Former EPA Head on Carbon Cap, Obama's Challenges

Jan. 16, 2009— -- As President Bush prepares to ride off into the Texas sunset next week, many have begun to examine his legacy, sure to be headlined "Iraq," "Economy" and "9/11." But what about Bush's environmental legacy? James Connaughton, the chairman of Bush's Council on Environmental Quality, told ABC News, "We'll have done more on climate change, including with mandatory regulations, than any prior administration."

But some critics see Bush's environmental record in a different light. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D.-Calif., said, "They have the worst legacy of any president. I've never seen anything like it. They really conducted a war on the environment."

So which is it?

Watch the interview Saturday on ""Focus Earth" With Bob Woodruff" on Discovery's Planet Green network.

Christine Todd Whitman, President Bush's first Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who resigned her post less than 2½ years into the president's first term, told ABC News, "The real frustration [at the time] was around a particular regulation that they wanted to change, and I agreed needed to be changed.

"But the way they wanted to change it was one that I just wasn't comfortable with, and I couldn't sign it in good conscience."

Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, said there was also pressure from the administration to qualify statements on the dangers of climate change, to use words like "potentially," something else Whitman was not entirely comfortable with.

When asked who in the administration was applying this pressure, she said it probably came "more from Vice President Cheney. It was coming through the Council on Environmental Quality, and, in honesty and fairness to them, they were getting input from all different people from different places on the issue."

Language parsing aside, Whitman believes that Bush does, indeed, acknowledge and care about climate change. "He said, 'Yes, it is an issue. We do believe it's an issue.' It's a question of whether it's manmade and therefore the solution is to take very draconian or very severe actions in order to curb man's emissions, or whether to say this is part of a natural trend and we can work around the edges and do it voluntarily, which is what they chose to do," she said.