Philadelphia Inquirer, "Air Pollution Puts Climate in Danger" (November 17, 1965)

In a 1965 article written in the aftermath of the President’s Science Advisory Committee report on global warming, journalist Philip Meyer asked Vernon Mackenzie, chief of the Air Pollution Division of the Public Health Service, about climate change. Mackenzie said “we’re not doing anything about preventing [the greenhouse effect].” There were other pollution problems that could be more imminent threats, Meyer noted. But Mackenzie did not conclude that action on global warming should be delayed. He believe, in Meyer's words, that the “air-temperature problem should be tackled - now.” Mackenzie's words show that not only was there knowledge of the threat of global warming among federal administrators, but that some of them believed the federal government should address global warming immediately. Mackenzie’s Air Pollution Division was rolled into the new Environmental Protection Agency when the latter was created in 1970.