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| Obama awards Ruckelshaus (1932-2019) the Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor. |
He was at Princeton, class of 1957, when I was at Portsmouth. He was enrolled at Harvard's Law School for two of the four years I was a Harvard undergraduate.
As a young lawyer in the 1960s, Ruckelshaus became a savior of Portsmouth Abbey School. With a Federal law suit, he fended off the siting of an oil refinery on Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay, opposite the school. He eventually slayed, or at least kept at bay, that oil company dragon.
It was not surprising that President Richard Nixon would appoint him, as a 38-year-old lawyer, to lead the new Environmental Protection Agency in 1970-73 – or that he would return under President Ronald Reagan to run the EPA again in 1983-85. Ruckelshaus was a Republican and a conservationist by family tradition. His grandfather was Chairman of the Indiana Republican Party in 1900.
What was surprising was Ruckelshaus's becoming one of the two heroes of the 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre". He had been recruited from his perch at the EPA by Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson to become the AG's top deputy. The Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, had subpoenaed nine White House tapes. On October 23, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. The order then went to Ruckelshaus, as next in command. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned.
The third in command, Robert H. Bork, then followed orders, firing Cox and abolished the office of Watergate prosecutor.
The next day, 300,000 telegrams of outrage descended on the White House. Nixon decided to release the nine tapes after all. Three GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against Nixon's impeachment–Reps. Charles Sandman (N.J.), Charles Wiggins (Calif.) and David Dennis (Ind.)–reversed themselves after hearing the tapes. They said they would vote for impeachment on the floor of the House. Nixon resigned before that could happen.
Not long after the Massacre, when Ruckelshaus was back in private practice of law, he kindly took me to lunch at the Hay-Adams Hotel to share with me his front-row experience of the events. In describing the President, he used the term "Unindicted Co-conspirator." I was deeply impressed with his courage and serenity in the face of all he had been through.
In the years that followed, it became clear in news reports that Ruckelshaus was increasingly distressed at the steady decline of the progressive wing of the Republican party. He ended up supporting Barack Obama for President and supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
Ronald Reagan once said that the didn't leave the Democratic Party; it left him. Ruckelshaus expressed similar sentiments about the Republican Party.
President Obama awarded Ruckelshaus the Medal of Freedom in 2015 for his environmental achievements. The race to succeed Obama was already under way and Donald Trump and Senator Marco Rubio were sparring for the GOP nomination. A few days before the Medal of Freedom ceremony, the Guardian interviewed Ruckelshaus and quoted him as follows:
"The Republicans aren’t helping, they are just responding to the convictions of the base that climate change isn’t a real problem and feeding that back to them – it’s a vicious cycle. Instead of treating it as a serious problem they are going through all the stages of denial. They are now at the stage of saying that it’s too expensive to do anything about climate change, which is no solution at all, they may as well just deny it’s a problem.
“I don’t know what Trump actually knows about climate change, I don’t think Trump thinks much about many of the issues. Rubio shifts around a lot because he hears a lot of different messages from his constituents but what he’s essentially saying is that climate change isn’t a big enough problem to address. That comes down to not dealing with it. It’s concerning and I don’t understand why they don’t see this as an opportunity rather than something to be denied.
“There was huge resistance from the auto industry, they pushed back very hard. The difference from then until now is that the public demanded something be done about pollution and the government listened. The four major auto companies sent their CEOs to lobby against the Clean Air Act and they got about three votes in the Senate and not many more in the House. They thought they’d get it reversed in the Senate.
“In those days you could smell and touch the pollution, it was a bit like how China’s cities are today. That had a galvanizing effect. The greenhouse gases of today, you can’t see or taste or feel them. And it’s got way too partisan. The atmosphere today is completely different to the 1970s; Republicans’ arguments are all partisan driven, they aren’t based on any legitimate analysis of science.”
Some Presidents' Records on the Environment, Since Nixon
President Nixon. In 1970, green issues then had bipartisan support. Clean Air Act amendments to the original 1963 Act created the EPA, William Ruckelshaus became its first head, and new water-pollution laws were passed after two years. But OPEC's decision to create an oil shortage meant that inflation cascaded through private and public prices and economic concerns overtook environmental ones. The GOP took on the mantle of environmental deregulation in the name of promoting economic growth, although significant instances of environmental progress have occurred under Republican leaders since Nixon.
