webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Reilly, Wm

zombied montreal on re-name

poster boy for mkt solutions? got his ass kicked by Sununu at fork #1

11 25 netflix the wh effect

sununu out, but bad effects k?

overpromise in campaign, underpromise in office/ policy. meaning?

b41 pushed to rio JEJ promo in theatres; paraiah at rio

reporter asked about US pressure, our guy says we never do --> ha

bromley

===

blocked from?

Annie Ropeik: And in fact, when Bush came to office, the table was set for them to do something big. Less than a year after Bush’s inauguration, world leaders planned a meeting — the first-ever international talks on a binding treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The talks would be held in Noordwijk, in the Netherlands. This would be the ideal place for Bush to hold true to his promises of being an environmental president - to lead the world in addressing climate change.

Sam Evans-Brown: But immediately it became clear that John H did not see global warming as being like acid rain. And this teed up an internal battle within the Bush administration.

Rafe Pomerance: and this became an issue inside the Bush Whitehouse and agencies... some people very enthusiastic about moving forward… others like Governor Sununu, Chief of Staff, was not.

Rafe Pomerance: And what happened was, during the crucial week when they were going to make a decision. Hansen again shows up.

Annie Ropeik: James Hansen is that NASA scientist, the one whose models of the greenhouse effect first got Congress’ attention back in the early 80s. He had continued coming before lawmakers, including now-famous bombshell testimony in 1988 when he declared that global warming was already being observed. Now, he was testifying again.

Sam Evans-Brown: But this time, John H. Sununu intervened.

Rafe Pomerance: And Hansen’s testimony was altered by the Bush administration. And later, as I have learned, Sununu claims he altered the testimony, and diminished its conclusions.

Annie Ropeik: The new text said that climate change might be attributable to “natural processes,” which Hansen did not believe. This was leaked to the press, and was splashed all over the front page of the New York Times. The Bush White House wound up with egg all over their faces.

Rafe Pomerance: The Hansen alteration had a big political impact on the deliberations inside the Bush White house.…

Sam Evans-Brown: Rafe says when you look back at newspapers of the time, you see editorial writers throwing Bush's own words back at him. The self-proclaimed environmental president had promised his administration would tackle climate change. Instead, they'd been caught doing just the opposite — secretly trying to downplay the problem.

Annie Ropeik: It put the White House on the defensive. And for a  moment in the roiling internal debate within the administration, it seemed like John H. Sununu had lost. Just before the historic, first-ever climate negotiations in the Netherlands began, he wrote a telegram to State Department’s negotiators, reversing his previous position and telling them to work towards a “full international consensus.”

Sam Evans-Brown: Here again is Nathaniel Rich, the author of Losing Earth.

Nathaniel Rich: And then then the strangest detail of all is that there’s a series of talks on the eve of the trip in November, at a Tony hotel in DC in front of international — or — investors in the American Stock Exchange. Sununu — although he’s not there to speak about climate change necessarily, he’s just there in his capacity as powerful person within the Bush administration to talk about the economy — spends most of his talk on Noordwijk and on this idea of a treaty. And in fact comes out fairly forcefully — it’s a very strange thing to read —  in favor of a global agreement. And he’s challenged at one point by an investor in the audience who says, “well isn’t this going to have some major economic costs? And he says, “yeah there’ll be some up front costs, but it’s nothing compared to the back end costs if we don’t do anything.”

Annie Ropeik: And yet, despite all of this — despite having lost face by altering Hansen’s testimony and having been pressured into supporting a global greenhouse gas treaty —  somewhere between that speech to investors and the final negotiation in Noordwijk, Sununu flipped again. 

Sam Evans-Brown: It meant Americans began the talks with a hard-line stance.

:{

}:

Nathaniel Rich: We won’t sign anything that's binding in terms of emissions reductions, and we won't take part in anything that won’t consider the economic implications in the short-term basically. And that’s the end of the dream of a global binding treaty essentially. That’s the closest we’ve ever come since.

Annie Ropeik: This set the template for all climate talks that followed, every subsequent attempt at a binding greenhouse gas reduction treaty has failed. Even the much lauded Paris agreement, which the US also backed out of, was completely non-binding…

Sam Evans-Brown: This is where we get this great quote, which I think is theSwedish environment minister walking out of the room, and saying “your government is fucking this up.”

Nathaniel Rich: Yeah, right. And they did.

Annie Ropeik: If that binding treaty had been signed in 1990 — and if global community had lived up to it — there could have been fifteen percent less carbon in the atmosphere when the effort to scale back emissions began. There would have been a thirty year head start on developing solutions and driving down their cost.

Sam Evans-Brown: In short, the problem would have been a lot easier to solve.

