The opening scene of the Netflix documentary, The White House Effect, features footage of drought and heatwaves in 1988. By that year, climate scientists had talked about the greenhouse effect for 15 years. The documentary goes on to detail how Ronald Reagan refused to acknowledge the reality of climate change, and George H. W. Bush lost an opportunity to begin addressing the issue.
Another scene showed the 1988 Senate hearing with climate scientist James Hansen, who testified about what was then termed the ‘greenhouse effect.’ “I assert not only that a climatically brighter path is feasible, but that it is achievable via actions that make good sense for other reasons,” he proclaimed to his senate colleagues.
Reagan vs Carter
During his first presidential campaign, Reagan cast shade on the incumbent, President Jimmy Carter, for what he termed the “energy crisis.” The U.S. supplied arms for Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and Arab nations retaliated by imposing an oil embargo, which banned oil imports to the U.S. and cut production. The U.S. had imported around 42 percent of its oil supply at that time. The embargo caused the price of gas to soar from $0.39 per gallon in 1973 to $0.59 the following year. By 1979, the cost per gallon had passed one dollar.
Carter asked the nation to conserve energy as a response to the gas crisis. He installed 32 solar panels on the roof of the White House’s West Wing. In his speech inaugurating the solar panels, Carter expressed his desire for the nation to “derive 20 percent of all the energy we use from the sun.” He explained that the solar panels would end up either being a “curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”
Reagan removed the White House solar panels in 1986, and they were later placed in museums, libraries, and universities, including the Carter Presidential Library, the Smithsonian, Unity College, and a museum in China.
Carter and Reagan had something in common: deregulation of the oil and gas industry. Carter addressed the gas crisis through a mix of increased domestic production and deregulation. Reagan further deregulated the oil and gas industry. In 1981, he issued an executive order that eliminated all federal controls on U.S. oil production and marketing. Eight years later, in another executive order, he urged Congress to enact further deregulation of the oil and gas industry. His wishlist included:
- Deregulating wellhead prices of natural gas and mandating open access to gas pipelines.
- Permit exploration and development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf.
- Repealing the transfer rule in calculating the independent oil and gas producers’ income taxes and increasing the following net income limitation to 100 percent.
Reagan served as president for two terms, with George H.W. Bush serving as his vice president. During Bush’s presidential campaign, he talked about the greenhouse effect and called it global warming, arguing that we must face it. “Those of us who think we’re powerless to do anything about the GH effect are forgetting about the Whitehouse effect, and Mr President, I intend to do something about it.” Unfortunately, his campaign promises about the environment were just words, as his actions indicated.
Lost Opportunities
Two of Bush’s staff picks represented opposing views on the environment. Bush picked Bill Reilly to head the EPA, a man who had led the Sierra Club. He also picked John Sununu, a pro-fossil fuel man, as his chief of staff. Bush became caught in the middle between Reilly and Sununu over climate change. A New York Times opinion piece declared that the “jousting” between the two men could “yield the progressive but not excessive environmental policy Mr Bush says he wants…but the final arbiter is the President himself.”
Sununu’s inaction on climate change and staunch support for the oil and gas industry did not come from ignorance. A memo sent to Sununu underscored the importance of climate action. It stated that the recommendations of a report on climate change “are surprisingly similar to many of the actions which have already been put into place or proposed by the [Bush] Administration.”
The battle between the two men culminated at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Although the Bush administration signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change, it refused to sign the Framework Convention on Biological Diversity. At Rio, Bush claimed that the “United States fully intends to be the world’s preeminent leader in protecting the global environment. President Bill Clinton signed the Biological Diversity treaty in 1993.
Reilly criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the Summit in a memo sent to EPA employees. “For me personally, it was like a bungee jump,” Reilly wrote. “You dive into space secured by a line on your leg…It doesn’t typically occur to you that someone might cut your line!”
The Past Revisted: The White House Effect andTrump’s Climate Inaction
After Clinton left office, Bush’s son, George W. Bush, took office and served two terms as president. The younger Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol. During Donald Trump’s first term in office, he removed the U.S. from the Paris Climate Treaty and gutted environmental protections. Since retaking office in January 2025, he has continued doing what he did during his first term.
Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash
