In Search of Republican Environmentalists

In Search of Republican EnvironmentalistsConservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of AmericanEnvironmentalism by J. Brooks Flippen; Green Republican: John Saylor and the Preservationof America's Wilderness by Thomas G. SmithReview by: Robert D. LifsetReviews in American History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 2008), pp. 118-126Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30031700 .

Accessed: 04/11/2014 15:15

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toReviews in American History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 129.15.102.212 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 15:15:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30031700?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


IN SEARCH OF REPUBLICAN ENVIRONMENTALISTS

Robert D. Lifset

Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism. J. Brooks Flippen.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. 278 pp. Photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95.

Green Republican: John Saylor and the Preservation of America's Wilderness. Thomas G. Smith.

Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. x + 404 pp. Pho-

tographs, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $40.00

The last couple of years have seen a number of new histories focusing on the

politics of environmentalism. Much of this scholarship has recognized the central role of Congress in environmental policymaking; see, for example, Paul Milazzo, Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 1945-1972 (2006); Bill Christofferson, The Man From Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator

Gaylord Nelson (2004); and Byron Pearson, Still the River Runs Wild: Congress, the Sierra Club and the Fight to Save Grand Canyon (2002). A second trend might very well be the recovery of a past in which environmentalism is not a one-

party issue. While it might be difficult for us to imagine, there was a time when environ-

mental policies enjoyed broad bi-partisan support. So it should not surprise us that as historians more closely examine the history of mid-twentieth-century environmentalism, they should find that which appears all too rare today: Republicans. Two recent biographies of Republican environmentalists depict- ing two very different people demonstrate that, for a time, it was possible to construct a political identity that was both environmental and Republican.

While Thomas G. Smith's, Green Republican: John Saylor and the Preserva- tion of America's Wilderness, does not present a well-defined argument, it is an

important contribution to both political and environmental history because this biography examines perhaps the most important, and least well-known, mid-twentieth-century environmental legislator.

As the ranking minority member on the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee from 1959 to 1973, Saylor bitterly fought the Bureau of Reclama- tion over a series of controversial western dams; he was an ardent supporter of stricter air and water standards, but his greatest impact was in the field of

Reviews in American History 36 (2008) 118-126 a 2008 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



LIFSET / In Search of Republican Environmentalists 119

land preservation. John Saylor (1908-1973) was the principle House author of the Wilderness Act, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Outdoor Resource Recreation Review Commission, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Saylor co-sponsored (and fought for) legislation establishing Redwood National Park, the C&O Canal National Historic Park, Piscataway National Historic Park, and the National Trails System. He also championed the estab- lishment of Canyonlands, North Cascades, and Voyageurs national parks as well as national lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, and historic sites, and he was a vigorous defender of the sanctity of the national park system. He had worked so hard and for so long to set aside millions of acres of untouched wilderness, that David Brower (executive director of the Sierra Club) felt that the country's wilderness system should be named after Saylor.

Yet in many respects Saylor, representing western Pennsylvania, appeared to be a conservative Republican. Entering Congress in 1949, Saylor was an enthusiastic supporter of Joseph McCarthy and the anti-communist crusade of that era. Saylor was a firm supporter of both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He supported restricting the spread of pornography, reducing foreign aid, repealing restrictions on gun ownership, and curbing the activism of the

Supreme Court. He opposed federal aid for education, the Miranda decision, and the New Left. Antiwar protests in Washington, D.C. literally "made him

weep, and he repeatedly referred to dissenters as 'degenerates,' 'loathsome derelicts,' and 'rebellious filth"' (p. 223).

However, Saylor distinguished himself from many Republicans in Con-

gress by his strong support for unions. Many of his constituents were coal miners and Saylor crafted a highly successful image as a tireless fighter for their economic well-being. And yet this was a losing fight. Over the course of Saylor's political career the coal industry in western Pennsylvania expe- rienced a long, slow decline to the point where unemployment in Saylor's district was routinely higher than the national average. In an effort to allevi- ate this suffering Saylor fought to raise the personal income tax deduction; he consistently supported hikes in the minimum wage and he supported reinstituting the WW II food stamp program. Saylor also supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and eliminating the poll tax. He supported increasing social security benefits and the Medicare bill; Saylor was a supporter of federal funding for the arts and humanities. Saylor was

essentially a fiscal conservative who had accepted the thrust of the New Deal with one important exception.1

Saylor's struggle for the economic well-being of his constituents and his interest in conservation found their strongest expression in his opposition to the federal government's dam building efforts in the western United States.

