Posted on 12/11/2008 7:50:03 PM PST by FocusNexus
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has backed up campaign promises to focus on green energy with an Energy Secretary nominee who experts say will provide scientific expertise and pragmatism to the search for new clean sources of fuel.
Obama's pick, Nobel physics laureate Steven Chu, has been a strong advocate for making buildings more efficient to cut energy use to counter global warming and climate change.
"If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade," Chu told Reuters in an interview last year.
Chu has led the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since August 2004. Under Chu's leadership, the lab has pressed aggressively to develop new alternative energy technology.
Chu's focus on advanced technology and renewable energy and lack of background in fossil fuels signals Obama expects the energy department to concentrate on new fuels, experts said.
"I believe that the selection of Steve Chu suggests that President-elect Obama is quite serious about reordering the energy sector and executing his vision of a green economy," said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at Cato Institute.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Concern for Climate Change Defines Energy Nominee
"Because of the danger of climate change, he said, the United States and other countries also need to make some urgent repairs. He said governments need to "act quickly" to implement fiscal and regulatory policies to stimulate the deployment of technologies that boost energy efficiency and "minimize" carbon emissions.
Chu's views on climate change would be among the most forceful ever held by a cabinet member. In an interview with The Post last year, he said that the cost of electricity was "anomalously low" in the United States, that a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gases "is an absolutely non-partisan issue," and that scientists had come to "realize that the climate is much more sensitive than we thought."
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What are the Republicans/conservatives,-- who were so happy about Obama's appointments and were telling us about how "centrist" Obama really is -- saying now?
Barack Obama’s choice of energy team signals climate change intent
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5326820.ece
Mr Obama has chosen as his Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics and who in recent years has devoted himself to the cause of inventing alternative fuels.
The President-elect has also created a new post, a White House overseer of energy, environmental and climate policy - already known as an “energy tsar” - who will be responsible for driving his agenda on Capitol Hill. For this, he has picked Carol Browner, a former legislative director to Al Gore.
The choices, and the fact that Mr Obama is intent on co-ordinating environmental policy from inside the White House, underscores his intent to push ahead with his hugely ambitions and expensive plan to create alternative fuels, and reduce carbon emissions, despite the fierce resistance that will inevitably come from US industry.
Mr Obama is in fact exploiting the economic crisis as a way to justify much of his legislative agenda. He is arguing that economic recovery is tied implicitly to big reforms in areas such as healthcare, the environment and schools, and he appears to have a Democratic-controlled Congress willing to fund much of it.
Yesterday, as he announced Tom Daschle, the Democrats’ former leader in the Senate, as his Health Secretary, Mr Obama said: “Now, some may ask how, at this moment of economic challenge, we can afford to invest in reforming our healthcare system. Well, I ask a different question - I ask how we can afford not to.”
Just think, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and two terms of Hussein would add up to of no energy policy for our country that will increase supplies. GW Bush at least tried, but he never really fought for it.
Did he pick Kermit the frog or Oscar the grouch? Those are the only “green” voices I can recall.
greens are commie tools, period-end-of-story.
In an interview with The Post last year, he said that the cost of electricity was “anomalously low” in the United States, that a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gases “is an absolutely non-partisan issue,”
Shut up and do science because the economy is clearly out of your league
“It’s shaping up to be another 4-8 years of NO real energy policy to speak of for America.”
We’ll just WISH there would be no energy policy. There WILL be an energy policy, which will focus on punishing people for using energy.
Energy secretary candidate fan of efficiency, tech
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10121034-54.html
“These positions will be at the center of Obama administration’s energy and environment policy, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions growth and have energy efficiency play an important role in an expected economic stimulus package.
The expected choices of Chu, Browner, and Jackson suggest that Obama intends to move aggressively on these goals.
“On policy, it’s a dramatic contrast based on what I know about the policy direction that all these folks will be bringing to these positions,” Daniel Lashof, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Washington Post.
The top EPA post is considered a pivotal position for climate change issues as the agency could begin to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide. “
Team Obama: U.S. Energy Policy to Ape California?
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/12/11/team-obama-us-energy-policy-to-ape-california/
What does the Obama administration’s proposed energy and environment troika mean for U.S. policy? Look west - all the way to California.
Ms. Browner advocates using the Clean Air Act to let the EPA regulate emissions throughout the economy, which wouldn’t require any political horse-trading in Congress, and which the current EPA has been loath to do.
That horrifies Big Business, of course. U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice-president William Kovacs shudders at the economic implications of top-to-bottom EPA regulation of the entire economy.
His massive middle-class tax increase is going according to plan.
The Saudis & UAE bought this election. They want us to be energy serfs forever and to continue to send our wealth to the middle east. This is how Islam can win.
Sad but true....
What you don’t think telling us all we need to get solar panels whether we can afford them or not is a good energy policy? /s
Hey, it ain’t easy being green.
Its not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
- Kermit the Frog
“It’s shaping up to be another 4-8 years of NO real energy policy to speak of for America.”
You can say that again. 4-8 years of very expensive pipe dreams. But hey, people wanted “change”. I hope they can afford it.
“he said that the cost of electricity was “anomalously low” in the United States”
Proof that smart people can be idiots and wrong.
It is a good thing to have low energy prices and a bad thing to have high energy prices... He’s got it upside down. and he will be our energy Secretary?!?? Uggggg!!!
“Well just WISH there would be no energy policy. There WILL be an energy policy, which will focus on punishing people for using energy.”
Correct.
They have an ANTI-ENERGY policy.
THese Green Squirrels can not do anything in the Northern Hemisphere in the Dead of Winter.
Do you realize how many SUVs will be at the Inaugural Gala in DC ? 100s ? 1000s ? And if we have a COLD FRONT hit the Festivities, they will have ICE on their minds for a few weeks.
The SUN is low on the Horizon, and only the SUN and Orbital Mechanics can change the Seasons.
I measured the Sea Level in Seattle AND Baltimore this year. Nothin is a risin, everything normal, don’t Panic and Tax me for a NON EVENT, or there WILL BE RIOTS in the Streets.
Hell, California Burning this year was never mentioned as the HUGE Polluter as it is....not a peep about all that CO2 ? Pass a law to stop that, Dude.
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