The Republican Party is not
known for championing environmental causes.
President Trump believes climate change is a hoax.
Trump administration has announced plans to gut the Endangered Species Act.
But today's open hostility towards green policies
wasn't always the Republican way.
I think younger people might be surprised to know that the Republican Party
has not historically been opposed to environmental protection
or to conserving wild spaces and natural resources.
In fact, much of the framework for environmental and conservationist policies today was laid down by the GOP.
Take the United States Forest Service for example.
It was set up by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 to protect wildlife and public lands.
During his presidency, Roosevelt protected approximately 230 million acres of public land.
And some of the most vast and far-reaching environmentally friendly policies
that fundamentally changed America were enacted by
this guy.
Yes, that's right.
Richard Nixon, the president better known for this:
One year of Watergate is enough.
And this:
People have got to know whether or not their president's a crook.
Well I'm not a crook.
Nixon achieved some of the biggest green accomplishments of any modern American president
leaving an impressive record when it came to implementing policies
to protect the environment.
He was from California and his base was in souther California that had seen smog
So he knew that politics and he knew how bad the smog and pollution could get
Nixon's administration with the help of a Democratic Congress
Passed many environmental initiatives
From institutional reform to pollution control
He was an institution builder at the federal level.
I mean one of the big changes that happened
in his tenure as president was that
environmental regulation and pollution and public health, environmental health
It was moved up to the federal level because the states weren't doing a good enough job.
It was an extraordinary example of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats.
All those laws were passed on a bipartisan basis
People would be surprised to know, with overwhelming support from both parties.
What's most notable is it wasn't especially controversial
You know, you've got Republican members of Congress supporting
clean air, clean water, trying to do something about toxic waste, and you have
Republican presidents signing the bills.
This is almost impossible to think about nowadays.
Environmentalism had become a big concern
for the American people in the late 60s and early 70s.
In all too many parts of America, it's becoming more and more
difficult to find breathable air, drinkable water.
They had witnessed a devastating oil leak in Santa Barbara, California,
and rampant pollution in other parts of the country.
New Yorkers learned about it at first hand when freak weather conditions
in July trapped poisonous fumes just above the city.
Environment was kind of a unifying issue.
It was an issue where Republicans such as him, they also thought that,
you know, we needed clean water, that pollution was a really big concern.
In 1968, Nixon created the Task Force on Environment.
And Congress was also doing its part.
It approved one of the first laws to establish a national framework
for environmental protection.
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.
The purpose of the Act was,
and is to this day,
to make sure the government conducts assessments before it begins
any federal projects that significantly affect the environment.
That includes construction of airports, buildings and military complexes.
But in 1970, Nixon proposed something that would change
the way the government dealt with the environment:
he submitted to Congress a plan to set up the Environmental Protection Agency,
(the EPA).
Each chapter contains specific recommendations by the counsel
for strengthening our attack on environmental problems.
Both Nixon and Congress were on a roll
They passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, in order to tackle air pollution
and set standards for what type of air pollutants can be released
In 1972, Nixon signed the Clean Water Act to regulate water quality.
The Act also made it illegal to discharge pollutants into navigable waters
without a permit.
And it wasn't just environmental legislation that Nixon was signing.
In 1973, he approved The Endangered Species Act.
The Act granted the government powers
to protect species at risk of extinction.
Of course, whether Nixon was genuinely passionate
about saving the environment is up for debate.
He was kind of pushed into it a little bit.
He might not have done it had he not had a Democratic Congress
and as well as environmentally-informed advisers to steer him that direction.
But whether it was political calculation
or a personal passion for the environment that drove Nixon's green policies,
, the fact remains that a Republican president supported laws
that have significantly changed the lives of Americans.
Clean air and clean water,
the wise use of our land,
the protection of wildlife and natural beauty,
parks for all to enjoy...
these are part of the birthright of every American.
So...what happened?
It's really the more recent Republican administrations
and the more recent Republican members of Congress,
I'd say in the last 20 to 30 years, that have
really rolled back environmental protection.
And during this period the more recent period, environmental protection
and especially climate change have become deeply partisan issues.
And then, in 1981, a new president takes office
guided by a free-market ideology innately hostile to government regulation.
What happens is Reagan comes in.
Along with him are opponents of environmental protection
through regulation.
What President Reagan did, which really set back environmental protections,
he appointed a secretary of the Interior
and an administrator of the EPA
who were essentially opposed to the missions of those agencies.
Reagan appointed Anne Gorsuch who,
keep in mind, didn't like the EPA,
to lead the EPA.
