The Politics of Dissent - Behind the Curve - page 121

The Council on Environmental Quality endured similar cuts in fund-
ing and changes in personnel, including a 50 percent reduction in staff
and a budget slashed by two-thirds. 21 The deepest cuts came in the CEQ's
research budget, a tacit rebuke to the kind of work the agency had under-
taken under Carter in its comprehensive 1980 systems-based Global 2000
Report to the President . Not coincidentally, that report dealt in part with the
potential environmental impacts of climate change. 22
The Carter to Reagan transition had a profound impact on the DOE
and CEQ, but the most notorious bureaucratic changes were initiated
in what historian Sam Hays refers to as the “Reagan Antienvironmental
Revolution,” carried out in those agencies most responsible for the every-
day management of the environment. 23 During the 1980 campaign, Reagan
had mobilized moderate Republican conservationists like Russell Train
and William Ruckelshaus— both former EPA administrators— to help
him establish a positive environmental image. Once elected, though, he
brought in highly conservative, pro-business, pro-industry advisors tied
to the Washington, D.C.- based Heritage Foundation to reshape American
environmental policy. The group sought to control policy by appointing
loyal right-wing acolytes as policymakers. Reagan tapped Ann Gorsuch, a
leader of the Colorado legislature's Republican Right and a lawyer for min-
ing and agriculture interests, to head the EPA. Gorsuch, in turn, named
fifteen like-minded subordinates, eleven of whom had ties to the very
industries the EPA was supposed to regulate. 24 John Crowell, attorney for
the world's largest buyer of national forest timber, took charge of the U.S.
Forest Service. And Robert Harris, the leader of a legal effort to overturn
the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, became head
of the Office of Surface Mining, the very agency he had been fighting.25 25
The antienvironmental revolution's coup de grace came in the person
of Reagan's new secretary of the interior, James G. Watt. An evangelical
Christian, founder of the quasi-libertarian Mountain States Legal Founda-
tion, and dubbed the “Robespierre of Western Resistance” by conserva-
tive columnist George Will, Watt openly opposed American conservation
efforts, both as a matter of policy and a matter of faith. 26 He described
environmentalism as “a left-wing cult dedicated to bringing down the type
of government I believe in.” “My responsibility,” he told the Wall l l S t r e e t
Journal in 1981, “is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the
land until Jesus returns.” 27 Watt committed the Department of the Interior