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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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the ones I've just mentioned and the Environmental Defense Fund -- which was founded about the same time as NRDC, perhaps a few months or a year earlier -- these organizations put out a constant barrage of publications of high quality, and still do. There was no lack of that. Of course, by the time of the Jim Watt period, the Reagan period, these organizations were going very, very strong and were increasing in importance and in membership, too.

So I certainly wasn't in any sense a lone voice, and I wouldn't want to leave you with that impression. Of course, there were nationally known writers like [Wallace] Stegner, [Rachel] Carson and many others from, the 50s onwards. As far as people writing in newspapers or publications of general circulation as distinct from books, there surely were people doing that. But apart from the newspapers that I mentioned a moment ago, as far as the individuals go, I really -- Well, there was a columnist named Flatau, who I remember did some very good columns -- I'm not quite sure where they appeared -- I think they were syndicated -- on environmental matters. There were perhaps one or two others. I can't be any more precise.

Q:

If you had to characterize what Reagan dismantled -- what he did, in effect; what his administration did to the environmental movement in this country -- could you characterize that?

Oakes:

Well, I think what Reagan did, apart from the general, totally derogatory attitude that he took -- and as President of the United States, that's very important -- specifically, Jim Watt, his Secretary of the Interior, really chipped away at the environmental protections and laws that he was supposed to defend. Now I'd have to go back to the record





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