===

Legacy

In his report Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change, Nathaniel Rich wrote that in November 1989 Sununu prevented the signing of a 67-nation commitment to freeze carbon dioxide emissions, with a reduction of 20 percent by 2005, and singled him out as a force starting coordinated efforts to bewilder the public on the topic of global warming and changing it from an urgent, nonpartisan and unimpeachable issue to a political issue, and an increasingly intractable one.[29]

===

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/710992579

apr 2019

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. As we deal with more extreme weather around the world and hear more dire reports about the future impact of climate change, you have to wonder, why didn't we succeed in taking preventive measures sooner, before things had progressed? That's one of the key questions my guestNathaniel Rich tries to answer in his new book, "Losing Earth: A Recent History." It's an expanded version of his report that the New York Times magazine devoted an entire issue to last August.

He focuses on the period from 1979 to '89, a period he describes as a time before the fossil fuel industry funded scientists to create doubt about the science of climate change and before the Republican Party adopted climate denialism as a central tenet. He focuses on the scientists, activists and political leaders who pushed for measures to limit carbon emissions and the political and corporate leaders who blocked them. We're also going to talk about where we are now with a president who doubts the science and a growing movement of young people insisting on action reversing the path we're on.

Nathaniel Rich, welcome to FRESH AIR. How much worse has the climate change problem gotten since your book ends in 1989?

NATHANIEL RICH:More carbon dioxide has been emitted into the atmosphere since the final page of the book basically, since the end of 1989, than in the history of civilization preceding it. So it's gotten a lot worse. Obviously, the political situation's gotten a lot worse as well. It's become a starkly partisan issue. I don't have to tell anyone that. And it seems like we are much further from a solution than we were 30 years ago.

GROSS: You write that, now, a long-term disaster is the best-case scenario.Would you explain that?

RICH: Yeah. Well, a certain amount of warming is baked in. And that's, you know, referring to some of the projections about 1 1/2 or 2 degrees Celsius warming above historical means, and there's all kinds of horrific scenarios that come with that. Of course, that's not nearly as bad as, you know, 3 degrees or 4 degrees or 5 degrees warming. But even when we talk about it in those terms, in sort of half degrees or full degrees warming, it's almost euphemistic because there's there's such dramatic differences even between, you know, 2 degrees and 2.1 degrees, 2.1 degrees and 2.2 degrees.

And I think one of the lies, sort of convenient dishonesties we have about the issue, one of the more benign ones, I guess, is that we think of it almost, like, in Hollywood terms, like, either we're going to win this thing, or we're going to suffer a crushing defeat. But of course, there's a huge range of outcomes in between.And at this point - yeah - where we're at, ranging from the not very good to the apocalyptic, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to better our situation as much as possible.

GROSS: Is there a moment when you think we came really close to seriously cutting back on the carbon emissions that are responsible for climate change during the period that you write about, '79 to '89?

RICH: Absolutely. From from '79 to '89, there are a series of efforts, escalating efforts, to first bring the issue to the attention of the powers that be, people at the highest levels of the federal government, and then to bring it to the public to generate public concern. And finally, in the middle of the decade, a solution materializes, which is a global treaty to reduce emissions that would be binding. And it's modeled after the ozone treaty that's then in process.

And by the end of the decade, we've reached the point of high-level diplomatic meetings to negotiate this binding global treaty. And we get to the precipice of an agreement on the framework of this treaty. And at the very last second, the U.S. pulls out, the story I tell in the book.

And so I think that, at least on paper, that's the closest we've come. I think you could have a reasonable, you know, debate about whether or not, if the U.S. did sign the treaty, they would have lived up - we would've lived up to the terms of it, whether other countries would have lived up to the terms of it even if it was binding. And that's a more, you know, complicated conversation to have. I think, at the very least, we'd be a lot further ahead than we are now. That seems indisputable.

GROSS: So what year did the U.S. pull out of this treaty? Who is the president, and why did we pull out?

RICH: So it's 1989. President is George H.W. Bush. And the previous summer, James Hansen, a NASA scientist who had become essentially the face of climate science, gave testimony before Congress in which he said, global warming is here. It's no longer a theory. We're seeing evidence of warming in global temperatures. It was the hottest summer in American history at the time.

And the story became a - it became a major public national story and to the point that even George Bush on the campaign stump gave speeches about it, was making promises that, as president, he would solve the problem then called the greenhouse effect as well. And he said, you know, those who think we can't solve the greenhouse effect haven't heard about the White House effect. And when I'm in the White House, you know, we'll solve it. And he gets to the White House.

James Baker, who's the new secretary of state, in his first major speech at the State Department, he invites the IPCC, the international organization under the auspices of the United Nations that's drafting - begins drafting a treaty. They have one of their first meetings at the State Department.And he endorses this program. And over the course of the year, you get to a meeting in Noordwijk in the Netherlands, a kind of coastal town on the North Sea.

