JeffG / Alamy
It is hard to remember but once, not so long ago, the Republican Party in the US was a pathfinder for good science and progressive environmental legislation. President Richard Nixon may have sprayed South-East Asia with herbicides in a failed attempt to root out Vietcong freedom fighters, but back home he created the Environmental Protection Agency, which became a model for similar agencies round the world, and pushed through pioneering legislation like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Those were the days, too, when American government scientists were at the cutting edge of research into climate change…
