On this day, June 1, 1992, President George H.W. Bush, says that a habitable planet is an extremist demand.
“We cannot permit the extreme in the environmental movement to shut down the United States. We cannot shut down the lives of many Americans by going extreme on the environment.”
George Bush at UNCED, quoted in the Guardian, 1 June 1992 –
This idea of the US “way of life” as “non-negotiable, or “sacred” has legs. Nine years later George H.W. Bush’s son, “Dubya” had become President after being selected by the U.S. Supreme Court. At a May 2001 press conference his spokesperson Ari Fleischer had the following exchange:
Q Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?
MR. FLEISCHER: That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one.
Why this matters.
What is sacred is beyond discussion. It’s a classic “de-agendaising” technique, where if you push the issue, you cast yourself into the outer darkness.
What happened next?
The USA government ratified the UNFCCC at the Rio Earth Summit, and has spent the last 30 years rendering it meaningless, and basically doing the bidding of various fossil fuel lobbies (yes, it is more complicated than that, but not MUCH more complicated).
See also my piece in The Conversation about George HW Bush.