Ignominious former Republican EPA administrators Bill “Father of DDT Genocide’ Ruckelshaus and Bill “Delete Science from the Clean Air Act” Reilly hit the GOP presidential candidates at an enviro group function.
Greenwire reports:
Two former Republican U.S. EPA administrators, William Ruckelshaus and William Reilly, joked yesterday that the assault on the agency from the GOP presidential field makes it increasingly difficult for them to back the contenders.
Before a panel discussion at the World Resources Institute, Reilly said he “lamented” to Ruckelshaus that hardly any questions had been asked in the Republican debates about the environment or climate change.
Ruckelshaus’ response, Reilly said: “Count your blessings.”
Ruckelshaus, who was EPA’s first administrator under President Nixon, and Reilly, who held the post under President George H.W. Bush, have grown louder in their criticism of the current Republican Party. Yesterday, they also offered a stiff rebuke of the party’s presidential candidates for attacking EPA when the agency is fulfilling its mandate laid out by Congress (E&ENews PM, Jan. 23).
But when asked how concerned they are that one of those candidates could actually win in November, Ruckelshaus said that “if their attitude doesn’t change about EPA, that would certainly give me great concern.”
Reilly countered that he recognized “certain realities of the primary season” and the need for candidates to appeal to the party’s conservative base.
But, he added, “One has to hope that some of them don’t mean what they are saying.”
To which Ruckelshaus groused, “That’s not much of a reason to support somebody!”…
Several, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia — who is now in a dead heat for the lead in some polls with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — have said they would like to abolish the agency all together.
Ruckelshaus said he did not think an effort to get rid of EPA would stick because there would be immediate consequences for human health and the environment that would quickly become apparent to the public…
We’ll take that bet Bill.
Some Greenpeace-ers are apparantly Globalists, imo.
I don’t want the industries to “pollute without restraint”. The rivers ARE cleaning-up,–people are even eating the fish in them, without keeling over. My point is,the EPA NEVER KNOWS when to STOP with the Regs. Many-fewer people are needed to maintain,–NOT INCREASE EPA regs. The regulations of the EPA are a “hidden-tax” on any given business–impossible to account for, because they are un-ceasing, so investors can’t be blamed for NOT starting businesses, they can’t figure the COST$ of. With no new businesses, there are NO NEW jobs. No new jobs, there is NO Recovery. Many rivers are clean enough to fish from. What must we have until the EPA’s “happy”–DISTILLED-water (–which won’t sustain fish–it’s TOO clean)…in our lakes and rivers? There’s a HUGE difference between fishing from cleaned-up rivers, and a fire on a river due to an oil slick leaked upon it. The trans-canadian pipeline has the newest technology–much less likely to have a spill than pipes currently in use. You want a safer, newer pipe providing 20K jobs now, 100K jobs later, or just continue to go “broke” as a nation? Get a CLUE, GreggM! Or are you “working” for the Commu-Globalists?
The malaria-stricken have no political or economic power. Even Greenpeace ignores them.
Would you also take bets on how quickly people start dropping dead and rivers catching fire from industrial pollution? You really must hate people to want to allow industry to pollute without restraint!
Banning DDT is/was a Globalist agenda. Nazis were among the foremost of the leftist, Globalists of their era, backed-up and over-done by their “real-world” competition, the Communists, who killed 4-5 times of their own, vs the Nazis mostly killing others. I suppose we do owe the World an apology. Having eliminated the Axis, we then left in place, a WORSE enemy,–the Communists. The existing Communists provide fresh bodies for us to: destroy-through-regulation, OURSELVES and our businesses, so while we’re beating our breasts over Globalist-tyrants abroad, we should ALSO apologize for OUR Globalist-tyrants here, who include: RINOs, Demoncrats, Eco-Nazis, their govt.-proxies of an anti-human bent, etc. Having declared that 9/10ths of the World’s peoples must be liquidated, the Globalists only cry “crocodile-tears” at Malarial fatalities in the 3rd world, –like Eichmann, they are only “sorry” they couldn’t send MORE to Our Maker. The U.N. is a “hot-bed” of Globalist apparacheks, which our taxes support 1/4. We should leave the U.N. We should “un-ban” DDT. We should de-fund the Bilderberger’s Club against the USA, the EPA, now being swung with increasing vehemence against what remains of this once-great, free nation. Will the EPA KILL this nation, before we can de-fund it? That remains to be seen. The Congress appears to be asleep…or in co-option.
Ruckelshaus banned DDT for political, not scientific reasons, typical of a Luddite lawyer. The political cost of doing business in the US has skyrocketed ever since, and his ban greatly encouraged the anti-business bureaucrats. My guess is that we are much more environmentally clean than most other countries, that we have the most stringent bureaucratic rules. What I would like to see is how precisely we compare with other great manufacturing countries to overall citizen’s health, and how much we would really suffer if we stopped ratcheting down on minute levels of all these chemicals he fears. I say cease making more rules and let the world catch up to us. But first, how about some apology to the families who lost millions of family members to malaria, killed by the removal of DDT, once used successfully to protect public health.