When I was eight years old, I celebrated Montana’s 100th birthday with George H. W. Bush.
On September 18, 1989, he greeted a crowd of 18,000 on the front lawn of our State Capitol. He had won Montana by 5.9 points in the previous year’s presidential election, an atypically narrow margin in a state that leans Republican in presidential contests. A drought the previous summer had shaken the faith of politically conservative farmers, who wondered whether the federal government would stand by them in hard times.
These feelings of uncertainty were not lost on the former CIA director and WWII veteran, nine months into his presidency. He knew Montana was a state of miners, farmers, ranchers, hunters, and anglers — a state where people lived life outdoors. He understood the tenuousness of our natural treasures and elected, astutely, to argue for their protection. Choosing words that today would send Fox News pundits into a flurry of preparations for a political execution, he called for “a new spirit of environmentalism across America.”
“This great state was once the scene of an epic battle — man against nature,” he said, referring to Montana’s mining history. “Too often, the only question that mattered was what man could take from the Earth, not how we left it, or how we put it back. Well, no more. Times have changed.”
In the course of his 1,500-word speech — recently re-printed by the Helena Independent Record with permission from the White House — he described the “destruction of rain forests” and “ravages of acid rain.” He also provided actionable solutions to help solve these problems. With EPA Director William K. Reilly at his side, he pledged to ban the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into our blue skies and end sewage dumping into our blue oceans.
But these were the building blocks for a much taller order that offers an almost incredible counterpoint to the environmental policy and international diplomacy of our current president. “The nations of the world must make common cause in defense of our environment,” he urged. “And I promise you this: This nation, the United States of America, will take the lead internationally.”
“In February,” he continued, “the United States will host the plenary meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In July when I visited Poland and Hungary, I pledged America’s help in tackling the increasingly serious pollution problems those two nations face. At the Paris economic summit, we helped the environment achieve the status that it deserves at the top of the agenda for the seven major industrial democracies. And I mean to keep it right there at the top of the agenda.”
The President sometimes fell short of this promise. The founder of an oil company, he took a hands off approach to cleaning up the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound. But, as recently reported in The Washington Post, he mostly kept his word. Acid rain dried up because he championed and signed a complex update to the Clean Air Act, a 1990 law that is forcing coal plants to adapt or close their doors even today. He implemented an offshore drilling ban. He also signed a law that required the federal government to study climate change, which brings us, unfortunately, back to the present political moment — a moment when the 45th President is downsizing the EPA, spurning international cooperation on climate change, and ignoring climate data commissioned by the 41st President.
Three decades ago, I heard George H. W. Bush speak because my father, a Dukakis-voter, wanted me to shake his hand. Sitting on my father’s shoulders several hundred yards from the podium, I can only remember a feeling of disappointment that the President was too far away. I would never get the chance to meet him.
Now, encountering the actual text of his speech for the first time, I feel a startling sense of closeness to the former President, who died November 30 at 94 years old. I marvel at the apolitical optimism in his statements of “common concern” and his vision for resolving these concerns.
“To the young people of Montana,” he said, “We’re living in historic times, but we must do everything in our power to protect the environment.”
Reading these words, I allow myself to imagine our next Commander-in-Chief delivering an even more ambitious vision on January 20, 2020. I imagine their words being welcomed by a majority of Americans who now believe climate change is real and that humans are responsible. I imagine the potential for a new non-partisan spirit of environmentalism to begin in the Oval Office and spread across the nation, and I feel a sudden sense of hope.
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