The Time for Denial Is Over: Obama Chooses His Green Team

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President-elect Obama met  with Al Gore and Vice President-elect Joseph Bidenenergy and climate policy — and how addressing those issues can drive the nation’s economic recovery, at the Transition’s Chicago headquarters earlier this wee to discuss

The time for denial is over, ” President-elect Obama said. “This is a matter of urgency and national security…[but] it is not only a problem, it is also an opportunity. We have the opportunity now to create jobs all across this country in all 50 states to re-power America, to redesign how we use energy and think about how we are increasing efficiency to make our economy stronger, make us more safe, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us competitive for decades to come — even as we save the planet.”

Following this, the President-elect has appointement his Energy and Climate cabinet members: Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy, Carol Browner as “Energy Czar,” Lisa Jackson as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Nancy Sutley as the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy

Previously, the ‘Secretary of Energy’ appointment has been given to former politicians but Mr. Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. he is expected to focus his attention on the Energy Department’s core missions: basic science, nuclear weapons and cleaning up a nuclear-weapons manufacturing complex contaminated since the Cold War.

Carol Browner, “Energy Czar,”

Ms. Browner who headed the EPA under President Bill Clinton, will coordinate renewable energy and energy efficiency policy from the White House, two areas that will feature prominently in a half-trillion-dollar economic-stimulus plan the new president hopes to sign into law as soon as he is inaugurated.

Brian Keane, president of Smartpower and Huffington Post/Yahoo Shine blogger for clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency responded to the President-elect’s latest cabinet appointments saying that they reflect a dramatic change in national priorities for the United States.

“Further, he seems to clearly understand that change in our energy policy does not come from Washington alone. In states across the nation, energy efficiency and conservation is being implemented from household to household and city to city.  People are becoming ‘Energy Smart’ from the bottom-up — not simply the top-down.  Today’s appointments show a keen understanding of this dynamic.”

—– Brian Keane, President of Smartpower

Image credit: Google.com and blog.publicroutes.com

5 thoughts on “The Time for Denial Is Over: Obama Chooses His Green Team”

  1. Might be better titled, the time for greed is over. I doubt the Bush administration was ever in denial when it came to the realities of climate change and the energy crisis, they were simply implementing policies that ensured profits to those they were beholding to.

    What we’re hoping to see in this next four years is a policy that is beholding to the American public at large, the ones who voted in the election, the people who our government officials work for.

  2. Might be better titled, the time for greed is over. I doubt the Bush administration was ever in denial when it came to the realities of climate change and the energy crisis, they were simply implementing policies that ensured profits to those they were beholding to.

    What we’re hoping to see in this next four years is a policy that is beholding to the American public at large, the ones who voted in the election, the people who our government officials work for.

  3. Carol Browner refused to follow a court order to preserve all computer files and information during her last days as head of Clinton’s EPA agency. What makes us think she’s going to do the right thing now. She spent her days deal-making and out right corruption. President Elect Obama didn’t do his homework with this appointment.

  4. Carol Browner refused to follow a court order to preserve all computer files and information during her last days as head of Clinton’s EPA agency. What makes us think she’s going to do the right thing now. She spent her days deal-making and out right corruption. President Elect Obama didn’t do his homework with this appointment.

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