Obama's environment choices send a message

Administration 'will value science,' president-elect says in nominating Nobel laureate for energy chief
WASHINGTON—With the nomination of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu for energy secretary, President-elect Barack Obama made sure no one missed the message in the résumé.

"His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science," Obama said Monday at a Chicago news conference. "We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action."

Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, headlines a quartet of appointments that also includes former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner as a coordinator of energy and climate policy; former New Jersey environmental protection commissioner Lisa Jackson as EPA administrator; and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley to run the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

With this team, some environmentalists and former federal research scientists expect Obama's White House to break from what they view as the Bush administration's record of overlooking science in favor of politics.

"It's such an incredible contrast, compared to the years of darkness under the current administration, to see a scientist in such a position of authority and influence in the Cabinet," said Alan Nogee, who directs the Clean Energy Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has accused the administration of silencing and overruling scientists in policymaking. "It's night and day."

Critics — including Nogee's organization and former EPA Administrator Christie Whitman—have complained about the influence of industry lobbyists and ideologues on administration decision-making.

Rep. Henry Waxman of California is among the Democrats who have repeatedly charged top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove, with pressing federal agencies to take positions that put them at odds with their own scientists on energy, global warming and stem cell research.

The critics say many high-ranking scientists have fled federal jobs or have been forced from advisory panels in an effort to tilt agency decision-making to be more favorable to corporate interests.

In 2001, Waxman issued a 40-page report accusing the administration of having "manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings." In 2004, 60 prominent scientists accused the administration of "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes."

In 2006 the top climate scientist at NASA, James Hansen, said the administration tried to gag him from speaking publicly after he gave an academic lecture calling for prompt reductions in greenhouse gases.

On Monday, the Interior Department's inspector general issued a report detailing how one administrator intervened in at least 13 decisions under the Endangered Species Act. The official's "zeal to advance her agenda has caused considerable harm to the integrity" of the Endangered Species Act program, the inspector general wrote, "as well as potential harm to individual species. Her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every ESA decision issued during her tenure."

Jeremy Symons, former climate policy adviser at the EPA, was so shaken after his service as EPA representative to Cheney's energy task force in 2001 that he left government service to become a vice president at the National Wildlife Federation.

"There was no interest in considering the scientific evidence of the impact our energy policy would have on the environment," Symons said in an interview Monday. "When science was brought up for discussion, it was dismissed as not important to developing the energy plan."

Obama stressed the importance of energy and climate policy to the nation's economy and security on Monday—though he declined, when asked by a reporter, to say when he plans to grant a waiver for California to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Chu, who won his Nobel Prize for developing methods to trap atoms with lasers, has oriented the Berkeley lab to focus on renewable energy and climate change. On Monday he stressed the Energy Department's role in supporting scientists, public and private, and innovations that he said "can transform the entire landscape of energy demand and supply."

His appointment won wide praise across industries and party lines. Current Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement that Chu "understands the significance of our energy and environmental challenges, and more importantly, understands the technical solutions necessary to address them. … I hold him in the highest regard."

Bush administration officials have insisted they respect science and that the criticisms are largely from the left and constitute an unbalanced view that discounts the views and contributions of industry.

jtankersley@tribune.com

thamburger@tribune.com

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