On a recent appearance with Bill Moyers on PBS, Stuart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior under John F. Kennedy, conceded that he was both sad and confounded by recent efforts to politicize the environment. He related that when he was in Congress as well as Interior Secretary that preserving the environment was an issue on which Democrats and Republicans agreed. There might have been partisan debate in other areas, but the need to preserve a healthy and scenic environment was an area where the parties closed ranks.

Under Bush a reckless policy of greed has been followed. By advocating Alaskan wild life oil drilling, cutting back on poisonous emissions, and abrogating the Kyoto accord, which was an integral part of the fight against global warming, the gauntlet has been hurled down by corporate special interest profiteers, led by big oil advocates Bush and Cheney.

Train points out that Richard Nixon did not favor a strong environmental policy due to a compelling belief in preserving the environment per se. As a weather vane politician he saw the wisdom in taking a position that would benefit and protect millions of Americans, and so he created the Environmental Protection Agency. He believed his pro-environment posture would enhance his presidential credentials and magnify his chances of securing reelection in 1972.

The current anti-environment brigade does more than oppose efforts to maintain clean air and water; an antagonistic approach has been adopted wherein environmentalists are attacked as dangerous radicals with an anti-business agenda who will cost millions of jobs if their agenda is advanced. These scare tactics have worked with many, and Train advocates the necessity of returning to more traditional ground.

Train is joined in his criticism of the Bush record by the likes of Paul O'Neill and Clyde Prestowitz, who have their own books available examining the Bush record. Their works demarcate a distinction between traditional conservatism as advanced by earlier Republican presidents and the radical neoconservative agenda advanced by Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft.

Much of the important environmental policy Train helped to devise and implement occurred during two Republican administrations, those of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Train served as undersecretary of Interior early in Nixon’s administration before becoming chair of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality (1970-1973). He then moved on to many accomplishments as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 1973 until 1978. At the end of the Ford administration, Train left government to become president of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the U.S. where he played a key role in developing that institution into the major conservation organization it is today.

Politics, Pollution, and Pandas is a fascinating, behind-the-scenes account of the politics of the environment over much of the last half century, as told by one of its master architects.