That's the first high-level diplomatic meeting of - it's of environmental ministers from all over the world. Sixty-five countries or so come there.And there's a general sense that everyone's going to sign essentially a letter of intent that they will pursue a binding treaty to reduce global emissions. And at that meeting, the U.S. pulls out.

And the reason, at least the narrow political reason for that, is that over the course of that year, there had been a huge fight within the administration between William Riley, the head of Bush's EPA, and John Sununu, his chief of staff. And Sununu was highly skeptical of the science and suspicious of the motives of this treaty. And he was ultimately more powerful and won the argument, essentially, and was able to force the U.S. delegation to not accept anything that was binding. And at that point, the treaty became watered down.

GROSS: Do you think that some of these treaties are almost like masquerades where countries show up, and they look really great - like, we're going to do it - we're going to sign it - and then, at the last minute, you pull out? Like, it's almost like a game of chicken. Like, nobody really wants to do it, but everybody's waiting for somebody else to pull out - that no one really has the political will to make the sacrifices that need to be made.

RICH:Yeah. That's John Sununu's argument, basically. I spoke to him at length for the book. And he said, listen - I mean, he's totally unapologetic about his role in this. And I said, you know, do you claim responsibility for thwarting (laughter) any chance of a solution on this? And he said, I - essentially, he said, I wish I could. But in fact, I felt that we were the only honest brokers at the table and that the other countries weren't serious - that even though it was, you know, a quote, "binding agreement," essentially, what - you know, what's the country going to do if someone doesn't hit their targets? Are they going to bomb them? You know, are they going to have economic sanctions? I mean, of course not. [js does not trust WK]

And in fact, the leader of the delegation,Allan Bromley, who was Bush's science adviser and was kind of Sununu's man in Noordwijk - he wrote a memoir in which he essentially said the same thing, that he said that - in conversations with other delegates, other environmental ministers - at Noordwijk, he asked them, you know, how are you going to hit these targets? Do you have plans, you know, to reduce emissions by 20 percent or whatever by a certain year? And they would say - a couple of them told him, well, no, but it's just a piece of paper. And, you know, no one's going to send us to jail.

And so I think, yes, it's - I think you have to take seriously that kind of cynical view. And I think you can't really take seriously Sununu's scientific opinions on this matter. But I think you can take seriously his skepticism about the power of these treaties....

===

losing earth

Nor can the Republican Party be blamed. Today, only 42 percent of Republicans know that “most scientists believe global warming is occurring,” and that percentage is falling. But during the 1980s, many prominent Republicans joined Democrats in judging the climate problem to be a rare political winner: nonpartisan and of the highest possible stakes. 

:{

}:

Among those who called for urgent, immediate and far-reaching climate policy were Senators John Chafee, Robert Stafford and David Durenberger; the E.P.A. administrator, William K. Reilly; and, during his campaign for president, George H.W. Bush. As Malcolm Forbes Baldwin, the acting chairman of the president’s Council for Environmental Quality, told industry executives in 1981, “There can be no more important or conservative concern than the protection of the globe itself.” The issue was unimpeachable, like support for veterans or small business. Except the climate had an even broader constituency, composed of every human being on Earth.

It was understood that action would have to come immediately. At the start of the 1980s, scientists within the federal government predicted that conclusive evidence of warming would appear on the global temperature record by the end of the decade, at which point it would be too late to avoid disaster. More than 30 percent of the human population lacked access to electricity. Billions of people would not need to attain the “American way of life” in order to drastically increase global carbon emissions; a light bulb in every village would do it. A report prepared at the request of the White House by the National Academy of Sciences advised that “the carbon-dioxide issue should appear on the international agenda in a context that will maximize cooperation and consensus-building and minimize political manipulation, controversy and division.” If the world had adopted the proposal widely endorsed at the end of the ’80s — a freezing of carbon emissions, with a reduction of 20 percent by 2005 — warming could have been held to less than 1.5 degrees...

Sununu had suspected that the greenhouse effect belonged to this nefarious cabal since 1975, when the anthropologistMargaret Meadconvened a symposium on the subject at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “Unless the peoples of the world can begin to understand the immense and long-term consequences of what appear to be small immediate choices,” Mead wrote, “the whole planet may become endangered.” Her conclusions were stark, immediate and absent the caveats that hobbled the scientific literature. Or as Sununu saw it, she showed her hand: “Never before have the governing bodies of the world been faced with decisions so far-reaching,” Mead wrote. “It is inevitable that there will be a clash between those concerned with immediate problems and those who concern themselves with long-term consequences.” When Mead talked about “far-reaching” decisions and “long-term consequences,” Sununu heard the marching of jackboots.

