At SDFF, former EPA chief William K. Reilly talked about lost chances for climate protection
Reilly urged climate action from Bush, and now the former EPA chief is pushing Musk on global warming
Special to the Sebastopol Times from Iowa newspaperman Douglas Burns
An urgent film, built on decades of archival footage and deep-dive document searches, confirms what President George H.W. Bush's top environmental official has carried with him for more than 30 years: the nation missed a rare political moment to address climate with a Republican president who showed signs of being motivated by emerging science.
Former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly is central in award-winning documentary filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk's "The White House Effect," a provocative feature sure to figure in the international conversation on global warming. The Sebastopol Film Festival opened with "The White House Effect" Thursday. It shows again Sunday, March 30, at 2 p.m. at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol, California.
Reilly, an Illinois native who now lives in Healdsburg, attended the opening night showing in Sebastopol — his second time to see the film, he said in an interview with The Iowa Mercury.
"I did lose some sleep over it the first time I saw it because I am aware of things that I could have done," Reilly said. "I had relations I might have appealed to."
Filmmakers Cohen and Shenk, the talented duo behind the 2017 film with Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power," explore the internal dynamics of the George H.W. Bush Administration where global warming is concerned in “The White House Effect.”
Reilly remains in the fight for the environment.
Earlier this year Reilly talked one-on-one with presidential advisor Elon Musk. Reilly thinks there is potential to reach Musk on environment-friendly policies, he said in a question-and-answer session with the Sebastopol audience.
"He (Musk) was very approachable," Reilly said in The Iowa Mercury interview. "He was articulate. He was open. I reminded him he once gave me a tour of his plant in California."
"He has a purchase on science from the point of view of the people around the president," Reilly said of Musk. "He's very sophisticated obviously with it. I asked him to use it on behalf of what I know he believes in, which is climate change, and the need for some kind of way to address it."
Musk shot right back, Reilly recalled.
"You may be assuming I have more power than I have," Musk told Reilly, the former EPA administrator said.
"I said, 'From where I sit, nobody's got any better.' He said to my daughter, 'I'll do my best,'" Reilly said. "He said to me, 'You will be pleasantly surprised by how well we do on those issues.'"
Disarmingly candid in "The White House Effect," a film shot fully with archival footage, Reilly, the former president of the World Wildlife Fund, did play a pivotal role in securing passage of the Clean Air Act during his tenure as EPA chief, from 1989-1993, George H.W. Bush's term in the White House. The film shows Reilly and other alarm-ringers and realists on climate science getting frustratingly close to launching major initiatives aimed at global warming under Bush before the issue, and the nation, became more polarized.
Specifically, Reilly, who said he had the longest one-on-one meeting an American ever had with then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, believes he may have been able to push Bush more on the environment had Reilly enlisted Kohl's direct advocacy with Bush.
Reilly recalls one defining conversation with Kohl word for word.
"He stood up and said, 'On your country and mine depends this planet to avert a catastrophe of climate change — and on your shoulders, Mr. Reilly, rests the responsibility to bring your president to understand the significance of this issue,'" Reilly recalled Kohl saying. "I memorized that. I get a little chill when I think about it."
"Bush cared about Helmut Kohl," Reilly said. "Whenever I met with Kohl he (Bush) would ask me to come over for lunch and talk about it."
Douglas Burns is at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival as a producer of Iowa filmmaker Nik Heftman's documentary on spoken-word artist Caleb Rainey, who performs under the name “The Negro Artist.” A fourth-generation Iowa journalist whose family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years, Burns is also the founder of The Iowa Mercury and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
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Thanks for sharing this article with us, Douglas! I was there for the film and talk with Reilly afterwards. You captured it well!