John Topping, 77, Dies; Early Advocate for Climate Action A former official of the Environmental Protection Agency, he was a Republican activist on global warming when it was an issue with bipartisan support The environmental advocate John Topping in an undated photo. He had, a colleague said, a “gigantic understanding of things — bureaucracy in general, and environmental policy in particular.”Credit...via Topping family April 10, 2021, 5:09 p.m. ET John Topping, whose work to warn the world of the risks of climate change stretched back to the 1980s, and who helped spur the internationa...