In April, the director of theO.M.B., Richard Darman, a close ally of Sununu’s, mentioned that the NASA scientist James Hansen, who had forced the issue of global warming onto the national agenda the previous summer, was going to testify again — this time at a hearing called by Al Gore. Darman had the testimony and described it. Sununu was appalled: Hansen’s language seemed extreme, based on scientific arguments that he considered, as he later put it, like “technical garbage.”

While Sununu and Darman reviewed Hansen’s statements, the E.P.A. administrator, William K. Reilly, took a new proposal to the White House. The next meeting of the I.P.C.C.’s working group was scheduled for Geneva the following month, in May; it was the perfect occasion, Reilly argued, to take a stronger stand on climate change. Bush should demand a global treaty to reduce carbon emissions.

Sununu disagreed.It would be foolish, he said, to let the nation stumble into a binding agreement on questionable scientific merits, especially as it would compel some unknown quantity of economic pain.They went back and forth. Reilly didn’t want to cede leadership on the issue to the European powers; after all, the first high-level diplomatic meeting on climate change, to which Reilly was invited, would take place just a few months later in the Netherlands. Statements of caution would make the “environmental president” look like a hypocrite and hurt the United States’ leverage in a negotiation. But Sununu wouldn’t budge. He ordered the American delegates not to make any commitment in Geneva. Very soon after that, someone leaked the exchange to the press.

Sununu, blaming Reilly, was furious. When accounts of his argument with Reilly appeared in The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post ahead of the Geneva I.P.C.C. meeting, they made the White House look as if it didn’t know what it was doing.

A deputy of Jim Baker pulled Reilly aside. He said he had a message from Baker, who had observed Reilly’s infighting with Sununu. “In the long run,” the deputy warned Reilly, “you never beat the White House.”

9.

‘A Form of Science Fraud’

May 1989

In the first week of May 1989, when Hansen received his proposed testimony back from the O.M.B., it was disfigured by deletions and, more incredible, additions. Gore had called the hearing to increase the pressure on Bush to sign major climate legislation; Hansen had wanted to use the occasion to clarify one major point that, in the hubbub following the 1988 hearing, had been misunderstood. Global warming would not only cause more heat waves and droughts like those of the previous summer but would also lead to more extreme rain events. This was crucial — he didn’t want the public to conclude, the next time there was a mild summer, that global warming wasn’t real.

But the edited text was a mess. For a couple of days, Hansen played along, accepting the more innocuous edits. But he couldn’t accept some of the howlers proposed by the O.M.B. With the hearing only two days away, he gave up. He told NASA’s congressional liaison to stop fighting. Let the White House have its way, he said.

But Hansen would have his way, too. As soon as he hung up, he drafted a letter to Gore. He explained that the O.M.B. wanted him to demote his own scientific findings to “estimates” from models that were “evolving” and unreliable. His anonymous censor wanted him to say that the causes of global warming were “scientifically unknown” and might be attributable to “natural processes,” caveats that would not only render his testimony meaningless but make him sound like a moron. The most bizarre addition, however, was a statement of a different kind. He was asked to argue that Congress should only pass climate legislation that immediately benefited the economy, “independent of concerns about an increasing greenhouse effect” — a sentence that no scientist would ever utter, unless perhaps he were employed by the American Petroleum Institute. Hansen faxed his letter to Gore and left the office.

When he arrived home, Anniek told him Gore had called. Would it be all right, Gore asked when Hansen spoke with him, if I tell a couple of reporters about this?

The New York Times’s Philip Shabecoff called the next morning. “I should be allowed to say what is my scientific position,” Hansen told him. “I can understand changing policy, but not science.”

On Monday, May 8, the morning of the hearing, he left early for his flight to Washington and did not see the newspaper until he arrived at Dirksen, where Gore showed it to him. The front-page headline read: “Scientist Says Budget Office Altered His Testimony.” They agreed that Hansen would give his testimony as planned, after which Gore would ask about the passages that the O.M.B. had rewritten.

Gore stopped at the door. “We better go separately,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll be able to get both of us with one hand grenade.”...

10.

The White House Effect

Fall 1989

The censorship did more to publicize Hansen’s testimony and the dangers of global warming than anything he could have possibly said. At the White House briefing later that morning, Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater admitted that Hansen’s statement had been changed. He blamed an official “five levels down from the top” and promised that there would be no retaliation. Hansen, he added, was “an outstanding and distinguished scientist” and was “doing a great job.”

The Los Angeles Times called the censorship “an outrageous assault.” The Chicago Tribune said it was the beginning of “a cold war on global warming,” and The New York Times warned that the White House’s “heavy-handed intervention sends the signal that Washington wants to go slow on addressing the greenhouse problem.”

