After eight years of political interference, it appears that science is poised to make a comeback in the executive branch. Barack Obama”s appointments to most top energy and environmental posts – Steven Chu at Energy, John Holdren as White House science advisor, Jane Lubchenco at NOAA – are all recognized experts on climate change and articulate advocates for sensible policies.
It’s hard to underestimate the damage done over the past eight years as Bush political appointees mounted a bureaucratic trench war on government scientists, doing all they could to stifle any meaningful policy debate on climate change and a variety of other issues including endangered species and pollution. Much of this was done for the crassest of reasons – to placate various interest groups that would have taken a hit had the government acted.
This quote from Bush’s science advisor, John H. Marburger III, sums up the strange psychology of denial in the White House:
“There are stupid and foolish things that have been perpetrated by employees of the federal government in the executive branch, but it doesn’t mean that the president is anti-science,” he said. “The president is getting blamed for every little thing that happens that people don’t like in the administration.”
The statement is almost beautifully ambiguous. Is he saying that Bush appointees did “stupid and foolish things” for which Bush should not be held responsible (which doesn’t make sense – obviously Bush is responsible for what his appointees do). Or is he saying the opposite: it was stupid and foolish for civil service professionals to resist the interference of the Bush appointees?
The delay on climate change will likely be seen, in historical terms, as one of Bush’s biggest mistakes. But another striking thing about this is how the Bush administration – taking the Republican Party with it for the ride – abdicated its responsibility to seriously engage these issues. The Republican Party was once able to mount credible critiques of environmental regulations and other fixes – which are, after all, no panacea, and should be vigorously debated across party lines. Instead, the Bush administration routinely shut out scientific findings it didn’t like. Meanwhile, many Republicans in Congress and the Republican policy establishment more or less took a holiday from thinking seriously about how to approach environmental and scientific problems. Of course there were exceptions. But the GOP will have do some work to be taken seriously on the climate debate and other scientific issues of our time.
