Some Historical Context to Today’s Debates on the Climate Agreement

The European Union, China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Canada, and other countries are negotiating the details for implementation of the Paris Agreement, and are developing domestic policies to achieve their respective Nationally Determined Contributions under the accord. At the same time, the United States — under the leadership of President Donald Trump — has announced its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as soon as permitted (November 2020), and has taken significant steps to roll back domestic climate change policies. This may be a good time to place this U.S. government behavior into historical context.

Of course, the history of climate change science goes back at least to Svante Arrhenius in the 19th century, but my focus is not on the history of the science, but on the policy history, in particular, the history of discussions within the U.S. government regarding climate change and potential policy responses.

Some might think that the starting point would be the 1988 Congressional hearings — led by Senators Timothy Wirth and Albert Gore — which the New York Times covered in a long article. That was during the last year of the Reagan administration, but the story really begins more than two decades earlier.

On November 5, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson released a report authored by the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee. The report included a 23-page discussion of the climatic effects of increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to the combustion of fossil fuels, and — interestingly enough — concluded with a proposal for research on a specific approach to responding, namely with what is now called geoengineering.

In his introduction to the report, Johnson emphasized that “we will need increased basic research in a variety of specific areas,” and then went on to state: “We must give highest priority of all to increasing the numbers and quality of the scientists and engineers working on problems related to the control and management of pollution.”

Four years later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan — one of the leading public intellectuals of the 20th century — was working in the Nixon White House, and sent a memorandum to John Ehrlichman, then a key presidential assistant (who subsequently served 18 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate conspiracy). In the memo, Moynihan referenced the Johnson administration’s report, focused on “the carbon dioxide problem,” described the basic science of the greenhouse effect, highlighted anticipated impacts including sea-level rise, proposed potential policy responses including “stop burning fossil fuels,” and concluded that “this is a subject that the administration ought to get involved with.” We do not know whether Ehrlichman responded.

From today’s perspective in the second year of the Trump administration, it may — or may not — be comforting to recognize that scientific and even policy attention by the White House to climate change goes back more than five decades. Since the Johnson administration, there have surely been ups and downs — through the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and Trump.

This list of presidential administrations illustrates that the White House swings between parties. It should also remind us that whether a single four-year term or even the maximum of eight years, administrations are relatively short-lived when judged in historical context.

All of which reminds me of a personal story. In November 2016, just days after the U.S. election, I was in Marrakech, Morocco, for the annual U.N. climate negotiations. I was speaking on a panel assembled by the government of China in their pavilion. Those who preceded me voiced their dismay about the election and their very low expectations for the climate change policy that would likely be forthcoming from Donald Trump and his administration-to-be.

Our moderator from the Chinese government then introduced me to speak, and as I listened with headphones to the simultaneous translation, I heard him say, “And now Harvard’s Professor Stavins will bring us some good news from the United States.” I was dumbfounded. What could I possibly say? I walked to the lectern, sipped some water, took a deep breath, and said to the audience, “When you get to be my age, you recognize that four years is not a long time!”

That will have to suffice as an optimistic conclusion to this column.