The day after the hearing, Gore received an unannounced visit from the O.M.B. director, Richard Darman. He came alone, without aides. He said he wanted to apologize to Gore in person. He was sorry, and he wanted Gore to know it; the O.M.B. would not try to censor anyone again. Gore, stunned, thanked Darman. Something about his apology — the effusiveness, the mortified tone or perhaps the fact that he had come by himself, as if in secret — left Gore with the impression that the idea to censor Hansen didn’t come from someone five levels down from the top, or even below Darman. It had come from someone above Darman.

Darman went to see Sununu. He didn’t like being accused of censoring scientists. They needed to issue some kind of response. Sununu called Reilly to ask if he had any ideas. We could start, Reilly said, by recommitting to a global climate treaty. The United States was the only Western nation on record as opposing negotiations.

Sununu sent a telegram to Geneva endorsing a plan “to develop full international consensus on necessary steps to prepare for a formal treaty-negotiating process. The scope and importance of this issue are so great that it is essential for the U.S. to exercise leadership.” He proposed an international workshop to improve the accuracy of the science and calculate the economic costs of emissions reductions.Sununu signed the telegram himself. A day later, the president pledged to host a climate workshop at the White House. Rafe Pomerance was unconvinced, telling the press that this belated effort to save face was a “waffle” that fell short of real action: “We should be able to complete a treaty by the end of 1990,” he said, “not be starting one.” But the general response from the press was relief and praise.

Still, Sununu seethed at any mention of the subject. He had taken it upon himself to study more deeply the greenhouse effect; he would have a rudimentary, one-dimensional general circulation model installed on his personal desktop computer. He decided that the models promoted by Jim Hansen were a lot of bunk. They were horriblyimprecise in scale and underestimated the ocean’s ability to mitigate warming.Sununu complained about Hansen to D. Allan Bromley, a nuclear physicist from Yale who, at Sununu’s recommendation, was named Bush’s science adviser.Hansen’s findings were “technical poppycock” that didn’t begin to justify such wild-eyed pronouncements that “the greenhouse effect is here” or that the 1988 heat waves could be attributed to global warming, let alone serve as the basis for national economic policy.

When a junior staff member in the Energy Department, in a meeting at the White House with Sununu and Reilly, mentioned an initiative to reduce fossil-fuel use, Sununu interrupted her. “Why in the world would you need to reduce fossil-fuel use?” he asked. “Because of climate change,” the young woman replied.

“I don’t want anyone in this administration without a scientific background using ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ ever again,” he said. “If you don’t have a technical basis for policy, don’t run around making decisions on the basis of newspaper headlines.” After the meeting, Reilly caught up to the staff member in the hallway. She was shaken. Don’t take it personally, Reilly told her. Sununu might have been looking at you, but that was directed at me.

Relations between Sununu and Reilly became openly adversarial.Reilly, Sununu thought, was a creature of the environmental lobby. He was trying to impress his friends at the E.P.A. without having a basic grasp of the science himself. Most unforgivable of all was what Sununu saw as Reilly’s propensity to leak to the press. Whenever Reilly sent the White House names of candidates he wanted to hire for openings at the E.P.A., Sununu vetoed them. When it came time for the high-level diplomatic meeting in November, a gathering of environmental ministers in the Netherlands, Sununu didn’t trust Reilly to negotiate on behalf of the White House. So he sent Allan Bromley to accompany him.

Reilly, for his part, didn’t entirely blame Sununu for Bush’s indecision on the prospect of a climate treaty. The president had never taken a vigorous interest in global warming and was mainly briefed about it by nonscientists. Bush had brought up the subject on the campaign trail, in his speech about the White House effect, after leafing through a briefing booklet for a new issue that might generate some positive press. When Reilly tried in person to persuade him to take action, Bush deferred to Sununu and Baker. Why don’t the three of you work it out, he said. Let me know when you decide. But by the time Reilly got to the Noordwijk Ministerial Conference in the Netherlands, he suspected that it was already too late.[for what? deegat said to sci/sctivist after all booted, you US are fucking this up; WR tried to put good face on it, but Wirth said US delinquents]..

