Obama Chooses Energy Secretary, EPA Chief, and “Climate Czar”

President-elect Barack Obama will soon announce current head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Steven Chu as his Secretary of Energy. Filling the slot for EPA Administrator will be Lisa Jackson, Carol Browner will serve as Obama’s “climate czar” - much better termed by the job’s official title of Energy and Climate Coordinator, and Nancy Sutley will head the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, sharing the award in 1997 for developing ways to “cool and trap atoms” with lasers.

Lisa Jackson, Obama’s pick to run the EPA, is former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection after spending 16 years at the EPA in Washington and New York. Many are eager to see Princeton-educated Jackson take the reigns of the EPA and steer it in a much-needed new direction, but has also drawn some critisicsm of her performance in New Jersey. Nonetheless, a new direction is certainly expected after the sorry performance of Stephen Johnson’s reign at the EPA.

Energy and Climate Coordinator Carol Browner is probably best known as the head of the EPA during the Clinton years. She has also worked as head of the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation and as a legislative director of Senator Al Gore (back in the day). In terms of her new position on the Obama team, she has been quoted as saying:

In responding to the climate crisis, the United States has the opportunity to rethink our energy future and move toward energy independence. Taking action now will allow us to avoid the worst climate impacts and will drive the creation of a clean energy economy, in which we exchange carbon-dependency for greater energy independence and new clean energy jobs

Nancy Sutley, soon to be the White House Council on Environmental Quality, has “a long history in the environmental community”. Her current position is that of Los Angeles deputy mayor for energy and environment. Sutley has also served on the California State Water Resources Control Board.

At the risk of invoking what might be a cryptic reference for those that don’t follow Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, as I look at Obama’s team taking shape and the promise of a new direction - or just any direction - in environmental and climate policy, all I can say is “Can we have our bike now?”

Stated more clearly, let’s just get on with it.

Photo Credit: WhiteHouse.gov

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