Lisa Jackson, Rachel Maddow, and Richard Nixon discuss the environment

[kristopher]

{Grist Headline but went to MSNBC link because they have the transcript.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-show/45395747#45395747

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. I believe they gave Nixon too much credit

Nixon created the EPA for political reasons (not due to a personal concern about the environment) and by the same token, for political reasons, today, people like to present Nixon as an environmentalist (compared to today’s Republicans.)

http://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/history/topics/epa/15c.html

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The disillusioning effect of the Vietnam war enhanced the popularity of Silent Spring. When people heard of the defoilation tactics used in the jungles of Indochina, they became more receptive to the "environmental" ideas advanced by Carson and her countless imitators. The cognoscenti even began using a more arcane term--"ecology"--in reference to a science of the environment, then still in its infancy.

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Everywhere television programs, symposia, and "teach-ins" raised the burning question: "Can Man Survive?" In May 1969, U Thant of the United Nations gave the planet only ten years to avert environmental disaster; the following month, he blamed the bulk of planetary catastrophe on the United States. Under Secretary of the Interior Russell E. Train spoke skeptically at the April 1969 Centennial of the American Museum of Natural History: "If environmental deterioration is permitted to continue and increase at present rates, |man| wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell |of surviving|."

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The phenomenal success of Earth Day gave greater priority than ever to environmental issues. In particular, it strengthened the impact of the report that Roy L. Ash of the President's Commission on Executive Reorganization had submitted on April 15. That report argued strongly than an independent agency was needed to coordinate all of the Administration's new environmental initiatives.

In sending Reorganization Plan No. 3 to Congress on July 9, the President admitted that he had first been reluctant to propose setting up a new independent agency. Eventually, however, he was convinced by all "the arguments against placing environmental protection activities under the jurisdiction of one or another of the existing departments and agencies."

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In 1972, the “Water Pollution Control Act” (AKA the “Clean Water Act”) was passed, by overriding Nixon’s veto.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3634

Richard Nixon
353 - Veto of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972.
October 17, 1972

To the Senate of the United States:

The pollution of our rivers, lakes and streams degrades the quality of American life. Cleaning up the Nation's waterways is a matter of urgent concern to me, as evidenced by the nearly tenfold increase in my budget for this purpose during the past four years.

I am also concerned, however, that we attack pollution in a way that does not ignore other very real threats to the quality of life, such as spiraling prices and increasingly onerous taxes. Legislation which would continue our efforts to raise water quality, but which would do so through extreme and needless overspending, does not serve the public interest. There is a much better way to get this job done.

For this reason, I am compelled to withhold my approval from S. 2770, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972--a bill whose laudable intent is outweighed by its unconscionable $24 billion price tag. My proposed legislation, as reflected in my budget, provided sufficient funds to fulfill that same intent in a fiscally responsible manner. Unfortunately the Congress ignored our other vital national concerns and broke the budget with this legislation.

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