The Other Side of the Coin

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.

 

 

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