President Nixon. In 1970, green issues then had bipartisan support. Clean Air Act amendments to the original 1963 Act created the EPA, William Ruckelshaus became its first head, and new water-pollution laws were passed after two years. But OPEC's decision to create an oil shortage meant that inflation cascaded through private and public prices and economic concerns overtook environmental ones. The GOP took on the mantle of environmental deregulation in the name of promoting economic growth, although significant instances of environmental progress have occurred under Republican leaders since Nixon.
President Reagan. He cut social and environmental budgets, including one-third of EPA spending, but in his second term he noted the high cost of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases and he promoted a worldwide reduction via the 1987 Montreal Protocol. This Protocol has been described as the most successful international convention ever, signed by 197 countries and the European Union, and it has stopped the growth of the ozone hole although some aerosol substitutes, such as hydrofluorocarbons, continue to contribute to global warming even though they don't damage the ozone layer.
President George W. Bush. During most of his administration, Bush 43 was, like Reagan, antagonistic to environmental regulation. He did support greater energy efficiency. Also, toward the end of his presidency he championed significant conservation initiatives that became law.
President Barack Obama. Obama made solid appointments–Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy and Lisa Jackson as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. He supported climate-change proposals at Copenhagen. He put energy efficiency and renewable energy on state agendas, with a $90 billion investment in green jobs in the stimulus bill, encouraging states and localities to focus on needed environmental initiatives. His EPA twice raised auto fuel-efficiency standards, using Nixon's Clean Air Act as the basis for the EPA's higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy ("CAFE") standards, first requiring 35.5 mpg fuel efficiency by 2016 and then 54 mpg by 2025. He regulated carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. His EPA won a major victory in June 2012 when the U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed EPA's ruling in 2009 in favor of measures to regulate carbon emissions. He saved the U.S. auto industry and its technology-generating capacity, keeping the United States as a strong player in electric-car technology and in the campaign to generate more efficient batteries. He used federal purchasing power to reduce carbon emissions. He supported four rounds of the ARPA-E program for energy technology research. The Advanced Research Projects Agency made awards for research on electrofuels, carbon capture, batteries, electric grid, thermal energy storage, and rare earth substitutes. Obama faced the BP oil spill early in his first term, which discouraged offshore oil drilling. The Fukushima nuclear meltdown discouraged further nuclear power development, constraining his options. Most important, the Republican House of Representatives adopted a totally negative stance, especially after the 2010 Midterm elections, toward the President's climate-change goals.
President Barack Obama. Obama made solid appointments–Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy and Lisa Jackson as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. He supported climate-change proposals at Copenhagen. He put energy efficiency and renewable energy on state agendas, with a $90 billion investment in green jobs in the stimulus bill, encouraging states and localities to focus on needed environmental initiatives. His EPA twice raised auto fuel-efficiency standards, using Nixon's Clean Air Act as the basis for the EPA's higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy ("CAFE") standards, first requiring 35.5 mpg fuel efficiency by 2016 and then 54 mpg by 2025. He regulated carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. His EPA won a major victory in June 2012 when the U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed EPA's ruling in 2009 in favor of measures to regulate carbon emissions. He saved the U.S. auto industry and its technology-generating capacity, keeping the United States as a strong player in electric-car technology and in the campaign to generate more efficient batteries. He used federal purchasing power to reduce carbon emissions. He supported four rounds of the ARPA-E program for energy technology research. The Advanced Research Projects Agency made awards for research on electrofuels, carbon capture, batteries, electric grid, thermal energy storage, and rare earth substitutes. Obama faced the BP oil spill early in his first term, which discouraged offshore oil drilling. The Fukushima nuclear meltdown discouraged further nuclear power development, constraining his options. Most important, the Republican House of Representatives adopted a totally negative stance, especially after the 2010 Midterm elections, toward the President's climate-change goals.