And for two years they do what they can to curb it, to dismantle it.
I mean, Anne Gorsuch took apart the whole enforcement division at the EPA.
They proposed massive cuts in EPA and other environmental agencies
Watt wanted to open up all these federal lands to the oil drillers
and the grazers and so forth.
The environmental programs managed to survive some blows by the Reagan administration
in large part due to pushback from Congress.
The Senate belonged to the Republicans, but the House was a blue majority.
Both Watts and Gorsuch eventually left.
Reagan's next appointments were more friendly to the environmental agencies.
The preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge,
it's common sense.
But what happens during the Reagan administration
the embrace of anti-statism and a strong dislike for big government.
And from there, the Republican party starts going through a bit of a metamorphosis.
I wouldn't say it's been a kind of linear road where of Republicans suddenly decided
you know, on mass that they didn't care about the environment
I think that what's happened over time is a combination of things
One is this sort of embrace of deregulation generally in the Republican Party
I would say environmental protection was part of the deregulatory moment
in the Reagan administration. And it's part of an anti-federal government era
which Reagan of course ushered in when he said:
Government is not the solution to our problem.
Government is the problem.
Conservative think tanks and corporations also started getting involved.
Since the 1990s
more than two-thirds of contributions
from the oil and gas industry
have gone to Republican candidates
and party committees.
Another thing that changed?
The other is a kind of loss of moderate Republicans in the House and in the Senate.
And the loss of that species of Republican means that you have much more
extreme Republicans.
And there's kind of a similar dynamic happening over time
in the Democratic Party where you see a divergence between
your average Republican and your average Democrat,
which makes bipartisan law very hard to pass.
It may come as a surprise to know that one Republican president that was
surprisingly moderate and bipartisan when it came to the environment was
George H. W. Bush.
If we believe every American expects and deserves clean air,
and then we act on that belief.
H. W. Bush actually should be known and given credit for being
quite an environmental president.
He signed the most important revision of the Clean Air Act
since it was originally passed in 1970, and it included a system
for dealing with the problem of acid rain, which was destroying lakes and forests.
The first ever market trading scheme for issuing allowances to pollute,
but creating a scheme to buy and sell those allowances
as a kind of market mechanism for controlling air pollution.
And then in the George W. Bush era, we saw really a period of, again, retrenchment.
He pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol,
which was the international agreement on climate change at the time.
But what really intensifies the partisan battle is:
climate change.
It sort of creeps into consciousness as an issue,
and it only becomes a really compelling issue that the
public becomes familiar with in the late 90s and early 2000s
Clearly to me, this climate change issue is one of the principal challenges
that we face.
A challenge that, should we fail to meet it, could imperil the lives of our children
and if not our children, our grandchildren.
By that point it becomes clear that this is going to be a very partisan issue
because climate change is about the energy system.
You know, it's about oil and gas, and how we fuel our electricity
and how we fuel our transportation.
And suddenly it becomes clear that this is going to be
something the parties divide over.
Jody Freeman was also a counselor for energy and climate change during the Obama presidency in 2009.
After taking office, Obama attempted to get
a comprehensive climate and energy bill passed.
But what Freeman and Obama found was that it's not just about
convincing the other party about the importance of
implementing extensive climate change policies.
It's about convincing your own too.
Even though it was a Democratic Congress
for the first two years of the Obama administration,
that new legislation could not get through.
And that's because energy and climate change are not clearly just
Republican and Democratic issues, people don't vote just based on party.
They vote based on where their state is positioned in terms of
what kind of resources they have.
Are they a coal state?
Are they a wind state?
Are they a state that's rich in renewables
or a state that has oil and gas?
So, it;s very hard to get support even when you , your party,
controls the Congress.
Once the midterm election happened, the Democrats lost control of the Congress.
And so there was no way a climate change legislation
was going to get done.
The Trump administration has made a targeted effort to roll back
Obama's legislations and efforts to combat climate change.
The impact of these rollbacks could have detrimental consequences.
The Republican Party went from this:
There is no disagreement with regard to the need for all nations
to cooperate, share their knowledge and their brains
in cleaning up the environment of the world.
To this:
As someone who cares deeply about the environment,
which I do,
I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punished the United States
which is what [the Paris Agreement] does.
We've lost our leadership role in the international community on these issues,
and the international community's really startled and disappointed
that the U.S. has disappeared on many other diplomatic issues.
There's no question that this is a moment of complete retrenchment
on climate change and clean energy policy