Damn you, Dick Darman! That un-Christian thought about a 1990’s presidential bureaucrat hit me on reading about new flooding in south Florida and warnings of 90 mph winds for several states the next day. These follow myriad tornadoes in our country, unprecedented flooding in Brazil and several other countries and, once again, days with the haze of smoke from forest fires in Canada. Whatever label you put on it, the climate is changing.
And we can feel it happening. Not only that, unrelated pollution problems continue. The number of streams and aquifers in our state with excessive nitrates or complex “forever chemicals” continues to rise, for example.
Despite more than a quarter century with a Cabinet-level environmental agency, pollution harming human health, destroying ecosystems and altering climate continues apace. More senselessly, even though a century has passed since a stuffy British economist outlined the wisest ways of handling problems like pollution, both U.S.
political parties continue to spurn his wisdom. Some people still opt for measures that are less effective and more costly. Others simply deny that problems exist.
This did not have to be, but it is. And a now-obscure staffer for President George H.W.
Bush bears some blame. Richard Darman, a North Carolinian with two degrees from Harvard, was a sort of wunderkind in three Republican administrations. A protégé of Bush-41 guru James Baker, Darman started as an assistant secretary of Commerce in the 19.
