At 90, a top environmental policymaker in the Nixon White House looks ahead

[G_j]

At 90, an eco-pioneer looks ahead

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/07/14/4676769-at-90-an-eco-pioneer-looks-ahead
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Many of the pillars of current environmental policy were erected during Train's tenure, as the first chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the second adninstrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. And Democrats as well as Republicans were quick to erect those pillars back then. "I think that was a moment in time that we may well never see again insofar as the environment is concerned," Train told me. "The issue has become much more highly politicized than it was back in the '70s."

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Q: I'll make sure to link to that. So what lessons do you think can be taken from your experience, either on the sorts of approaches might need to be taken, or any strategies you might suggest for the next generation of environmentalists?

A: I think something has happened to our public life, and it's hard to know how to turn it around. That's the lack of bipartisanship. Put it the other way around: the acute political partisanship that seems to mark every move on Capitol Hill. Take as an example that initiative by Sen. Murkowski of Alaska, Senate Joint Resolution 26, which specified that the EPA was not to exercise any authority over the regulation of greenhouse gases, carbon emissions in particular. When that came to a vote, every single member of the Republican membership of the Senate voted for it. That's incredible. No divergence whatsoever, even among some of those I know were opposed to it. It's just a very partisan process today. That did not exist when I was involved in such matters. That's going to be extremely hard to turn around.

What would I recommend? I don't know. How do you change that? Now, maybe if the Republicans got a Republican president who would be more relaxed with the Congress ... I don't know that for a fact at all. By the way, to understand my political viewpoint, I'm registered today as an independent. I grew up as a Republican, served in several Republican administrations, but I'm no longer on that side of the fence. I am independent.

Q: It almost is like a long philosophical cycle that has to move, as it did from the Goldwater era to the Nixon era. It's almost as if we're in the wrong part of the curve.

A: That we certainly are. How that's going to change, I don't know. It seems like the only game in town right now is the defeat of Obama and the election of a Republican president the next time around. Everything else is unimportant. That, in my mind, is the picture of a Congress, or at least the Republican side of the Congress, that is abrogating its responsibility to the American people. I don't think that members of Congress are elected simply to pursue political ends, I think they're there to serve the well-being of the American people. That's what we wanted.

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