Hydro and atomic power competed with coal as a source of energy. Unlike coal, however, the federal government heavily subsidized them both. Saylor



120 REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY / MARCH 2008

considered these giant, public power projects to be little more than "miner displacement programs" and as a representative of western Pennsylvania miners he was determined to fight them.

Over the course of the first six decades of the twentieth century the Bureau of Reclamation built a staggering number of dams in the western United States. But, while the Bureau of Reclamation's purpose was to increase the sum total of arable land, by the 1950s it appeared to Saylor and others that this government agency was becoming the "Bureau of Federal Power" (p. 224). Representing private power interests and concerned about creeping socialism, Saylor derided many western dam projects as little more than efforts by the federal government to destroy private enterprise in the utility industry. To be fair, Saylor was not opposed to every western dam project. To gain his approval a project needed to be economically sound, its main purpose must be to deliver water, not produce public power; and the project must not intrude upon the national park system. Saylor's approval mattered, because he could exploit divisions within the western caucus of representatives on the Interior Committee, and if necessary round up enough Republicans and eastern Democrats to cause problems for Interior bills seeking House approval.2

This book walks the reader through a series of western dam fights that should be familiar to many western and environmental historians. The two most famous struggles involved efforts by the federal government to place a dam within Dinosaur National Monument (also known as the Echo Park Dam) in the mid-1950s (as part of the Colorado River Storage Project); and about ten years later another effort to build a dam in the lower Grand Canyon that would back water up into the Grand Canyon National Monument and into part of the Grand Canyon National Park (part of the Central Arizona Plan). Both projects were defeated, in part, by Saylor's efforts. The book also details the struggle to pass the Wilderness Act, the Wild and Scenic River Act, Redwoods National Park, and the effort to set aside wilderness in Alaska.

Readers looking for an argument addressing the nature of mid-twentieth- century environmental politics or Saylor's influence over his colleagues (outside of Wayne Aspinall) or party will walk away disappointed. But while many of these fights have been the focus of recent monographs, this book is at its best in detailing the personalities and strategies of the legislative maneuvering and backroom dealings that characterize controversial issues seeking resolu- tion in the Congress. As a result, it is part of a growing body of scholarship that focuses attention on Congress as the central venue for environmental

policymaking in the late 1960s.3 An argument could be made that despite his social conservatism, John Say-

lor was a moderate to liberal Republican. His reflexive anti-communism was common to politicians of his generation and was shared by many Democrats. While Smith never clearly delineates what came first: Saylor's preservationism




or his defense of the coal industry, he does describe how, when these two policy preferences began to compete with each other in the 1970s (in the form of pollution legislation), Saylor was unapologetic in his support for environmental legislation. Saylor did not live to see the Republican Party turn away from environmentalism, nor did he live to see the argument that environmentalism cost jobs gain traction; Saylor died of a heart attack in October 1973.4

One Republican environmentalist who did live through these changes was Russell Train (1920-). In Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism, J. Brooks Flippen has produced a biography that benefits from both oral history interviews and a greater grounding in the literature of environmental history. Flippen has sketched a portrait of a Republican who had a more frustrating experience, in part because his career peaked a few years after Saylor's.

Between 1969 and 1977 Russell Train served as an environmental regu- lator and policymaker in a series of positions within the Nixon and Ford administrations. Train served as the nation's second Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (1973-1976); chairman of Nixon's Council on Environmental Quality (1970-1973) and as Under Secretary of the Depart- ment of Interior (1969-1970).

Russell Train was a thoughtful, diplomatic, engaging figure from a promi- nent Washington family who had long been a fixture on the Washington cock- tail circuit. The Ivy-League educated insider had fashioned a second career for himself as a conservation leader after serving for several years as a judge on the U.S. Tax Court. At Interior and the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ), Train helped to draft and lobby for the Coastal Zone Management Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act; he banned the use of several herbicides; and he contributed towards the effort to kill the Cross Florida Barge Canal and the Miami Jetport.

