Today’s gridlocked politics is an historical anomaly, and there’s reason to believe that we can return to an environmental concensus. And Republicans can play a part.

Kevin Christy

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Jul 9, 2016 · 10 min read

It’s easy to give into some level of despair about climate change, but it’s worth remembering that America and the world do actually have landmark achievements in the realm of environmental protection. Today’s hyper politicized, know-nothing, gridlocked landscape aside there are plenty of examples from recent history of scientists recommending solutions to a clear and present problem — and politicians listening and acting.

The London Killer Fog
One of the most noteworthy environmental disasters of the 20th century was London’s Killer Fog of winter 1952, where a rare inversion layer settled over the city and trapped coal and other smoke at near-ground level. This resulted in a toxic fog so thick that driving cars became impossible, and some reported being unable to see their feet while they walked. An estimated 12,000 people died as a result of the poisonous cloud, which took five days to clear.

Following the disaster, the country took action:

Parliament passed the Clean Air Act of 1956, which restricted the burning of coal in urban areas and authorized local councils to set up smoke-free zones. Homeowners received grants to convert from coal to alternative heating systems. The transition away from coal as the city’s primary heating source to gas, oil and electricity took years, and during that time deadly fogs periodically occurred, such as one that killed 750 people in 1962, but none of them reached the scale of the Great Smog that descended upon London 60 years ago.

Southern California Smog
Southern California’s smog problem is born of the same atmospheric condition, an inversion layer, that resulted in London’s Killer Fog — only it’s a common occurrence above the Southland.

A few years ago I went hiking in the local hills with a Meetup group, and among the hikers was a staffer with a hyper-libertarian think tank and an acolyte of Ayn Rand. He was deriding environmental regulation and advocating for strict property rights as the foundation for government conduct. I pointed out to him that the glorious, clear day we were experiencing was virtually unseen when I was his age due to air pollution, a classic example of a negative externality. It was obvious to me that since he had never experienced it, it simply wasn’t real to him.

But it was to me, because I lived through some of the worst of it.

As a young boy growing up in Southern California in the late 1960s and the 1970s, noxious smog was an almost daily reality. Summer “smog alerts” were common, often accompanied by warnings to keep small children inside to avoid undue exposure. I remember the painful, burning sensation that would develop in our lungs if we played outside when the smog was particularly bad — which was in fact quite a few days of the summer and early fall.

But California scientists, officials and lawmakers worked steadily on the problem, passing rounds of legislation and regulations designed to clean up our air, including banning the burning of trash, pollution controls for industry, and most importantly smog control devices for cars.

In the late 1960s, California imposed initial regulations reducing cars’ tailpipe emissions. The most significant pollution control device — the catalytic converter — was not required until the 1975 model year.

It’s noteworthy that at the time, auto manufacturers complained that the new emissions standard were technologically unachievable and would be prohibitively expensive.

“Clearly, catalysts were the top measure,” said Stuart, executive officer of AQMD from 1976 to 1986. “Without that, we’d still be choking all over the place.”

Although catalysts were proposed and tested in the early 1960s, auto manufacturers strongly resisted their introduction, according to air pollution officials.

“In the beginning, they said it could not be done,” said Jim Boyd, executive officer of the California Air Resources Board from 1981 to 1996. “They said the technology was impossible. That it was incredibly expensive.” (AQMD)

But we did it, and it worked.

The Nixon Years: The Environmental Revolution takes Hold
By the late 1960s, Americans were increasingly conscious of the damage that modern society was doing to the environment through air and water pollution and through mismanagement of waste.

In 1970, Walter Cronkite hosted an Earth Day special program to drive home the urgency of action on the environment.

In 1971, the nonprofit organization Keep America Beautiful launched what may be the most famous advertising campaign of the decade with “The Crying Indian” television commercial:

This elevation of environmental issues in the minds of the American people is credited with providing President Nixon the political support he needed to take unprecedented action on the environment across his time in office:

1969: Halted all dumping in the Great Lakes
1969: Passed the National Environmental Policy Act
1970: Created cabinet-level Council on Environmental Quality
1970: Created the EPA by executive order
1970: Passed the Clean Air Act
1972: Passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act
1973: Passed the Endangered Species Act
1974: Passed the Safe Drinking Water Act

The Ozone Layer
Starting in the 1970s, scientists began warning about an alarming holes in the protective ozone layer in the atmosphere, and pegged the culprit as chlorofloroucarbons (CFCs).

In 1987, the United States and European countries signed the Montreal Protocol, which imposed limitations on chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) starting in 1991 and a total ban on those substances by 1996.

For my Republican friends, 1987 was during the Reagan administration. Yes, the Gipper saved the world.

