Six former heads of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, five of them Republicans, have called on the Bush Administration to stop talking about the weather and start doing something about it, by setting mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions that lead to widespread climate change and global warming.
_{Photo courtesy of Susan Marton}

During a roundtable discussion that was part of an event to celebrate the EPA’s 35th anniversary, the six former EPA administrators agreed that global warming is an urgent issue that requires decisive action. They told current EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson and other government officials that continuing to debate what percentage of climate change is caused by human activity is a waste of time.

“Why argue about things you can't prove?” said William D. Ruckelshaus, who served under President Richard Nixon and again under President Ronald Reagan. “We need to fashion policies with proper incentives to reduce the amount of carbon we are putting in the atmosphere. There are all kinds of things we can do right now, and we ought to be taking those steps.”

Johnson said the EPA has invested $20 billion since 2001 in research, technology and dozens of programs aimed at reducing carbon emissions, but his predecessors pointed out that neither the White House nor Congress has come up with a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Even the U.S. Department of Energy, part of the Bush Administration, says the problem is getting worse. The Annual Energy Outlook for 2006, released in December 2005, predicts that carbon emissions from the United States will increase 37 percent by 2030.

“This is not a sort of short-term cycle problem. This is a major disaster for the world,” said Russell E. Train, who served as EPA administrator under President Nixon and President Gerald Ford. “To say we'll deal with it later and try to push it away is dishonest to the people, and self-destructive.”

The bipartisan wake-up call to President Bush from such a diverse group of former EPA administrators appears to be unprecedented in American politics. Carol M. Browner, who served under President Bill Clinton, was the only Democrat in the group. After the session, she told reporters that her colleagues’ consensus on the need for government regulation to curb global warming is “huge” and “a testament to the reality of the issue and a recognition that it's time to do something.”

More information:

Ex-EPA Chiefs Agree on Greenhouse Gas Lid -- The Washington Post

6 Ex-Chiefs of E.P.A. Urge Action on Greenhouse Gases -- The New York Times (may require registration)