File:1977 from the Office of Science and Technology Policy.jpg

Courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (public domain)

Congressman George Brown

The Representative from California was instrumental in proposing and establishing the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy

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National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976

• https://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/94/282.pdf
• https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1865/pdf/COMPS-1865.pdf

Background

Congress established the Office of Science and Technology Policy as an office within the EOP to, among other things, “serve as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment for the President with respect to major policies, plans, and programs of the Federal Government.” Within the context of its organic statute, OSTP currently defines its mission as having three components:

Provide the President and his senior staff with accurate, relevant, and timely scientific and technical advice on all matters of consequence.

Ensure that the policies of the Executive Branch are informed by sound science.

Ensure that the scientific and technical work of the Executive Branch is properly coordinated so as to provide the greatest benefit to society.

To this end, OSTP has established the following strategic goals and objectives:

Ensure that federal investments in science and technology are making the greatest possible contribution to economic prosperity, public health, environmental quality, and national security.

Energize and nurture the processes by which government programs in science and technology are resourced, evaluated, and coordinated.

Sustain the core professional and scientific relationships with government officials, academics, and industry representatives that are required to understand the depth and breadth of the Nation’s scientific and technical enterprise, evaluate scientific advances, and identify potential policy proposals.

Generate a core workforce of world-class expertise capable of providing policy-relevant advice, analysis, and judgment for the President and his senior staff regarding the scientific and technical aspects of the major policies, plans, and programs of the Federal government.

OSTP also has several roles not articulated in these formal statements. These include serving as a sounding board and conduit of information for agency executives seeking to understand, clarify, and help shape science and technology-related policy objectives and priorities and helping to resolve interagency conflicts over areas of S&T responsibility and leadership.

Office of Science and Technology Policy

• https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/

One of the first work products of the new OSTP was a 1977 letter to the president, a call to action pushed by Representative George Brown. Frank Press, the first director of the office, spoke of "catastrophic climate change" and urged President Carter to address climate change and climate disruption.

George E. Brown Jr

GreenPolicy360 Siterunner / Steven J Schmidt

• https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Climate_activist_-_Steven_Schmidt_-_1978_on.png

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.

In 1978, Congressman Brown proposed the first U.S. national climate change legislation, the National Climate Program Act, drafted the legislation, and shepherded its passage through Congress. The call to action of the Office of Science and Technology Policy was a beginning of U.S. climate action -- the National Climate Program Act was a momentous occasion.

The National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367

National Climate Program Act, 1978 / PDF

Congressman Brown Out in Front of Climate Action

GreenPolicy360 Siterunner / SJS: George was looking forward to the 21st century and especially to the challenge of nuclear non-proliferation, his concern for decades.

George was a visionary, a trained physicist and engineer who was in shaping the modern environmental movement. George looked at national security, and global security, in ways few in the U.S. Congress did. In the 1970s he was among the the first voices speaking of environmental security and led efforts to recognize the threat of climate change and global warming.

George was a visionary, an engineer, a leader in Congress who led from California in shaping the modern environmental movement. George helped inspire a generation of activists. We look back to the 1960s and 70s, as GreenPolicy360's siterunner remembers, a new vision of security that, as Congressman Brown wrote, looks at earth science and environmental security.

New Definitions of National Security

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Update | June 2022

Via The Guardian

The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/14/1977-us-presidential-memo-predicted-climate-change

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At the Beginning of U.S. Science on Global Warming

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

1978, the First Climate Actions

National Climate Program Act, Public Law 95-367

National Climate Program Act of September 1978

In 1979 came the first follow-on National Science Academy report. This study and report of national scientists was prescient and accurate in its global warming predictions.

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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 foundation legislation for decades of green progress.

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

Congressman Brown's work advanced environmental air quality and clean air legislation. He introduced the nation's first bill to ban lead in gasoline and was at the forefront of the Clean Air Act. He attacked Los Angeles smog, some of the worst air quality of any city in the world at the time and the air standards that came out of California became models worldwide. He succeeded in clean air and water efforts, though rarely given credit given his quiet approach to accomplishing big picture goals.

EPA History

George was a key player in legislation founding the Environmental Protection Agency.

As the LA Times noted (without pomp or circumstance) in George's obituary in 1999: "He championed the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency". The creation of the EPA was in many ways Congressman George Brown's vision achieved..."

The founding of the EPA was based on new realizations of science and the environment. The vision of the "Whole Earth" that began with unprecedented Apollo photos on the cover of Life magazine in January 1969 led to a coming together of education, students 'teach-ins', scientific space missions studying earth systems for the first time, and popular demands for environmental protections.

A leader and a chairperson on the House science committee for over 30 years, George legislatively engineered an array of science efforts, including one that greens look to as prescient -- climate science.

In His Time, a Visionary Leader in Science

Advancing Historic Environmental Achievements

A generation of environmental policies, programs & law

George E. Brown, Jr. was widely known as the leading statesman and advocate for science, engineering and technology policy in the United States Congress. George Brown was a member of the House of Representatives from California for more than 35 years. During his tenure he rose to the Chairmanship of what is now the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology and was one of the nation’s most ardent supporters of federal research.

Thirty plus years setting the agenda for visionary science in the House of Representatives

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:George_E._Brown_official_portrait.jpg

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