Acid Rain
In the 1970s, awareness began to build about the dangers of high acid content found in rain and snow, particularly in the U.S. Northeast. Watersheds in that region were found to have abnormally high levels of acidity, resulting in some cases of lakes being unable to support certain species of fish, soils losing nutrients, and damage to historical monuments. The phenomenon began to be called “acid rain,” and it entered the popular lexicon, including in 1984’s “Distant Early Warning” by the rock band Rush:

An ill wind comes arising
Across the cities of the plain
There’s no swimming in the heavy water
No singing in the acid rain
Red alert
Red alert

In 1990, the George H. W. Bush administration (the Gipper’s V.P. and fellow Republican) signed into law the 1990 Clean Air Act, which directed the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the Acid Rain Program, which established caps on acid rain emissions and created an emissions credit trading program (“cap and trade”).

The program worked, and acid rain emissions have fallen to about 1/5 of 1980 levels, establishing a market-based precedent for significant environmental action.

Beijing Smog

Yes, even Beijing’s notorious air pollution is improving since the government closed coal-fired electric plants and replaced them with natural gas, and imposed emissions controls on local industrial plants.

And yet…
So amidst all this success, driven in no small degree by Republican presidents, let’s take a moment and listen to the Republican’s 2016 candidate as he promises to gut the “Department of Environmental Protection:”

Since there is no Department of Environmental Protection in the federal government, we’re probably safe until someone in a potential Trump administration actually figures out that he meant the Environmental Protection Agency. Given the caliber of people he surrounds himself with, that could be a while.

The below passage is a rerun of “God Save the GOP,” a Daily Digest edition from June 2016, which took a deeper dive on the positive environmental legacy of Republicans, and is the foundation of my argument that we need the GOP as a valuable ally in the fight against climate change.

I’ve been a longtime Republican, but around 2005 with the disastrous results of the Iraq War plainly in view, and the increasing hostility of the GOP to environmental issues and in the midst of a general rethinking of a lifetime of issues, I started voting Democratic. We have to acknowledge, however, that there exists a long legacy of environmentalist acheivements under Republican presidents from Teddy Roosevelt through Richard Nixon. I like to think that the party can recapture that heroic legacy. Come on, GOP, there’s no place like home…

About 10 years ago, I spent some time in the membership of what is now ConservAmerica (and was then called Republicans for Environmental Protection, or REP) in the hope of helping to return the party to its roots of environmental protection (see below). I visited their website to see what they’re up to, and while they remain enthusiastic about natural gas and nuclear energy (which I see as important for getting off of coal and maintaining a low-carbon profile while we move to a 100% renewable energy mix) they are still supportive of renewables. Looks like they also bought into the protectionist module manufacturing perspective, which is unfortunate. Still, I wish them godspeed.

Barry Goldwater, the great-grandfather of the modern American conservative movement, once said, “While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment.” Somehow, today’s Tea Party efforts to “recapture” the legacy of men like Goldwater has led us to the point where the Republican presidential candidate now wants to eliminate the EPA. This is not conservatism, it’s know-nothingism. Read the article and know hope.

Part of helping conservatives recapture their legacy is engaging in the kind of dialog that can actually be heard (unlike, I admit, my typical snark). Richard Conniff, author of the NYT article above, points out that how you frame a moral motivation for fighting climate change can make all the difference. From the article: “A conservative version [of environmentalist motivations] might talk about “love of country,” “joining the fight,” “taking pride,” “performing one’s civic duty,” and “honoring all of Creation.” The liberal counterpart might instead emphasize “love for all of humanity,” “fair access to a sustainable environment,” and “preventing the suffering of all life forms.” And, duh, the conservatives liked the first version better.” While of course the fossil industry pumps massive amounts of money into conservative thinktanks and campaign coffers (see below), political pressure from constituents still matters — and the way to reach them is through dialogue that speaks to what they care about.

Maybe one reason that the GOP has become the party of climate change denial is that it pays to deny. As I’ve said before, fossil fuel money has become a megaphone for anyone who’s willing to step out and deny the climate consensus, providing donations and covering fire for politicians willing to adopt their message.

One last piece on the GOP and climate change: What if I told you that 30 years ago the Senate held hearings on climate change, and that the man behind those hearings was a Republican environmentalist, Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island? Here’s what he had to say at the time: ““This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling,” Chafee said at the hearing. “The scientific evidence … is telling us we have a problem, a serious problem.”” Fast forward 30 years to today, and that kind of leadership is absent in the Republican party, even though the science — as well as the evidence of climate change — has only become more convincing. Pull yourself together, GOP. We need you in this fight.