Ben Moyer reviews the Book "Politics, Pollution and Pandas: An Environmental Memoir" By Russell E. Train

    “Politics, Pollution and Pandas” is Russell Train's personal story of a distinguished career in conservation, and a chronicle of the emergence of environment as a significant issue in American domestic policy.

Train grew up in a prominent Washington, D.C. family. His father, Charles R. Train, was a career naval officer who served as President Herbert Hoover's special naval advisor at a time that preceded the National Security Council at the White House. The elder Train helped shape high-level policy, and Russell developed an early understanding of the social and political workings of federal government, which stood him “in very good stead in later years.”

His interest in conservation and environment stemmed, Train relates, from two African hunting safaris made with wife, Aileen, in the late 1950s. But it was not until much later that Train considered professional conservation work. He had served five years in the Army during World War II and later earned a degree from Columbia Law School. “One thing was certain: no thought of a conservation or environmental career ever entered my mind,” Train writes.

He began his career with the federal government on the staff of the Congressional Joint Committee on Internal Revenue and was soon appointed by President Eisenhower to a 12-year term as a judge on the U.S. Tax Court.

But Africa's wildlife and landscapes had touched Train deeply. “Certainly, my life was never the same,” he writes. “The two safaris in East Africa on which Aileen and I went in 1956 and 1958 played, without a doubt, a central role in the future course of my life and work.”

While still serving as a federal judge, Train helped found the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation in 1961 to train native Africans to manage and protect their wildlife resources. In 1965 he submitted his resignation from the tax court to President Lyndon Johnson to accept the presidency of the Conservation Foundation, a primarily educational organization with international reach.

Soon after the election of 1968, President-elect Richard Nixon’s transition team asked Train to chair a Task Force on Natural Resources and Environment. From that role, he rose quickly within the administration to under secretary of interior, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1973.

From his perspective within and around the Nixon administration, Train writes about an unprecedented, and unduplicated, federal emphasis on environmental protection. “Indeed, it is my belief that the environmental initiatives, both domestic and international, taken or proposed by President Nixon during those years of 1970-1973, put together largely under the leadership of CEQ and often developed by it, represented the most comprehensive set of policy initiatives in a single broad policy area ever undertaken by any administration in United States history.”

With precision and authority Train relates the political and administrative background behind the formation of the EPA, and passage of landmark legislation such as the National Environmental Policy Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, all enacted during the Nixon years.
Train also recounts leadership displayed by the Nixon administration in international environmental issues, resulting in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1972, and a more effective International Whaling Commission.
Most captivating for readers who lived through America’s environmental awakening in the late 1960s and early 1970s are Train’s accounts of high-profile environment vs. development battles of the time. Issues such as the Miami Jetport, the Tocks Island Dam (proposed for Pennsylvania’s Delaware River), and significant revisions to plans for the Trans-Alaskan pipeline represented the first time in American history that environmental quality was the deciding factor that halted or altered major development projects. “We were, in fact, pioneering the entire environmental impact process, and doing so with respect to what was being called the largest private construction project in history.” Train writes.

Train, though, never pretends that the initiatives pushed forward by Nixon resulted from the president’s environmental altruism. Instead, Train observes that Nixon saw early in his first term, possibly as a result of the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, that the environment was an issue he had to embrace to ensure re-election in 1972. “There is no evidence of which I am aware that Nixon had any real personal interest in environmental matters,” Train writes early in the book. “I certainly never heard him express any. His reaction to these issues was that of a highly political animal. He read the polls and he had to be aware that concern for the environment was rapidly rising among the American people. His political instincts told him that he could not afford to be seen as anti-environment.”

Still, the environmental accomplishments of the Nixon administration represent an historical watershed in the American relationship to air, land and water. Train observes that Nixon’s accomplishments, whatever their motivation, remained “largely intact and on track” through subsequent administrations up to the present one, which Train deems, “decidedly negative on environmental matters, both nationally and internationally.”

Train stayed on at EPA until President Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. He describes Ford’s administration as “remarkably different” from Nixon’s, “encouraging a far more open process of government.” But Ford, Train writes, though a “thoroughly decent man,” was no more interested in the environment than his predecessor. He attributes the Republican ticket’s abandonment of environment as a centrist issue in its 1976 platform as part of the reason for Carter’s victory. Train observes, however, that the Carter administration did not establish a dramatic environmental record during its four-year tenure.

Train later became president of the World Wildlife Fund, and the fund continues to engage this lifelong conservationist today, where he works to spread a global appreciation of all mankind’s connection through nature.
“Politics, Pollution and Pandas” is a 376-page hardcover volume with eight pages of photographs from Train’s personal and public life. Published by Island Press, the book retails for $28, a modest price for a clearer understanding of the political climate surrounding America’s grappling with its own national environmental responsibility.

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