Other posts on this website chronicle the contributions our organization has made to the management of the administrative state.
These contributions have to be augmented by our failure to exercise a unique opportunity to address the issue of the century.
In the early seventies, the Quality of Life Review designed and implemented by the Nixon Administration, placed OMB in a central position to delineate the environmental issues to be addressed with the necessary resources.
One day, in the early seventies, we received a call from a NASA scientist. He explained that he was going out of the chain of command but would like to visit on non-government time, Saturday, to discuss a very contentious issue.
The meeting took place with three or four NASA scientists in attendance. They did not use the term climate change but they stated we were on a course for the super heating of our atmosphere with cataclysmic impacts on human life.
Their presentation was daunting; in the immediate future it never left our minds, but in the long run our failure to act on it was an event one can never forget.