In 1946, at age 3, my oldest and best friend, Harvey Mogul, moved into the modestly decorated Dutch colonial house across the street from me. I was only 6 years old.
His residence, so close to mine, was somewhat of an embarrassment for me because at age 3 Harvey could easily read my second-grade reader while I dyslexically stumbled over words like “was” and “saw.” When Harvey, himself, entered second grade, his classmates were so hopelessly beneath his mental age that it produced a freakish social gulf between them. Harvey’s mother found it necessary to bribe friends his own age with party cookies and ice cream to tolerate him in their playtime activities.
As we grew older, I became one of Harvey’s few trusted friends in spite of the wide intellectual gulf between us. At age 16, Harvey won a full scholarship to Harvard University and still another at age 19, to Harvard University Law School. He graduated magna cum laude 2 1/2 years later, third in his class, with a juris doctor degree. Harvey went on to a brilliant legal career for many decades.
Yet, oddly enough, shortly after Harvey’s final graduation, he confessed a sense of personal unfulfillment because he did not graduate first in his class, nor did he graduate summa cum laude instead of simply magna cum laude. While Harvey was too poorly coordinated to participate in sports, he was a widely and deeply knowledgeable sports fan. Harvey recently confided in me a cherished lifelong fantasy. He would trade all his degrees and professional position to be the uncontested best as a nationally syndicated and celebrated sports commentator.
So how is Harvey’s unlikely fantasy related to the current EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin?
Zeldin, EPA’s 17th administrator, recently decided to rescind the EPA’s “endangerment finding,” a fundamental EPA policy, underpinning much of the regulation governing greenhouse gas emissions since 2009. Zeldin, like my friend, Harvey, is also inspired by a fantasy. Zeldin is courageously risking his entire political career and argues that this long overdue reversal releases hell-bent-for-leather American businesses from onerous widespread bureaucratic, economically debilitating red tape and will economically “Make America Great Again.”
Zeldin’s willingness to risk so much engendered thoughts of Harvey, my long-time scholarly friend. Harvey expressed a willingness to sacrifice his entire, only ever so slightly less than perfect legal career, to be the very best celebrated and syndicated national sports commentator. It seems that Zeldin actuated what Mogul only dreamed about. Bravo for Zeldin’s courage to realize a life-long personal dream! “Make America Great Again!”
Yet, paradoxically, Zeldin managed to fly squarely into the face of a no-brainer global warming policy developed over many decades by the best scientific global warming researchers and managers in the world. On March 20, 2023 the almost 800 UN supported Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists, the world’s most authoritative source of research for global climate change, issued their Sixth Assessment Report on climate change. One hundred and ninety-five member states rely on information and guidance from the IPCC. It warned of devastating consequences of consistently rising greenhouse gas emissions globally, the widespread global destruction of homes, fragmentation of communities, loss of crops and irreversible risks if we do not change the course of rising greenhouse gases.
Ultimately, Mogul understood that for all practical purposes his dream of sports commentary should remain just that, a dream. Mogul also understood that his squeaky voice and unproven sports writing skills presented far too great a risk to his life-long happiness. Zeldin’s “fetish of seeking perfection” has no such sense of self or prudence. The mumbling, cockamamie, self-aggrandizing president who appointed Zeldin to a position for which Zeldin is clearly not qualified, either by education or experience, probably could not differentiate between a greenhouse gas and a bursting birthday balloon. Congratulations Lee Zeldin, you did achieve your dream of perfection, a perfection of an abomination!
Incidentally, when did America actually stop being great? Let us pray!