===

William K. Reilly was appointed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Dec. 22, 1988, and he was officially nominated by President Bush on Jan. 20, 1989. Reilly has held five environment-related positions during two decades, the latest as President of both theWorld Wildlife Fund--U.S. and theConservation Foundation." [1]

"Mr. Reilly is a director of ConocoPhillips, Royal Caribbean International, National Geographic Society and the Packard Foundation. He also serves as chairman emeritus of the board of the World Wildlife Fund, chairman of the Advisory Board of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions of Duke University, and co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy." [1]

In an EPA interview, Reilly noted that:

"Then, the President's Council on Environmental Quality, which was setting up and looking for a land use lawyer, went to my old law firm for advice about whom to pick. They suggested me."So, I found myself one of the Council's first staff members under Russell Train and was given the job of helping draft the regulations - they were then guidelines - implementing the National Environmental Policy Act and the Environmental Impact Statement procedures. I also drafted a National Land Use Policy Act. That was the only one of the big legislative proposals on which we worked in the early 1970s that did not make it into law. The Coastal Zone Management Act is essentially the same bill that I had drafted, based on the American Law Institute's Model Land Development Code. So, we got a piece of it, a grant incentive program for the coast but not for the whole country."After two years there, I was invited to direct a task force on land use for the President's Commission on Environmental Quality, chaired by Laurence S. Rockefeller. We produced a report in 1973, The Use of Land: A Citizen's Policy Guide to Urban Growth, which went through three printings and sold 50,000 copies. I accepted an invitation then to become President of The Conservation Foundation. In 1985, it affiliated with World Wildlife Fund and later merged completely. In 1985, I became President of both institutions. That's where I was when President Bush asked me to become EPA Administrator. That's probably more than you wanted to know." [2]

Contents [hide]

Affiliations

Tobacco issues

William Rilley was EPA administrator on January 7, 1993 at the time the EPA issued a press release announcing the publication of its1993 Risk Assessment on the health hazards of secondhand smoke. The final report, titled "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders," (EPA 600/6/90/006F), concluded that Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS, also known as secondhand smoke), is a Group A human lung carcinogen responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually among U.S. non-smokers. The risk assessment grouped ETS with other carcinogens rated Group A, including radon gas, asbestos, and vinyl chloride. The report also concluded that passive smoking results in serious respiratory problems for infants and young children. The 530-page EPA report had been in the development phase since 1988, and was subjected to extensive review and revisions. It was prepared under authority of Title IV of Superfund (The Radon Gas and Indoor Air Quality Research Act of 1986), which directs EPA to conduct a research and information dissemination program on all aspects of indoor air quality.

The report's publication represents a landmark in the history of government publication on the health hazards of secondhand smoke. The tobacco industry attempted to influence the report's creation throughout its development period. When they couldn't stop the report or significantly alter its conclusions, the Tobacco Institute created an aggressive program to fight the fallout of the report by attacking the process and methodology used in creating it. The Institute enlisted consulting scientists to create the appearance of doubt about the scientific consensus on secondhand smoke by going on media tours, and writing letters and op-eds criticizing it. To head off the flood of legislated smoking restrictions the Institute expected in the wake of the report, the Institute hired ventilation experts to tour the country promoting the use of ventilation, rather than smoking bans, to clear the air in workplaces.[3][4]

Reilly presided over the EPA at a time when the tobacco industry concentrated tremendous energy on trying to undermine the agency's credibility.

An internal Philip Morris (PM) report, found in the files of Victor Han (Director of Communications for Philip Morris Worldwide Regulatory Affairs), describes the threat that the EPA's 1993 rating of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) as a Group A Human Carcinogen posed to the cigarette industry:

Indirectly, ETS will have considerable influence on all other tobacco-related legislation, including taxation, marketing freedoms, etc. Of critical importance will be the effect on consumers, practically deprived of more and more locations in which they can smoke, and psychologically given more incentive to quit.

The 12-page PM report characterizes the EPA as "at worst corrupt and controlled by environmental terrorists" and states that,

...without an effort to build considerable reasonable doubt about [EPA's case against secondhand smoke]--particularly among consumers--then virtually all other efforts [to fight the ETS issue] will be diminished in effectiveness.

PM's was not to fight the ETS issue on its merits, but instead to destroy the credibility of the government agency that declared it dangerous:

The credibility of the EPA is defeatable, but not on the basis of ETS alone. It must be part of a larger mosaic that concentrates all of the EPA's enemies against it at one time.

The paper describes how the media's focus would be taken off of ETS by the generation of non-ETS stories, stories that focus on "general EPA bashing by credible, authoritative sources." and "EPA ineptitude and, when possible, corruption."[5]

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

References

  1. ↑ William K. Reilly, DuPont, accessed October 3, 2011.
  2. ↑ Climate Works Foundation Board, organizational web page, accessed December 14, 2012.
  3. ↑ President's Council, American Farmland Trust, accessed October 3, 2011.
  4. ↑ Board of Trustees, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, accessed September 16, 2007.
  5. ↑ Leadership, Initiative for Global Development, accessed December 11, 2007.
  6. ↑ About, National Geographic Society, accessed January 17, 2009.
  7. ↑ Directors, Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation, accessed November 20, 2009.
  8. ↑ Advisory Board, Blue Legacy, accessed February 19, 2010.
  9. ↑ National Council, The Conservation Fund, accessed May 9, 2010.
  10. ↑ Terra Nature Fund People, organizational web page, accessed February 24, 2012.

