A New Leadership Team Emerges

Washington, DC -- This week in 1992, when Bill Clinton was the President-elect, environmentalists and the Clinton transition team were in the early stages of conversations about key appointees. And today, although not officially, the outlines of the Obama environmental team have already emerged.

One wonderful face is a familiar one: former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who apparently will coordinate energy and climate within the White House, which is a major step forward and shows that the overall energy and climate portfolio will have strong leadership and attention from the top.

New Energy Secretary Steve Chu, from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, will take on what I have always thought was the most miserable job a President had to offer. But if anyone can make the Department work as intended, instead of as a series of often bruising exercises in crisis management at the nuclear weapons lab, it might be Chu.

Lisa Jackson, the nominee for EPA Administrator, has developed very close, positive relationships in New Jersey with the Sierra Club, and she also brings a strong scientific background to an agency where for the past eight years science and knowledge have been systematically corrupted and disregarded.

And new White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley should be able to provide the crucial oversight and switchboard function that CEQ has always done at its best.

We're still waiting to see who takes the lead at Interior, Agriculture, and Transportation, but so far, so good.

And perhaps as a sign that the winds of change have reached Washington ahead of the inauguration, the Bush administration today dropped two of its proposed last minute environmental regulatory assaults. Two major sections of the Clean Air Act -- the New Source Review Rule that requires the cleanup of old factories and power plants when they are expanded and the rules protecting Parks and wild areas from nearby air pollution sources -- will remain intact instead of being legally gutted in the last month.

Comments

[Paul from Potomac]

Carl,
Could you check to see if Chu is the first Nobel laureate to have a cabinet post?

[Dr. James Singmaster]

Let's hope that someone among the environmental hotshots Obama has selected has some awareness of the massive ever-expanding messes of organic wastes and sewage. In case readers are not aware, EPA has a conference this month on the risks of drugs in drinking water and NAS had in early Nov. a major report on the need to get conriol of pollution coming out from storm drains. Those actions should be a warning that those messes are out of control and that we need to be taking action to get control of them.
I have sent Carl a somewhat detailed program on using pyrolysis on those messes for many benefits including actual removal of some carbon for permanent reduction of our carbon footprint and destruction of germs, toxics and drugs that are escaping from those messes to pollute our water supplies. Sierra Club memebers, if concerned, should call for action upon Carl and Obama's environmental hotshots on those messes. This is where we need to develop Green-Charcoal jobs with great benefits as new dumps without the hazards of germs, drugs and toxics destroyed by pyrolysis will have much lower costs for maintaining them.
Dr. J. Singmaster

[Peter Bray]

Carl, you and the Sierra Club should be ASHAMED of your lack of action in regards to the cabinet. You kept mum and did nothing when names were floated. And now we have anti-environment Ken Salazar, he of prairie dog hating, at Interior. Good on you for doing absolutely nothing.

[Peter Bray]

Carl, I just want to reiterate... you and the Sierra Club suck. You've been whining about Interior Secretary for 8 years... now that you FINALLY had a voice, you stayed totally silent. And now we have Salazar. I was in John Muir Society but will give nothing further to your ineffective group. And I will advise everyone else I know to do likewise.

[Margherita Melegari]

Instead of keeping fingers crossed and praying that Obama behaves at the height of OUR expectations, you should start NOW to keep him accountable to the promises he made. Interior...Agriculture... Natl Security Adviser: Gen Jones Jones "has parlayed his 40-year military career into several corporate directorships. Among them is Cross Match Technologies, which makes biometric identification equipment. More germane to Jones’ forthcoming role in Obama’s inner circle, though, might be Jones’ seat as a director of Boeing, a weapons manufacturer, and as a director of Chevron, an oil giant." _from Democracy Now_ Like who? You are right, same position as Tanker Condy Rice.
These are all OBVIOUSLY disturbing signs, not to mention the entirely Rubin, the CityCorp,'s Economic cabinet .
Please, ACTION NOW. We are just individual citizens, we will support organizations that we feel close to us but already those are too kind and subsequient. I like Obama but he is no saint. So far, he is been positioning himself not as a reformer of any kind.