When Train became Chairman of the CEQ in January 1970, he became the Nixon administration's most public figure on environmental issues and helped to define Nixon's environmental agenda, just as the issue was rising to a new level of national consciousness (the first Earth Day would take place that spring). Train advocated and lobbied for (along with others) the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency that would be responsible for imple- menting pollution laws. He worked to strengthen the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), and its required environmental impact statements; he issued annual reports on the environment and successfully lobbied Nixon to sign the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970, as well as several environmental bills recently passed by Congress.5

Train also played a foreign policy role. In the early 1970s, the United States enjoyed a leadership role within the international community for the progress it made in combating pollution and conserving natural resources. Nixon felt




that this could be leveraged serving as a "bridge to other nations," thereby advancing detente (p. 105). The administration looked to Train (and not the State Department) as an emissary to speak with and visit foreign leaders who expressed an interest in the issue. In this capacity Train visited France, Germany, Spain, China, Iran, and Japan. In the summer of 1972 he led the American delegation to the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm. In advance of Nixon's historic trip to Moscow in 1972, Train led the administration's effort to find common ground, resulting in the US-USSR

Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection.6 But in 1971 the president began to back away from his support for the

environment. Nixon had decided that he could not "out Muskie, Muskie," that he would never successfully gain the environmental vote (p. 110). This was part of a larger shift in Nixon's politics toward the right, often described as the "southern strategy." When the United States confronted an Arab oil

embargo in the fall of 1973, Nixon sided with many in the White House who felt that energy supplies could best be quickly increased by exempting the

energy industry (among the most polluting industries in the country) from all environmental restrictions. Flippen also notes that Nixon understood the added political support he might draw from conservatives, now mobilizing against the recently enacted pollution control regulations. With the Watergate scandal in the background, this was not an unimportant consideration.7

As Watergate began to paralyze the White House after the 1972 election, Train successfully managed to move over to EPA, becoming its second administrator in 1973. While Train justified the move by arguing that the real

struggles were now going to be over implementation and not in policy for- mulation, his was a fairly common response to Watergate. White House aides

began leaving for the agencies and departments of the executive branch in considerable numbers. The EPA alone, by 1973, housed twenty "ex-Presiden- tial-aides" (p. 141).8

At EPA, Train supported strip-mining regulation; he banned the use of the chlorinated hydrocarbons aldrin and dieldrin, and aerosol sprays employing vinyl chloride. In 1973, EPA ordered Chrysler Corporation to recall over 800,000 passenger cars because of a defect in their pollution control system. Under Ford, Train promulgated regulations encouraging the elimination of leaded gasoline and successfully lobbied for the Toxic Substances Control Act (1976).

But because of Nixon's (and later Ford's) move toward the right, Train

spent a good deal of time and effort defending the Clean Air Act among other environmental laws and regulations from being emasculated by the White House. Train found himself in a difficult position, for while he fought for environmental objectives within the White House, prudence forced him to publicly defend compromises or setbacks that enraged the environmental

community. Train did not vigorously protest legislation that made the Alaskan




pipeline exempt from NEPA's impact statement process; nor did he publicly protest when the administration slashed funding for waste treatment centers and the EPA itself.

Despite Flippen's title (Conservative Conservationist), Russell Train was no conservative. Like Saylor, he was a moderate to liberal Republican. While the author provides little insight into Train's politics outside of environmental issues, Train is quoted a number of times referring to himself as a moderate or liberal, and Flippen makes clear Train's increasing disenchantment with the

Republican Party over the past three decades.9

Beyond being moderate to liberal Republicans, Saylor and Train shared a number of characteristics. Both claimed a strong connection to the outdoors that began in childhood with the encouragement of their parents. Saylor kept a fishing rod in his car and held fishing permits for several states. Both he and Train enjoyed hunting. Train traveled to Africa a number of times on safari (Train held a lifelong fascination with Africa). Both came to conservationism in their early forties. Saylor was not involved in any conservation organizations or activism prior to being elected to Congress at the age of forty-two. Train's second career in conservation effectively began when he became president of the Conservation Foundation at the age of forty-four. Both were from well-established, upper-middle-class families that could trace their American ancestors back to the seventeenth century.10

Smith roots Saylor's environmentalism in a form of patriotism. Saylor believed Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis that the frontier or wilderness experience had promoted democracy, self-reliance, opportunity, creativity, and the characteristics that made Americans unique. Saylor valued wilderness for its ability to refresh the human spirit, to provide a sense of wonder and inspiration; he equated a green America with a great America and felt that the failure to set aside wild and scenic landscapes would deprive future generations of their natural heritage.

