Obama's Energy and Environment Team Includes a Nobel Laureate, Veteran Regulators
President-elect Barack Obama appears to be on the verge of tapping a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a Princeton University-educated chemical engineer, and a former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency for the top spots on his energy and environment team.
Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a 1997 corecipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, has emerged as Obama's likely pick for secretary of energy. Lisa Jackson, a former commissioner of New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection who was trained as a chemical engineer, is expected to become administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. And Carol Browner, former EPA chief in the Clinton administration, is expected to be asked to serve as a "high-level coordinator" on energy issues—and perhaps something of a "czar" on climate change.
It is by all accounts, a well-credentialed team that will help carry out Obama's ambitious energy and environmental agenda.
Obama's picks are also a dramatic departure from many of his predecessors. The choice of Chu gives a leading scientist rare prominence in the cabinet, while the full slate indicates Obama's interest in aggressive action on climate change, increased funding for scientific research, and stronger environmental regulation by the federal government.
It is, in other words, an about-face from the Bush administration.
The three picks have a record of supporting high levels of federal involvement in energy and environmental issues, both in terms of money invested and regulatory oversight. During the early 1990s, Browner earned a reputation for attempting to uphold water and air regulations in the face of opposition from congressional Republicans. Jackson, likewise, at a congressional hearing last May on mercury emissions, told lawmakers, "Implementing the real maximum achievable protections is simply the only moral and ethical choice available if we are to meet our responsibility as public officials."
At a talk in April 2007, Chu expressed similar sentiments, arguing that federal regulation not only works but is often less costly than detractors warn—a debate that will undoubtedly be playing out over the next few years as Congress considers the economic costs of regulating greenhouse gases.
"If there is a regulation that says you have to do something—whether it be putting in seat belts, catalytic converters, clean air for coal plants, clean water—the first tack that the lawyers use, among others things, and that companies use, is that it's going to drive the electricity bill up, drive the cost of cars up, drive everything up," Chu said at the time. "It repeatedly has been demonstrated that once the engineers start thinking about it, it's actually far less than the original estimates. We should remember that when we hear this again, because you will hear it again."
At Berkeley, Chu has strongly advocated research into solar power and advanced biomass, in particular biofuels made from grasses that won't compete for space with farmland. At a talk this summer in Nevada, Chu said, "In the first eight months of a new research program, we have developed ways to separate out cellulose, and we have already made a yeast [that] makes a gasolinelike fuel. Already within eight months, we are working on diesel and jet replacement fuels. We need to work with making this really scalable so it will outperform the yeast we have to today." (One potential disagreement with Obama: Chu has criticized corn-based ethanol, which Obama has strongly supported in the Senate and in the campaign.)
- 1
- 2
- Next Page >
Reader Comments
God's Wisdom Overcomes Science and Billions in Debt
The finest team going the wrong way is still disaster. The push for a stimulus of the economy, especially for more science, will get us into a deep pit of ever increasing debt (interest on debt) and be unproductive and ineffective. God warned against debt, charging interest, and insurance because they produce an oppressive system of bondage.
Looking for green technology and pollution reduction does not make sense mathematically. Using polluting energy and people driving back and forth to work to create windows in sky scrapers that do not allow fresh air in or let hot air out for natural air conditioning fights against the very system we are trying to correct. Solar advantages would be wiped out with one volcano spewing ash into the atmosphere. More planes will cut the sunlight. We are going the wrong way. The goal is not employment and until we realize that we will continue to go into debt to increase employment.
Barack Obama is not advocating freedom from energy costs, he is advocating bondage to domestic energy costs. Evidence has shown we cannot trust that. The truth of freedom and deliverance is in getting back to nature, even in the city. Pets that give milk and eggs have more security than pets you have to buy food for. Trees and plants with food give freedom that supermarkets, transporting vehicles and processing plants can not give. Jesus said, "When you have food and clothing, be content" Why? Because the rest is easy to deal with, people can open their homes to others if they have plenty of food. We do not need great employment stimulating plans and debt; we need to be humble enough to get out of our expensive, flashy and sexy clothes to dig in the dirt. We just may find it extremely liberating and full of excitement and hope.
Carbon Dioxide May Not Be The Problem
Obama's Energy and Environment Team need to consider different ideas. Reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels may not be the answer; we were still polluting ourselves to death then. Now we have more nations doing the same thing.
Things of nature emit carbon dioxide. NOVA had a program that showed that if the sun were a little brighter, it would cause more carbon dioxide and you would literally be able to watch things grow. The word of God says there will be a time when the sun and moon will be seven times brighter. Before that time, the wind will be stopped and the sun will only shine a third part of the day. That does not fair well for wind and solar technology. In Missouri I am already noticing not as many full sun days even in the summer.
If the NOVA program is correct, cutting the carbon dioxide without replacing it somewhere could cause a detriment to growing trees and plants leading to a loss of vegetation. Could that have happened to other planets? ("There is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes, the words of Solomon)
The main problem could be that the intense heat caused by our concentrated heating in cities and factories etc does not have time to cool enough to be harmless to the atmosphere. Now we are heating our homes when we do not need to, multiply that by hundreds of thousands and you have a major concentration of heat going into the atmosphere. I am not a scientist; but I know God does not create things that are bad for us. Barack Obama's energy and environment team need to take another look at the data with these ideas in mind.
Science Caused Our Problems; We See Them Years Later
There is no real change in Obama’s choices for cabinet positions. He “formally named the rest of his team: physics Nobel laureate Dr. Steven Chu as his Energy Secretary; Lisa Jackson as his Environmental Protection Agency Administrator; Nancy Sutley as his chair of the Council on Environmental Quality; and Carol Browner as assistant to the president for Energy and Climate Change, a new post.”
Our solutions are found in the scriptures and are prophecy written on the United Nations' building:
Isaiah 2:4: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and they shall learn war no more."
If we turned from our employment lifestyle that causes stress, pollution, disease and high health care costs, global warming, wars, energy crisis, food crisis, reoccurring financial crises, crime and social security insufficiencies, we would not need a global warming policy and energy and climate change green jobs and expensive projects to employ the people. We would not need the president-elects other promises of universal health care, social services like welfare and pre-kindergarten child care and social security would not be necessary.
The "New Deal" of past recessions caused the lifestyle that has created our world problems. There is no wisdom in getting deeply into debt to create more of a destructive and dangerous lifestyle. We do not need more science or a new post; we need understanding that we are going the wrong way and we need real change to a retirement lifestyle where we create a garden paradise with all our needs met in beauty and abundance in our neighborhood. We need true freedom and independence that is fair and available to all people. We need an environment that does not break down and need to be repaired with massive amounts of tax money. We need the change we expected, something that would make our lives easier.
Barack Obama will not prosper us by borrowing big economic stimulus packages for new forms of energy for climate protection. It would still take polluting energy to create them. We will still be working away from families, buying insurance for autos, health and homes, buying energy from domestic suppliers, dealing with daily stress of child care, college tuition, sons in military, and conflicts over abortion, marriages, and religion. There is no change in Barack Obama's energy and climate-environment team.
advertisement
