Obama Picks His “Green Dream Team”

Yesterday, Obama announced his pick for Secretary of Energy.  He chose a Nobel laureate who is a keen supporter of alternative energy, and who has said that people saying that they are uncertain whether climate change is being caused by humans is “reminiscent of the dialogue in the 1950s and ’60s on tobacco.”

No, it was not Al Gore!

Obama’s green team (L-R): Carol Browner, Lisa Jackson, Nancy Sutley, and Steve Chu, with Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Obama picked the physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, Stephen Chu - a decision that has won praise from scientists across theboard.  “His appointment should signal to all that my administration will value science,” the President-elect said in a press conference yesterday. “We will make decisions based on facts.”

“Now, should he be confirmed, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who specializes in climate change and renewable energy and already knows how to run a decent-size bureaucracy is going to be in charge of realizing Obama’s bold promises to lead the United States toward an energy-sustainable future. Symbolically speaking, one would be hard put to draw a sharper contrast between the Bush and Obama eras than what is achieved by this single appointment,”

commented Andrew Leonard of Salon.com.

Alongside Chu, Obama chose Carol Browner as his “Climate Tzarina” who will coordinate between the different government agencies that deal with energy policy.  He also picked chemical engineer and former environmental policy official Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates air quality. Nancy Sutley, a Californian environmental officer, becomes head of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality.

Gene Karpinski, the head of the League of Conservation Voters, sums up the response from environmentalists, calling Obama’s choices “a green dream team“.

Obama has frequently said that tackling climate change and creating energy independence were high on his list of priorities, and these announcements reinforce Obama’s claim that he will take significant action to on these issues early in his presidency.

EPA Coal Decision Provides a Glimpse of What is to Come

On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appeals panel overturned a permit for a proposed coal-fired power station in Utah.  The panel ruled that the EPA’s Denver office had inadequately supported its decision to issue a permit to the plant without considering its carbon dioxide emissions.

In October 2007, the Sierra Club and others filed a request to overturn the permit, which had been issued to the proposed coal-fired power station, because it did not require any controls on carbon dioxide pollution.

The key word in the previous sentence, and the basis for this entire case, is ‘pollution’.  The term pollution, according to a landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court in April 2007, can now be used to describe carbon dioxide, as a consequence of its ability to warm the climate.  This gave the EPA the ability to regulate carbon dioxide through the Clean Air Act, however the EPA, with the help of the Bush Administration, has been slow to act, and does not intend to regulate on the issue while President Bush is in the White House.

The Sierra Club’s David Bookbinder said that the decision will temporarily stop permits being handed out to any coal burning power plants, essentially putting the development of all coal-fired power stations on hold for the moment.

As the President-elect, it falls to Barack Obama to decide the future of carbon dioxide regulation in the US.  In an interview in October, Jason Grumet, a top Obama energy advisor who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Secretary of Energy, said that Obama would regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, “in the absence of congressional action” on climate change.

Yesterday, traders connected the dots and coal stocks plummeted by up to 12.5%.

By setting a precedent for many more lawsuits of a similar nature, Thursday’s ruling hints at the long-term consequences of the Supreme Court decision for carbon-intensive industries in the US.  This is “an issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual permitting process,” the EPA appeals panel stated.