents-environmental-records-f232f07005d0#.ah8efijka
[5] http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/
[6] http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/
[7] http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1097&context=curej
[8] http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/12/11/kyoto/
[9] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/timeline-the-politics-of-climate-change/
[10] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/timeline-the-politics-of-climate-change/
[11] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1248278.stm
[12] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/13/us/filibuster-vowed-if-bush-seeks-arctic-oil.html?_r=0
[13] http://www.lcv.org/assets/docs/presidential-candidates-on.pdf
[14] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/
[15] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/
[16] http://grist.org/briefly/obama-brags-about-low-gas-prices-but-he-shouldnt/
Very interesting exposition. How would you reset the agenda going forward?
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