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Time to Take Greenhouse Gas Threat Seriously, Says Former Chief of EPA

Posted on: Thursday, 20 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

By Steve Hinnefeld, Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind.

Apr. 20--Americans should take the lead in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change, former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus said Wednesday at Indiana University.

"It's time to get serious and stop arguing about whether it's real or not," he said. "It's real."

Ruckelshaus, 73, was at IU Wednesday for an IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs symposium.

The Indiana native was the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, heading the agency in Republican administrations from 1970 to 1973 and from 1983 to 1985.

In the lecture and during a talk with reporters, he said President Nixon created the agency in response to a growing public outcry about air and water pollution and the failure of the states to address the problems.

"The expectations were high," he said. "I think we made a lot of progress in the first several years of the EPA's existence."

But he said the agency ran up against the limits of using regulation and litigation to influence behaviors that harm the environment -- suburban sprawl, increased energy consumption and the cumulative impact of lots of small sources of pollution.

Ruckelshaus said Americans expect a lot from government but, conversely, don't trust elected leaders.

"I think the American people are ideological liberals and operational conservatives on the environment," he said.

He sees promise in local-level efforts that bring together competing interests to find solutions to environmental problems. He cited as an example an initiative to protect endangered salmon habitat in Washington's Puget Sound, near where he lives.

But Ruckelshaus said some environmental problems can only be addressed at the national and international levels: climate change, for example.

"This administration has relied on voluntary reductions, and I don't think voluntary reductions will get us very far," he said.

While there's legitimate debate over how best to address climate change, he said, studies have overwhelmingly concluded that human activity -- primarily burning fossil fuels to make energy -- contributes to global warming.

"Therefore we should be taking serious steps to reduce the amount of carbon we're putting into the atmosphere," he said. "If we don't take steps to reduce that impact, it's unlikely the rest of the world will either."

He said it will take presidential leadership to change behavior and lifestyle choices in ways that reduce energy consumption and pollution.

But he's concerned the Bush administration doesn't have the public's trust on environmental issues.

"Americans must generate a renaissance of trust," he said, "so the government at all levels is no longer them but us."

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Source: Herald-Times

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