How'd they do it in the '70s?

Posted by Christina Larson (Guest Contributor) at 2:13 PM on 02 Apr 2006

Today, it's a good bet that if you consider yourself an environmentalist, you lean left politically. That's especially true here in D.C. But it wasn't always. Once leaders in both parties fell all over each other competing to be known as champions of the environment.

Recently I had a chance to speak with the former chiefs of staff for both Democrat Ed Muskie and Republican Howard Baker -- the dynamic duo whose early-1970s Senate subcommittee produced the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, among other landmark environmental laws.

My basic question: How'd ya do it?

Leon Billings, Muskie's staff director, said one thing that didn't grind meaningful action to a halt was waiting indefinitely for more data to roll in: "We know so much more about the science of global warming now than we knew about the science of leaded gasoline and auto emissions in 1970 when we wrote Clean Air Act," he said.

His counterpart, Republican Jim Range, says: "Once we had identified the problem, there was a commitment on both sides of the aisle not to agree on everything, but to agree that you would work together until you had addressed the problem."

In other words, just sitting on your hands wasn't an option.

Let's hope we're fast approaching the day when Washington takes the same approach toward global warming. We can't afford to wait much longer.

For story: How'd they do it in the '70s?
3 Comments | Post a Comment

Taxes

The environmental problems we want to solve now will be solved despite a considerable loss of the subsidy fossil fuel users now pay to government employees, contractors, and subsidy recipients. I think it was in the late 60s or early 70s that we began supporting this large class of petrolistas. (If anyone who has been driving for 40 years remembers when laxity in speed limit enforcement began, that would be the time.)

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
B: internal combustion, nuclear cachet

by GRLCowan at 4:28 PM on 02 Apr 2006

Boria

Thanks for the link - if a bit off topic.

This is BIG NEWS: at least it was news to me. I have been anticipating something like this, research in some similar direction for a while now.

by Born at 8:22 AM on 03 Apr 2006
[ Parent ]

Working both sides of the street: IRV anyone?

The illusion that we still have a two-party system died hard. I think it was no lesser than E. O. Wilson, in early 2001, who was still talking about the Republicans as approachable on environmental legislation.

Not only environmentalists, but also labor, feminists, and so on, loved the feeling of empowerment that came upon them when realizing that a determined minority interest group could achieve tremendous leverage by "working both sides of the street". Today, various African-American voices still find that theory appealing as they talk of escaping the 'taken for granted' trap that comes out of the Black vote being overwhelmingly Democratic - and that without even one African-American Republican in the House!

But to "work both sides of the street", you gotta have a real two-party system - which means that the party in power has to respect the system. Today, the RNC continues to pursue the goal of destroying the remnants of the old duopoly.

How about this? Let's turn this situation into an opportunity. PUSH FOR IRV, to open up the old duopoly and change "politics as uaual" for the better. NOW is the time to convince Democrats, at least, that the old duopoly wasn't so great after all - especially when half of it is committed to its destruction. With IRV, we would still probably have two major parties - but the center could shift much more readily. It would break up the silly 'liberal-conservative' paradigm, wherein "conservative" means the opposite of 'conservation'!

by Born at 8:39 AM on 03 Apr 2006

ADVERTISING POLICY

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