"Only in retrospect can we now see that it was about 1976 that the climate change signal emerged above the noise of natural variability." But at the time, this was not that unusual," Trenberth explained. "With the 1976-77 El Niño event, climate change in terms of global temperatures was kicked off. Like Mann, Trenberth noted that if the same ethic which led to pro-environmental legislation in the '70s had lasted, we may quite literally inhabit a different world than the current climate change-ravaged one. So our hot water was essentially free from then on." ![]() "These heated a fluid that took heat into my house and heated water in a huge 200 gallon tank. "I took advantage and had solar panels installed on our house in Boulder," Trenberth said. Trenberth praised Carter for some of his policies including setting up tax credits for home owners for installing solar panels in 1977. The president also passed the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (which doubled the amount of land used for parks and wildlife refuges) and created Superfund, which helped clean up contaminated factory and mining sites. Trenberth, distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote to Salon. He added that "Carter's concerns have proven real and, unfortunately, before their time." "Jimmy Carter established himself as having environmental concerns and Frank Press from wrote a memo about possibilities of catastrophic climate change to Carter in July 1977," Kevin E. Carter intended to signal technology as a solution to a nation in danger of (as Agnew had put it) "devouring its irreplaceable life-sustaining elements through simultaneous genius and foolishness." Indeed, the Democratic president who followed Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford (a Republican who briefly assumed office after Nixon resigned in disgrace due to the Watergate scandal) was Jimmy Carter, who famously installed solar panels on the White House. And that, of course, is what has happened." "Yet the science was well-enough known to anticipate that more warming would likely occur given a continuation of fossil fuel burning. Mann, a professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, told Salon by email. "Warming had been muted by sulphate aerosol pollution (the same pollution that caused acid rain was also offsetting some of the CO2-driven warming by reflecting sunlight back to space)," Michael E. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist. These were proactive measures that made a real difference in improving the quality of the environment - and these policies channeled an ethos that could have nipped climate change in the bud, assuming it had lasted beyond the 1970s. He amended the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to strengthen regulators' ability to clean up the environment created the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and repeatedly directed federal energies toward controlling air pollution, water pollution and the safe disposal of hazardous waste materials. The EPA was far from Nixon's only landmark environmental policy. (Barbara Alper/Getty Images)If Muskie was going to garner headlines by quipping to automobile companies that they shouldn't stay in business if they couldn't adopt rigid pollution controls, Nixon would do so more substantively by creating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). declares bankruptcy, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, 22nd August 1978. Polls consistently showed that Muskie would be a tough candidate for Nixon to beat, and because Muskie was the main environmental senator with "a storied career" promoting anti-pollution legislation, being pro-environment could help Nixon co-opt one of Muskie's signature issues.ĭumped barrels containing hazardous chemicals remain on a 4.5 acre site after the Silresim Chemical Corp. Edmund Muskie of Maine in the 1972 presidential election. Rick Perlstein, an American historian and journalist who has penned acclaimed books on the 1960s and 1970s like "Before the Storm" and "Nixonland," pointed out to Salon that Nixon worried about running against Democratic Sen. "Nixon was and is overrated as an environmental president," David Helvarg, Executive Director of the conservation activist organization Blue Frontier Campaign, told Salon by email. Nixon read the room, which meant supporting environmental reform.
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