<< Would you consider Richard Nixon a "right winger," Del? I'm guessing you would. Would you consider establishment of the EPA in 1970 an initiative to improve the environment? Hmmmmmm.....? >>
I do consider establishment of the EPA in 1970 an initiative to improve the environment, and Nixon a right winger. Nixon took the initiative to make people aware of the need to protect the environment like Gore established the Internet. His was a reaction to a changing mindset regarding the environment that was already in place. From the EPA site....
American environmentalism dawned as a popular movement on a mild spring afternoon in 1970. Wednesday, April 22nd, brought blue skies, light breezes, and temperatures in the 60s to New York City and Washington, D.C. Much of the rest of the country enjoyed similar conditions. On that day, the influence of nature had particular meaning; the nation held a celebration of clean air, land, and water. Encouraged by the retreat of winter, millions participated.
The first Earth Day may have been prompted, in part, by the recent moon landings. When the astronauts turned their cameras homeward, capturing the image of a delicate blue planet, the world looked upon itself with fresh understanding. The context of Earth Day 1970, however, was far from celestial, reflecting the turbulence of the time. Since the mid-1960s, the streets has become a common outlet for political and social discontent. Yet Earth Day, forged in an era of strife and change, had its own personality; marijuana smoke may have hung in wisps over some of the day's festivities, but violence and confrontation were nowhere to be seen...
...The growth of the cities also made plain the evils of pollution. Media stories covered radioactive fallout and its effect on the food chain, dangerous impurities in urban water supplies, and the deterioration of city air. The subtle metaphor of a "web of life," in which all creatures depended upon one another for their mutual perpetuation, gained common currency. Hence, the powerful reaction to Rachel Carson's 1962 classic Silent Spring, a quietly shocking tale about the widespread pesticide poisoning of man and nature. Her book elicited a public outcry for direct government action to protect the wild; not for its future exploitation, but for its own innate value.
In the process of transforming ecology from dispassionate science to activist creed, Carson unwittingly launched the modern idea of environmentalism: a political movement which demanded the state not only preserve the Earth, but act to regulate and punish those who polluted it. Sensing the electoral advantage from such advocacy, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson added the environment to their speeches and legislative programs. In his 1964 and 1965 messages to Congress, Lyndon Johnson spoke forcefully about safeguarding wilderness and repairing damaged environments.
Richard Nixon showed as much eagerness as his predecessors to profit from the issue, and he invoked it during the bitter presidential election of 1968. As President, however, he acted with ambivalence, moving in two directions at once. On one hand, he raised eyebrows by appointing a National Pollution Control Council, a Commerce Department body comprised solely of corporate executives. He also vetoed the second Clean Water Act. At the same time, in 1969 and 1970, he approved and directed a succession of sweeping measures which vastly expanded the federal regulatory protections afforded the environment.
Just four months after his January 1969 inauguration, President Nixon established in his cabinet the Environmental Quality Council, as well as a complementary Citizens' Advisory Committee on Environmental QuaIity. Opponents denounced both as ceremonial and Nixon, ever sensitive to criticism, rose to the challenge. He had already asked Roy L.Ash, the founder of Litton Industries, to lead an Advisory Council on Executive Organization and submit recommendations for structural reform. In November, the President's Domestic Council instructed Ash to study whether all federal environmental activities should be unified in one agency. During meetings in spring 1970, Ash at first expressed a preference for a single department to oversee both environmental and natural resource management. But by April he had changed his mind; in a memorandum to the President he advocated a separate regulatory agency devoted solely to the pursuit of anti-pollution programs.
Forging such an institution actually represented the final step in a quick march towards national environmental consciousness. Congress recognized the potency of the issue in late 1969 by passing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This statute recast the government's role: formerly the conservator of wilderness, it now became the protector of earth, air, land, and water. The law declared Congressional intent to "create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony," and to "assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, esthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings." Henceforth, all federal agencies planning projects bearing on the environment were compelled to submit reports accounting for the likely consequences--the now famous Environmental Impact Statements (EISs)...
...Signing the Act with fanfare on New Year's Day 1970, Nixon observed that he had "become further convinced that the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is," he said, "literally now or never."
...by early July the Administration could concentrate its full attention on the capstone of its program. Acting on Roy Ash's advice, the President decided to establish an autonomous regulatory body to oversee the enforcement of environmental policy. In a message to the House and Senate, he declared his intention to establish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)...
...on December 2, 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency would at last open its doors.
epa.gov
I doubt if it was pot smokin' right wing conservatives who organized that first Earth Day.
Del
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