MANY WHO HEARD OR READ Russell E. Train's speech over 40 years ago were shocked. Arguably the second or third most important spokesperson for the Republican Party about the environment (President Nixon and William Ruckelshaus were the other two) was articulating a proenvironmental position, identifying fossil fuels as a problem, and describing the Earth as a living organism. Maybe, many hoped, President Nixon was becoming a proenvironmental president or at least not an obstacle to the environmental movement. Within months of Train's speech, the National Environmental Policy Act was passed on January 1, 1970. Language similar to that Act's preamble can be found in Train's Bronfman lecture.
Perlstein1 asserted that President Nixon did not care much about environmental protection; rather, he was trying to build a constituency.2,3 Senators Edmund Muskie (known by some as “ecology Ed”) and Henry “Scoop” Jackson were perceived by President Nixon as likely opponents in the 1972 presidential election. The President knew that environmental concern among the public had tripled since 1965. Flippin2 felt that President Nixon knew that he could not win the 1972 presidential election with an environmental platform, but could be beaten by Senator Jackson or Senator Muskie without one. Given Train's connection with the President, these political considerations may well have influenced his speech.
Russell E. Train was the first chairman of the newly minted Council of Environmental Quality, the government body charged with introducing an environmental presence to government policy. In 1973, he became the second administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the government arm responsible for implementation and enforcement of environmental policy. Thus, Train held the two most powerful government environmental protection positions in the United States at a time when the nation formally recognized the importance of environmental protection. Along with William Ruckelshaus, Train was central to the initial testing of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act. These pieces of legislation were truly landmarks.
Russell E. Train's early life would not have predicted his ascendancy to the two most important environmental protection positions in the United States.4 He served in the United States Army from 1941 to 1945, where he attained the rank of major. After the war, he enrolled in the Columbia University Law School, graduating in 1948. From 1949 to 1956, he served in various positions for the Republican Party. In 1957, he became a judge for the United States Tax Court, a position he held to 1965.
In his 40s and after a trip to Africa, he realized the importance of environmental protection and conservation. In 1961 he founded the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation. In 1965, he became President of the Conservation Foundation, and then President Nixon appointed him to be undersecretary of the United States Department of the Interior in 1969. Prior to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior arguably had the most important environmental portfolio in the United States.
After serving as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, he became president of the World Wildlife Fund in 1978, and then chairman of its Board. Train cochaired the organization Conservationists for President George Bush. From 1990 to 1992, he chaired the National Commission on the Environment. For these accumulated services to environmental protection, Russell Train received the Order of the Golden Ark decoration from the Netherlands, the conservationist of the year award from the National Wildlife Federation, and the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1991, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush.
Acknowledgments
I thank Ted Brown for his careful editing of this article.
References
- 1.Rick Perlstein, Nixonland (New York: Scribner, 2008): 460 [Google Scholar]
- 2.J. Brooks Flippin, Nixon and the Environment (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000). [Google Scholar]
- 3.Matthew J. Lindstrom and Zachary A. Smith, National Environmental Policy Act: Judicial Misconstruction, Legislated Indifference, and Executive Neglect (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001). [Google Scholar]
- 4. Environmental Protection Agency, “Russell E. Train biography,” http://www.epa.gov/history/administrators/train.htm (accessed February 12, 2010)