File:Climate activist - Steven Schmidt - 1978 on.png

Post to Facebook | Sunday, September 26, 2021

• https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58690645

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"We have to identify the problem, then act in many ways to solve the problem. Global warming is the threat of our times."

-- Jerry Brown, California Governor

"We’re going to need to use every tool in the toolbox if we’re going to solve this problem."

-- Michael E. Mann

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"My friend George"

From East Los Angeles to Washington DC -- and Beyond, New Environmental Protection

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/George_E._Brown_Jr

(GreenPolicy360 Siterunner / Steven J Schmidt: I met George Brown in the mid-1960s. He changed the direction of my life and was integral to my becoming an environmental activist.)

In the 1990s California Congressman Brown was looking forward to the 21st century and especially to the challenges of environmental earth science programs he had led in Congress for decades. He thought that, as the Cold War was ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, that pushing for nuclear non-proliferation and weapons control was doable.

George was pro-peace, a realistic visionary, an engineer, a vet who opposed disastrous Vietnam war when we first began our years of work and cooperation. Congressman Brown believed in green politics and was a mentor. In over three decades in Congress he helped to create and shape the modern environmental movement.

Here, I want to take a quick look back as I watched a sequence of events in the 1970s, following George's work to push a proposal for a new Environmental Protection Agency onto President Nixon's desk for signature.

George was instrumental in proposing and establishing the Presidential Office of Science and Technology Policy in 1976. This was part of a plan he had, he explained to me. He was working with the National Academy of Sciences as they released a first-ever climate report. He was, as an trained physicist and engineer, focused on communicating with the new president, Jimmy Carter, who also was trained in physics and energy and engineering in naval career. They began to speak of technology and energy and, for the first time in the nation's policy-making process, the subject of global warming was introduced. This was a process where George Brown took a point position -- the climate report of the US Academy on Science, to the first National Climate Act program legislating, to creating a new Science and Technology Office, and top of the new Office agenda, briefings and a climate letter to the President. President Carter was soon was putting solar panels on the White House roof.

At the Beginning of U.S. Science on Global Warming, Strategies & Planning

Rep. George Brown brought his extensive work with U.S. top scientists, featured in the work of 1977's Energy and Climate Report of the National Academy of Sciences.

In his rumpled suits and quiet way George E. Brown moved to form coalitions few thought could be formed and garnered support for the first set of U.S. Congressional acts that served as a foundation for the National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976 that created the Office of Science and Technology.

• https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1865/pdf/COMPS-1865.pdf

Office of Science and Technology Policy

• https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/

One of the first actions taken by the new office with the responsibility of reporting to the president was a climate warning.

George Brown's work produced a government warning to President Carter of "climatic fluctuation" and "catastrophic" change. The new Science Office was up and running and the word was out, let's get going and do what need to happen next...

Energy and Climate Report, 1977, National Academy of Sciences / 175 pp. / PDF via GreenPolicy360

At this time George proposing and drafting the legislation for the first U.S. National Climate Program. Congressman Brown shepherded its passage in 1978. This first federal climate program was established to study and assess scientifically the issues and risks of human-caused climate change. The work in 1977 and 1978 became a foundation for comprehensive Atmospheric and Earth Science missions and climate-related initiatives, with an array of new Earth missions led by NASA and NOAA, the EPA and USGS. The goal in the minds of those at work here involved conducting as much research as possible and, with this data and knowledge, to apply this body of information to policy decisions. They/we were thinking of measuring and monitoring Earth's system to make intelligent decisions in protection of 'the Commons'. The modern environmental movement was being created.

The National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367

National Climate Program Act, 1978 / PDF

National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367

National Climate Program Act of September 1978

1979 came the first follow-on National Science Academy climate report. This study and report of national scientists was prescient and accurate in its global warming predictions. George saw the science and acted to shape the formation of an Earth Observing System. It was, I saw up close, in that decade and those following, a first generation of the best of humanity at work.

The goal -- to protect the Home Planet.

• https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earth_Observing_System_-_fleet_of_satellites.png

Congressman Brown Out in Front of Climate Action

GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: The beginnings of modern environmental and climate science can be traced to the 1960s and 1970s.

The First Earth Day: Personal Memories by Steven Schmidt of George's Role.

Senator Nelson and Congressman Brown were there making it happen... Being there, urging them on, is a memory that continues.

• https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earth-Day.png

* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:%27Thin_Blue_Layer%27_of_Earth%27s_Atmosphere_2.jpg

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