Twenty two years ago, on this day, May 11, 2001, George “Supreme Court got me this gig” Bush did his masters’ bidding.
President Bush signs Executive Order 13211. It is a verbatim copy of a “suggested” order sent in March by American Petroleum Institute official James Ford (see March 20, 2001). The executive order, enigmatically titled “Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use,” exempts certain industry actions from federal review. [White House, 5/22/2001; Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 17] AND in a letter of 11 May 2001 The White House asked the US NAS for assistance in identifying the areas in the science on climate change where there are greatest certainties and uncertainties. The NAS was also asked for its views on whether there are any substantive differences between the IPCC reports and the IPCC summaries. An answer to the request was expected in early June, i.e., within less than a month. The NAS quickly appointed a special committee under the chairmanship of Dr Ralph Cicerone, chancellor of the University of California, Irving, CA, and a well-known researcher in atmospheric chemistry (and president of the NAS since 2005). Its report was ready in June…
(Bolin, 2007) Page 179
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 374ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that George Bush who had become president thanks to the decision of Supreme Court judges appointed by his dad was not losing any time in a bolstering the oil and gas industries and began trying to delay any action on climate change by asking for yet another appraisal because while an appraisal is being done you can defer any questions about what you are going to do. Once the appraisal has been done you can say that you’re studying and considering it and that buys you more time. And maybe something else will come along and distract everyone and in any case you are demoralising and exhausting your opponents.
What I think we can learn from this
This is a standard technique that incumbents use to delay things to talk out the clock to make it at the same time seem as if they care about the issue because why else would they be calling for scientists to investigate, so it’s a win-win. It’s a deeply deeply cynical manoeuvre; it should be noted that the US government had been asking for these appraisals since 1979 and they always come back the same way. So this was not a disinterested search for knowledge – this was a delaying tactic by a deeply irresponsible man-child.
What happened next
The NAS delivered its appraisal and to precisely nobody’s surprise it said that climate change was real and things urgently needed to be done about it. Bush of course did nothing except make the problem worse.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.