While Flippen does not clearly detail the philosophical roots of Train's environmentalism, other than to observe that Train in the early 1960s adopted an "ecological perspective" (p. 48), the narrative does effectively carry the reader through a series of decisions (beginning in the late 1950s) that begin with Train joining a small social African Safari Club to running, fifteen year later, the Environmental Protection Agency. While never clearly articulated, it appears that Train had always believed that the party once led by Theodore Roosevelt should naturally embrace an environmental agenda.

That did not come to pass. Environmentalism is currently an issue taken up largely by Democrats, which begs the question: why are environmentalists currently endangered within the Republican Party? The answer lies with changes in: the Republican Party, American voting patterns, and the environmental movement itself. Flippen's book does a fine job detailing how in the mid-1970s the Republican Party began to forcefully oppose environmental initiatives.




In 1972, the Republican platform prominently celebrated the Nixon administration's environmental accomplishments; Train was invited to speak to the

platform committee and he participated in the convention. Four years later he was persona non grata; his identification with the party was considered

by Dick Cheney (Ford's chief of staff) to be a liability. By the mid-1970s a new conservatism began to forcefully attack environmental laws and regulations arguing that they cost jobs. By July 1975 Ford was repeating this same formula. Train would shortly write in his diary that "doctrinaire anti-environmentalists" surrounded the president (p. 172). By 1976 many of Train's liberal and moderate Republican friends privately began to express their preference for

Jimmy Carter. This shift within the Republican Party had two related sources. One was

the growing influence of industry as it mobilized to oppose additional efforts to clean up the environment. A second source emerged from ideological conservatives ostensibly concerned with the increasing power of the federal

government; conservatives argued this power was being used in ways that threatened the living standards of Americans. For moderate and liberal Re-

publicans like Train, the living standards of Americans were threatened by pollution. Train felt "there is too much of a tendency to equate conservatism with being protective of business" (p. 171).

Flippen attributes the mobilization of the business community against environmentalism to the failure of the "growth coalition." For much of the

postwar era, big business cooperated with labor and the federal government. Government spending and investment, as well as rising wages, drove increased consumption and profits. Corporate executives began to transform their economic and political strategies when they felt their profits were hurt

by "global competition, labor militancy, consumer advocates and in time, environmentalists" (p. 164). As a result, they abandoned the "growth coalition." Because Flippen does such a wonderful job of describing this transformation, his book does not describe, as the subtitle proclaims, "the emergence of Ameri- can environmentalism." Rather, this book is really a description of the decline and fall of environmentalism within the Republican Party.

If Flippen had framed the book in this manner, it would have allowed him to discuss changing voting patterns. The most environmentally conscious voters have long been in New England and along parts of the east and west coasts. The bi-partisan nature of environmental politics in the middle decades of the twentieth century owed something to the fact that these regions voted into office significant numbers of members from both parties. Since the 1970s, voters in these regions have increasingly turned toward the Democratic Party. This mirrored a simultaneous Republican Party effort to shift the base of its

support to the south and parts of the west, regions that have historically dem-

onstrated less support for environmental initiatives. As a result, the regional




realignment of the Democratic and Republican Parties over the last three and a half decades contributed to making environmentalism a one-party issue.1

Finally, it should be noted, environmentalism changed. While there is cur-

rently a debate among environmental historians to determine exactly what constitutes environmentalism-does it, for example, include anti-pollution reformers of the Progressive era-few would argue that concern for pollution gained more attention and became the focus of greater activism in the late 1960s and 1970s. Changes in pollution law (the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972) saddled business with the cost of investing in new

technology and prevented companies from engaging in business as usual. Business began to mobilize against environmentalism as a response to these

surging short-term costs.12 At the same time, as the issue enjoyed newfound popularity, the ranks

of activists swelled with a younger generation that began to change the face of the movement. Smith notes how around 1970, colleges and universities

looking for Earth Day speakers suddenly discovered John Saylor. Saylor's rejection of the tactics employed by left-leaning students (sit-ins, protests, etc) and his objection to the anti-war movement made him sound at times like

Spiro Agnew. But this was perhaps symptomatic of how the growing appeal of environmentalism among the young might simultaneously weaken its appeal among older, more socially conservative Americans.

