“The first suggestion to Rafe Pomerance that humankind was destroying the conditions necessary for its own survival came on page 66 of the government publication of EPA-600/7-78-019.”
This is a history, mostly US based, of the policy debates around any kind of action in reaction to climate change from about 1979-1999. While it touches on events after 2000, and lives in 2019, it focuses mostly on the early stages developed under Carter, then Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, with the figures that were primarily involved during those different presidencies. It begins with the sort of basic understanding of findings, then develops into the creation of models, and then the Cassandra-like scientists who bring these to the politicians who might help to effect change. What emerges is a pretty predictable set of reactions from each of the presidencies and congresses, and certainly familiar to us now that we’ve lived under 40 years of basic inaction and political rhetoric, with the additional clarifying information from Covid 19, which of course was also impacted by climate change in various ways.
The villains that stand out here are definitely Ronald Reagan, who is and always will be a villain, not just for his rejection of even a remote concern over climate change, but also and especially for the reversal from day one of almost any and all policies from the previous administration to curb pollutants, greenhouse gases, and energy consumption. That’s the same basic premise for the rest of the book whenever a Republican is in charge, minus some empty promises and false concern from GHW Bush. The other villain that stands out is John Sununu, the former governor of Vermont who became GHW Bush’s chief of staff, who seemed to single-handedly kibosh any attempts to link the US to lowered emissions. He would go on to claim that he was the public face of a lot of behind the scenes conversations around the world about how everyone who signed up to lower admissions was making a public pledge that they didn’t intend to uphold. So be it, but I don’t care. He also felt the same way and worked to make that opinion palatable.
It’s not that Democrats were knocking it out of the park, but they were perhaps the only possible hope and did make some changes. But I recall specifically that while I was always GW Bush (because fuck him), one of his very first acts was to rescind the US’s pledge on the Kyoto Protocols.
I don’t really know how to feel about climate change, except bad of course. But in terms of my orientation toward it? I do what I can and would be willing to do more, but until governments and corporations are required to stem emissions, my little bit one way or the other doesn’t really matter.