President-Elect Obama Announces Nobel Prize Winner To Cabinet

Yesterday, President-elect Obama announced the nomination of a Nobel Prize winner to be our new energy secretary. No, it wasn’t Al Gore. It was physicist Steven Chu.  Wait? A scientist? In the cabinet? That’s so…what’s the phrase? European? Smart? Common-sense? UnBushlike?

“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.” 

Very interesting words after the past 8 years of blindness and environmental corruption.  A scientist is holding a top-spot in government – not a lawyer.  After a period where NASA scientists were censored and EPA reports were hidden and lied about.

In addition to Chu, Obamaramadingalingadingdong also appointed Carol Browner to be the coordinator of energy and climate change policy (Kyoto for the next generation anyone? Lets giddy up).  Lisa Jackson who ran than the NJ EPA is new EPA Administrator. He also named a council on Environmental Quality – former deputy mayor of LA, Nancy Sutley.  Bring it on!

Here’s an excerpt from an RFK, Jr. speech from a couple years ago to give you and idea of where we were with the Bush administration:

…most insidiously, they have put polluters in charge of virtually all the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from pollution. President Bush appointed as head of the Forest Service a timber-industry lobbyist, Mark Rey, probably the most rapacious in history. He put in charge of public lands a mining-industry lobbyist, Steven Griles, who believes that public lands are unconstitutional. He put in charge of the air division of the EPA, Jeffrey Holmstead, a utility lobbyist who has represented nothing but the worst air polluters in America. As head of Superfund: a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund. The second in command of EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist.

The New York Times reported a couple of weeks ago that the second-in-command of the Council on Environmental Quality, which is in the White House directly advising the president on environmental policy, is a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute. His only job was to read all of the science from the different federal agencies to make sure they didn’t say anything critical and to excise any critical statements about the oil industry.

“In the next few years, the choices that we make will help determine the kind of country and world that we will leave to our children and our grandchildren.”  Obama also went on to discuss climate change and the imminent dangers we face.

So maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Keeping my fingers crossed!