"I Get It -- It Begins With Energy"
Washington, D.C. -- To have a president, in an address to Congress, say "it begins with energy" is, for anyone concerned about the environment, climate, and energy, almost incomprehensibly exciting. A few days ago, I commented that for years our concerns had relegated environmentalists to the marginalized "free speech zone" at political conventions. Now President Obama is constructing his recovery package, his message to Congress, and his budget around a new, green energy economy.
Environmentally the boldness is obvious. President Obama has asked for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions, and his budget makes it clear that he wants to make the polluters pay.
And Obama is ensuring that all emitters of carbon dioxide will be treated fairly and equally -- by buying their carbon permits at an auction, instead of having them allocated as a political favor. He's going to use the revenues from that carbon auction both to create a new, green energy economy and to make sure that energy prices don't hurt low- and moderate-income Americans.
The president put it very simply: "I get it."
The public gets it, too. During President Obama's address, pollsters found that his discussion of a new energy future scored off the charts. In delivering his speech, President Obama refined a new political language -- one that integrates values and policy choices. It was interesting that commentators could not decide whether Obama was more FDR or Lyndon Johnson -- after an inaugural address that was largely Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy. We are clearly at a potentially transformational moment, but one in which the fulcrum of change is the relationship between the president and the public.
Obama continues to address the people directly -- in a way that encourages the rest of the nation's leadership to align with him. So far, the Republican leadership has declined to join -- but there are four years to go.
Public servants get it too. As a result, reform is sweeping across the face of the federal government. President Obama's skeleton crew of confirmed appointees are harvesting, for our benefit, the fruits of eight years of massive Bush disrespect for public service. As EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson made clear in meeting with me, she may not yet have her dozen or so assistant administrators and political appointees. But she has 17,000 dedicated environmentalists in her agency moving the agenda.
Walking into one meeting today, with a key environmental appointee, a young man escorted me up to the main office. He was smiling. Things were not entirely well-organized. But the important work (a global mercury treaty anyone? California's clean-car waiver?) was happening. I said to him, "I don't want to get you into trouble -- you are probably career. But I understand that career folks have been serving this president very well." He smiled. "I don't think you could get me in trouble. Trouble just left." Was this some die-hard Democratic staffer left over from the Clinton years? No. He had joined the government in 2002. He had never known any president but Bush. But he knows the difference now.
Four weeks -- reckless mineral leases canceled, irresponsible Outer Continental Shelf drilling policies suspended, mercury controls back on track, clean-air standards moving, coal-fired power plants held accountable, wildlife protection reinstated, clean-water standard moving again, scientists unmuzzled, public information available again, and now the principle of making carbon emitters pay for the damage they cause embodied in President Obama's budget -- it's all a little bit heady.
In other areas -- finance, foreign policy -- the path forward is less clear. Testing moments remain. Of the new administration -- and of the American people.
Roosevelt, to make the Civilian Conservation Corps get to scale, had to break heads within his own administration. And Americans made it possible for him to get away with it. Almost certainly our new president will face that same challenge. Our job, I think, is to get ready for that moment of testing, to lend our mettle, and keep the bar as high as it is today.
