Ex-EPA Chiefs Blame Bush in Global Warming (D&Rs Whiners Alert)

AP on Yahoo ^ | 1/18/06 | John Heilprin - ap

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON - Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency — five Republicans and one Democrat — accused the Bush administration Wednesday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems.

"I don't think there's a commitment in this administration," said Bill Ruckelshaus, who was EPA's first administrator when the agency opened its doors in 1970 under President Nixon and headed it again under President Reagan in the 1980s.

Russell Train, who succeeded Ruckelshaus in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said slowing the growth of "greenhouse" gases isn't enough.

"We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it," he said at an EPA-sponsored symposium centered around the agency's 35th anniversary. "To sit back and just push it away and say we'll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive."

All of the former administrators raised their hands when EPA's current chief, Stephen Johnson, asked whether they believe global warming is a real problem, and again when he asked if humans bear significant blame.

Agency heads during five Republican administrations, including the current one, criticized the Bush White House for what they described as a failure of leadership.

Defending his boss, Johnson said the current administration has spent $20 billion on research and technology to combat climate change after President Bush rejected mandatory controls on carbon dioxide, the chief gas blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse.

Bush also kept the United States out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases globally, saying it would harm the U.S. economy, after many of the accord's terms were negotiated by the Clinton administration.

"I know from the president on down, he is committed," Johnson said. "And certainly his charge to me was, and certainly our team has heard it: 'I want you to accelerate the pace of environmental protection. I want you to maintain our economic competitiveness.' And I think that's really what it's all about."

His predecessors disagreed. Lee Thomas, Ruckelshaus's successor in the Reagan administration, said that "if the United States doesn't deal with those kinds of issues in a leadership role, they're not going to get dealt with. So I'm very concerned about this country and this agency."

Bill Reilly, the EPA administrator under the first President Bush, echoed that assessment.

"The time will come when we will address seriously the problem of climate change, and this is the agency that's best equipped to anticipate it," he said.

Christie Whitman, the first of three EPA administrators in the current Bush administration, said people obviously are having "an enormous impact" on the earth's warming.

"You'd need to be in a hole somewhere to think that the amount of change that we have imposed on land, and the way we've handled deforestation, farming practices, development, and what we're putting into the air, isn't exacerbating what is probably a natural trend," she said. "But this is worse, and it's getting worse."

Carol Browner, who was President Clinton's EPA administrator, said the White House and the Congress should push legislation to establish a carbon trading program based on a 1990 pollution trading program that helped reduce acid rain.

"If we wait for every single scientist who has a thought on the issue of climate change to agree, we will never do anything," she said. "If this agency had waited to completely understand the impacts of DDT, the impacts of lead in our gasoline, there would probably still be DDT sprayed and lead in our gasoline."

Three former administrators did not attend Wednesday's ceremony: Mike Leavitt, now secretary of health and human services; Doug Costle, who was in the Carter administration, and Anne Burford, a Reagan appointee who died last year.

___

On the Net:

EPA: http://www.epa.gov

[NormsRevenge]

Bush's Nixon's Fault... for ever creating this monstrosity called the EPA.

[rellimpank]

--AMEN--

[NormsRevenge]

In this handout photo released by the Environmental Protection Agency, current EPA chief, Stephen Johnson, with michrophone, fourth from left, is joined by former administrators, from left, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, Russell Train, Bill Ruckelshaus, Lee Thomas, Carol Browner and Bill Reilly Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006, in Washington. Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency accused the Bush administration Wednesday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems. (AP Photo/EPA, Eric Vance, HO)

[Numbers Guy]

"If this agency had waited to completely understand the impacts of DDT, the impacts of lead in our gasoline, there would probably still be DDT sprayed and lead in our gasoline"

And if DDT was still being used, there would be millions of people in the Third World alive because they wouldn't die from malaria.

What an unbelievable idiot. Even some environmentalist types now admit that the DDT ban was a horrible mistake.

[LasVegasMac]

What a great picture......a gaggle of clymers!

LVM

[CBart95]

Get used to every imaginable group of nutcases coming out to blame Bush for everything under the sun.

Get ready for "innocent" posters who break their necks to bring us that type of "news"...all under the guise of providing a useful service to us uninformed types.

[oolatec]

We should just chop down all of those trees in Canada that are contributing significantly to global warming... ;)

[Emmett McCarthy]

Ain't that the truth! This is what happens when you create some stupid ass "feel good" agency. A bunch of nimrod ex- directors pretending that what they think effin' matters to anyone. And the continued use of DDT might have saved millions of lives, by the way.

[perfect stranger]

Bush also kept the United States out of the Kyoto international treaty........

I stopped reading right there.

[MNJohnnie]

Right on the money NR. Really need a Fed Agency to reproduce the work 50 State NEA Departments do. What a crock.

[DJtex]

We should just chop down all of those trees in Canada that are contributing significantly to global warming... ;)

Here! Here! I spent a few hours last night catching up on the impact of Methane vs. CO2. Methane is 25-30 times more "effective" a greenhouse gas than CO2, and it's gone up 7% in the last 20 years. Multiply that 7% times 25 and we see that atmospheric methane is playing a much larger role than when Kyoto was crafted.

If the new German findings that methane is produced by living plants (not just decaying ones) and that it's release is being enhanced by more heat/CO2, then Kyoto is dead.

We're in a 10,000 year warming trend between very regular 90,000 year Ice Ages. More CO2 plus higher temps will increase overall biomass by 20%. This adds to methane production by plants. At some point all this "nature-caused" heating will have to reverse and we slide back into another Ice Age, like we've had eight times in the last 800k years.

[Paradox]

The idiotic statement about DDT proves OUR point. DDT hysteria was not based on real science, it was simply a political wedge issue. The damage done by the BANNING of DDT has been incalculable. Millions upon millions have died miserable deaths...

[Ninian Dryhope]

"there would probably still be DDT sprayed and lead in our gasoline."


That would be fine by me.

[Bob]

Bush also kept the United States out of the Kyoto international treaty........

I stopped reading right there.

Yeah, wasn't the Senate vote on the Kyoto Treaty 99-0 against?

[perfect stranger]

Yes, and it was during the previous administration.

[perfect stranger]

I don't know for sure but I'd be willing to bet 25 cents that the only vote against was from Kucinich.

[OldFriend]

Will these people ever go away or better yet, just shut their mouths and stop spewing this nonsense.

[John W]

You have to love that last sentence.What brilliant writers we are producing.

[Frank_2001]

Of course-the President can only sign treaties that the Senate has ratified-if he attempted otherwise, now that probably WOULD be an impeachable offense...but the MSM is counting that the produktz of da publik screwels wont no da difrenss;)

[hinckley buzzard]

All politiicians, not a decent scientist among the lot.