People still cheer him for the oil glut he unleashed, but that meant the end of our eco system. Ronald Reagan interfered with the interaction of science and government, resulting in a watered down and ‘solution optimistic’ view of climate change and it’s effects. Two reports independently predicted the rise in temperature we now see. Two realistic views of the dangers of fossil fuel use. And Ronald thought it was better to not respond. Could he have? We will never know. What we will know is the consequences of his choice to ignore climate change.
"In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president. He was pro-business and pro-America. He knew the country was already in the environmental dog house because of acid rain. If global warming turned into a big issue, there was only going to be one bad guy. The US was by far the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. If the president wasn’t careful, global warming could become a stick to beat America with.
So Reagan commissioned a third report about global warming from Bill Nierenberg, who had made his name working on the Manhattan Project developing America’s atom bomb. He went on to run the Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he had built up the Climate Research Division. And he was a Jason. Nierenberg’s report was unusual in that individual chapters were written by different authors. Many of these chapters recorded mainstream scientific thinking similar to the Charney and Jason reports. But the key chapter was Nierenberg’s synthesis – which chose largely to ignore the scientific consensus." (bron)