By producing volumes focusing on leading Republican environmentalists

working on different ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Smith and Flippen have reminded us that there was a time when environmentalism drew supporters from both sides of the aisle. As such, they help to emphasize the diversity of environmental politics in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

Robert D. Lifset is a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for Public History at the University of Houston where he is currently revising his dissertation, Landscapes of Power: Environment, Politics, Energy, & the Struggle for Storm King Mountain, 1962-1980.

1. As early as 1953 the Department of Labor declared Saylor's district to be economically depressed. His district had an unemployment rate exceeding 6 percent for more than eighteen consecutive months. It would remain distressed for the next two decades with unemployment at times reaching 15 percent in the Johnstown area.

2. While westerners dominated the Interior Committee, they were vastly outnumbered within the House. Cheap imported foreign oil was an even greater threat to coal's market share than hydroelectric power, but Smith writes that preservationists' growing aversion toward dams coupled with the abhorrence of socialism felt by most members of Congress made Saylor's struggles against public power projects far more popular among his colleagues than his struggles for protectionist trade policies.

3. See Mark W. T. Harvey, A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement (1994); and Karl Brooks, Public Power, Private Dams: The Hell's Canyon High Dam Controversy (2006). See also the monographs detailed in the first paragraph.




4. John Murtha has represented Saylor's old district since 1974. Murtha first ran against Saylor in 1968 attacking him for championing legislation that hindered economic develop- ment.

5. The bills included the Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act, the Marine Mam- mal Protection Act, and the Coastal Zone Management Act. Nixon signed these three bills into law in 1972.

6. Stockholm was the world's first major international meeting on the environment.

Flippen identifies new conventions on ocean dumping and trade in endangered species as

significant accomplishments of the conference. The agreement with the USSR yielded joint projects to control air and water pollution, advance urban design, and to improve earthquake prediction. Both countries agreed to study oil pollution, wind erosion, pesticides, animal conservation, and forestry.

7. Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Me.) was a well-known Congressional environmental advocate and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1972.

8. Only the Department of Commerce, with twenty-five, employed more former White House staffers.

9. There is also no evidence to suggest that Flippen considers Train to be conservative on conservation issues. For an example of where Flippen quotes Train describing himself as a liberal, see p. 180.

10. Train's family history had deep roots in the Republican Party. His great-grandfather (a Congressman) had attended the inaugural Republican Party convention in 1856. His father and grandfather had both been Admirals in the Navy and had been close to Herbert Hoover and Theodore Roosevelt. The Conservation Foundation was founded by Fairfield Osborn, the longtime head of the New York Zoological Society and author of Our Plundered Planet (1948).

11. For a discussion of the regional patterns in environmental voting, see Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence, Environmental Politics in the United States 1955-1985 (1987), 40-52; Samuel P. Hays, Explorations in Environmental History (1998), 400-17; Flippen does reference Hays in noting that the bi-partisan nature of environmental politics in the 1960s was a reflection of how the issue divided the party's along regional lines, but the idea is not developed.

12. For the thesis that environmentalism emerged from an earlier conservationism, see

Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence, 13-39, and Hays, Explorations in Environmental History, 334-42. See also Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside (2001). A challenge to the view that American environmentalism is a distinctly post-WWII phenomenon can be found in

Stephen Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, The Transformation of the American Environmental Move- ment (1994). This view has gained an increasing amount of support. For a discussion of one

industry's response to these new pollution laws, see Hugh Gorman, Redefining Efficiency: Pollution Concerns, Regulatory Mechanisms, and Technological Change in the U.S. Petroleum

Industry (2001).



In Search of Republican Environmentalists

Documents

Transcript of In Search of Republican Environmentalists