External links

This article may include information from Tobacco Documents Online.

===

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Reilly

William K. Reilly (born January 26, 1940) was Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush. He has served as president of World Wildlife Fund, as a founder or advisor to several business ventures, and on many boards of directors. In 2010, he was appointed by President Barack Obama co-chair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling to investigate the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Contents [hide]

Early life, military service and education

Born in Decatur, Illinois, into a conservative, deeply religious family, Reilly was strongly influenced by his father, a highway construction steel merchant. Reilly's father moved his family from Illinois to South Texas when Reilly was 10. From the Rio Grande Valley, the Reillys moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, where he finished high school at Durfee High School.

He subsequently attended **Yale** University, where he earned an A.B. in history. During his Yale years, Reilly took advantage of the junior year abroad program to study in France. Reilly then earned a law degree from **Harvard Law** School, completing a thesis on land reform in Chile.

After law school, Reilly entered the United States Army and served a tour of duty during 1966 and 1967 as a captain[1] in Europe with an intelligence unit planning for the evacuation of U.S. troops from France. During that time, he married Elizabeth "Libbie" Buxton.

After completing military service, Reilly returned to school and received a masters degree inurban planning at Columbia University.

Early career

In 1968, fresh from planning school and a four-month project in Turkey, Reilly went to work for Urban America, Inc., where he worked to integrate century-old concerns for urban beautification, an issue which had been brought to the forefront of the American conscience by the civil rights movement - concerns which would grow into the environmental justice movement which he dealt with when he was at the EPA.

In 1970, during the Nixon Administration, Reilly became a senior staff member of the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) underRussell Train, who would later become the second EPA Administrator in 1972.

Reilly moved from CEQ to become President of The Conservation Foundation, which merged with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1985. After the merger, he served as President of World Wildlife Fund until taking over as administrator at the EPA in 1989.

EPA Administrator

During his time at EPA, Reilly championed integration of the nation's environmental and economic agendas and sought to strengthen the role of science at EPA. He put priority on elevating attention to the protection and restoration of natural systems, preventing pollution before it is generated, enforcing environmental laws aggressively, and fostering such innovative cleanup technologies as bioremediation. He also led the Agency in assessing and advancing the concerns of the emerging environmental justice movement.

Reilly played a pivotal role in crafting and securing passage of a new Clean Air bill, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in November 1990. Breaking a 10-year stalemate in reauthorizing the Clean Air Act, this law creates an innovative, market-oriented emissions trading system to cut sulfur dioxide pollution in half, promotes the use of alternative fuels, requires major reductions in air toxic emissions, and lays out realistic timetables and commitments to assure steady progress in reducing ozone in cities that have not yet attained air quality standards.

While at EPA, Reilly elevated attention to restoring the health of natural systems, including the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, and other water bodies. Funding for targeted, high-priority geographic areas jumped from $40 million to over $700 million. He also sought to give impetus to the President's policy of "no net loss" of wetlands. During his tenure, EPA vetoed three water resource projects for adverse environmental impacts, including the Two Forks dam in Colorado, a decision which prompted fundamental changes in water policy in the West.

Reilly made pollution prevention a priority, negotiating voluntary agreements with industry to reduce toxic emissions and promote energy conservation, and encouraging recycling and waste reduction. Under his direction, the Agency achieved record levels in criminal and civil enforcement actions, and collected more in fines and penalties in his four years than in the Agency's previous 18-year history. EPA secured over $1 billion annually in private party contributions to Superfund cleanups, a three-fold increase over 1988; over four years, the amount collected accounted for three quarters of all such contributions since the Superfund program began. During Reilly's final year at EPA the Agency completed cleanup at a Superfund site every five days.

Reilly also played a leading role in asserting environmental priorities in U.S. foreign policy.He headed the U.S. delegation to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. At his direction, EPA did some of the seminal research on greenhouse gas reductions, which helped pave the way for a treaty on climate change, calling for national action plans, periodic scientific and economic reassessments, and assistance to developing countries. He was also prominent in advancing forest conservation on an international scale, culminating in a declaration of principles at the Rio Summit. In 1990, Reilly represented President Bush at the opening of the Eastern and Central European Regional Environment Center proposed by the President during his 1989 visit to Budapest (EPA was instrumental in setting up the Cen¬ter and developing its program); negotiated on behalf of the United States, first in London in 1990, later in Copenhagen in 1992, revisions to the Montreal Protocol phasing out CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals; and worked with the Secretary of State and other Cabinet officials on a range of bilateral and multilateral issues involving Brazil, Canada, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Turkey, the so-called G-7 industrialized democracies, and other member coun¬tries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Reilly accompanied President Bush to the 1989 Paris Economic Summit, the first environment minister to accompany a head of state to this annual meeting. At President Bush’s request he led a mission to Kuwait at the conclusion of the war to assess the environmental and health effects of the burning oil fields, and then reported to the Congress on his findings. He also became the first EPA Administrator to take part in the annual bi-national Cabinet meetings with Mexico, and played a pivotal role in assuring that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) factored in environmental concerns. Reilly testified before Congress in support of NAFTA seven times.

