We try to avoid being political on this blog- no single party holds a monopoly on individual responsibility, and, besides, there’s a healthy diversity of views around here. That said, it’s impossible not to feel optimistic that the in-coming administration ‘gets it,’ that it understands both the urgency of climate change and the opportunities that a ‘Green Economy’ might present us. In Obama’s proposed agenda, and specifically in his choice of nominees (from Stephen Chu as Energy Secretary to Carol M. Browner as EPA administrator), there seems to be a refreshing respect for science.
The out-going administration, in contrast, has subjugated science and abdicated leadership when it comes to the environment. As a House of Representatives committee on global warming recently wrote, “the first 100 days of the Bush administration initiated perhaps the worst period of environmental deregulation in American history, [and] the last 100 days of a Bush presidency could be even worse.”
