Yesterday the EPA celebrated their 35th anniversary "by citing the significant progress made in pollution reduction and protecting the health of all Americans. Since its creation by President Richard Nixon on December 2, 1970, EPA has been instrumental in creating a cleaner, healthier environment."
The celebration included a panel discussion of former administrators. According to the NYTimes, the discussion focused on global warming (6 Ex-Chiefs ...):
Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, including five who served Republican presidents, said Wednesday that the Bush administration needed to act more aggressively to limit the emission of greenhouse gases linked to climate change.
Does anyone other than me get a mental image of the Commodores** playing the after party?
NYTimes cont:
Speaking on a panel that also included the current agency chief, Stephen L. Johnson, they generally agreed that the need to address global warming was growing urgent and that the continuing debate over what percentage of the problem was caused by human activities was a waste of time.
"Why argue about things you can't prove?" said William D. Ruckelshaus, ... "We need to fashion policies with proper incentives [emphasis added] to reduce the amount of carbon we are putting in the atmosphere. There are all kinds of things we can do right now, and we ought to be taking those steps."
...
Lee M. Thomas, the agency administration in the second Reagan administration, said the time had come for environmental and industry groups, the usual antagonists in environmental policy, to set aside their differences in favor of a plan like the one used to curb the effects of acid rain.
That acid rain program really seems to have everyone bought into the idea of pollution trading, at least for certain types of air emissions ... except maybe Carol Browner ;->.
*With apologies to Mark Thoma for duplicating his post (I started typing this morning before I saw the late night post). Note to Mark: this is an Eastern Time Zone blog!
**My senior prom theme song was Celebrate from the 1980 album Heroes: "... celebrate good times, c'mon! let's celebrate ...." Runner-up in the voting was AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." What were we thinking?