Later career

After leaving EPA in January 1993, Reilly returned to World Wildlife Fund. Later that year, he and his wife moved to the Bay area in California when Reilly accepted the position of Payne Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

Reilly is founding partner of Aqua International Partners, L.P., a private equity fund dedicated to investing in companies in the water sector in developing countries. AIP was formed in 1997 and is based in San Francisco.[2]

Reilly is a director of ConocoPhillips, Royal Caribbean International, and the Packard Foundation. He also serves as chairman of the board of World Wildlife Fund, co-chair of the Energy Project formed by the Bipartisan Policy Center, and chair of the Advisory Board for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. He previously served as a director ofDuPont and the National Geographic Society.

Reilly is an advisor to TPG Capital, an international investment firm. He was a key player in the leveraged buyout by TPG and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) of Texas Utilities (TXU, nowEnergy Future Holdings Corporation) in February 2007, instrumental in negotiating with TXU a reduction in the number of coal-fired power plants to be constructed from 11 to 3. He serves as chairman of the Sustainable Energy Advisory Board for the company.

In 2012, President Obama appointed Reilly to the newly formed Global Development Council, the mission of which is to advise the president on future directions for U.S. foreign assistance.

Commission on BP oil spill

In May 2010, Reilly was appointed co-chair of the body formed to study the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill and related issues of offshore drilling, with former Florida governor and U.S. senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, as the other co-chair. President Obama met with the co-chairs for the first time June 1. At that time, the president was quoted as saying of the co-chairs: "They have my full support to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor."[3] Appearing on the Diane Rehm Show the same day, congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) responded to the suggestion that an oil industry representative be appointed to the commission by pointing to Republican Reilly's position with Conoco. The suggestion had been forwarded by John Breaux, former Democratic U.S. senator from Louisiana and lobbyist more recently for among others Shell Oil Company.[4][5] Markey also opined that Congress ought to give subpoena power to the commission.[4]

In October, 2011, Reilly appeared with Graham at Climate One to discuss problems with industry practices, domestic and international regulatory oversight including coordination with Mexican and Cuban deep-water drilling industries, and recommendations on what will power the U.S. economy while it transitions to cleaner energy.[6] The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, which had hosted the Climate One event, broadcast the discussion on public radio nationally in early December.[7]

Awards

In November, 2011, Reilly received[8] the Vincent Scully Prize at the National Building Museum[9] for "his commitment to smart environmental planning, comprehensive land use and preservation of open space".[10]

References

  1. ^ EPA Profile
  2. ^ Aqua International Partners page, "Private Company Information:Detailed information", Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
  3. ^ "Obama Demands Thorough Probe From Oil Spill Panel", by the Associated Press, June 1, 2010, via The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
  4. ^ a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K.Reilly#cite_ref-DR01_4-0) b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K.Reilly#cite_ref-DR01_4-1) "Update on Gulf Oil Spill", Diane Rehm Show, June 1, 2010. Citation is to audio or to transcript (available by order) only. Link updated 2010-07-08.
  5. ^ "Lobbying Increases with Oil Prices: Industry spent nearly 62 percent more between 2004 and 2007" by Bennett Roth, Houston Chronicle, via oilwatchdog.org, a project of Consumer Watchdog. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
  6. ^ Gerdes, Justin, "Beyond Petroleum: Lessons from the Gulf of Mexico", Climate One webpage, 10/27/2011. Podcast. Retrieved 2011-12-12.
  7. ^ "KQED: December 9 "Beyond Petroleum", Commonwealth Club webpage. December 12, 2011 broadcast on MPBN: Listing and listener report. Retrieved 2011-12-12.
  8. ^ Sundt, Nick, "Former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly: On Climate Change, Cities May 'Save Us From the Ideological Gridlock in Washington'", World Wildlife blog, 11/11/2011 15:13. Retrieved 2011-12-12.
  9. ^ Trescott, Jacqueline, "The Vincent Scully Prize goes to William K. Reilly, the former EPA administrator", Washington Post blog, 10/31/2011 6:04 pm ET. Retrieved 2011-12-12.
  10. ^ "Vincent Scully Prize: William K. Reilly". National Building Museum. November 8, 2011. Retrieved 12 October 2011.

External links