Obamas Dream Green Team - page 2

Salazar arrived at the sprawling Department of Interior, in part, because he grew up in the West (an informal prerequisite for past secretaries). His appointment initially bothered some environmentalists who questioned what they saw as his close ties to the ranching and mining industry. But heading up an agency that has a $17.2 billion budget and that oversees 500 million acres of land isn't a job that everyone wants—particularly since the department historically has been fraught with scandals.

Like Salazar, Lisa Jackson oversees a huge, complex agency at the EPA. Her reputation was built on her ability to navigate bureaucracies as well as her pragmatic and direct attitude. She worked for the EPA for 16 years in both Washington and New York before taking a post in the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where she eventually rose to commissioner. There, she was known for setting up standards to reduce the state's greenhouse—gas emissions (a foreshadowing of the fuel efficiency standards that her agency and the Department of Transportation worked on this spring). Some environmentalists in New Jersey, though, were critical of the way she oversaw the state's constellation of Superfund sites, arguing that she was too close to the industries and companies that caused the pollution. So far, as the EPA administrator, she's received praise for diplomatically and strategically tackling problems from fuel efficiency to stricter rules surrounding the protection of endangered animals. Moving forward, she says the EPA will need to spend an "awful lot of time" monitoring the spending of the stimulus money. "If states don't spend the money, we'll move it," she says.

Secretary of Energy Chu was President Obama's wildcard pick—the first Nobel prize-winner in physics to occupy the top energy slot. Chu is a passionate scientist who views global warming as the most pressing concern of the day, but he admits that he's no bureaucrat. Early on, he ran into trouble when he talked off-the-cuff about OPEC production and oil prices without, he says, fully understanding the issue. Even now he's not the master schmoozer, but he has the respect of the country's scientific community who is grateful to have one of their own in office.

In the coming years, Chu will oversee the $39 billion that the stimulus has added to his department's budget. Even if he's not the one personally lobbying senators to support the climate-change bill, Chu loves to talk about global warming. He can't help himself. "We have door No. 1 and door No. 2," he says. "We're going to save the planet, or we're going to wish things were the way they were."

This eclectic group—with all of their expertise in science, energy policy, and advocacy—still can't be shielded from the skepticism and quandaries that will inevitably arise over the next three and half years. Among the challenges: when Congress returns from its August recess, it will deal with a mountain of competing agendas including passing health-care reform. It's possible that one of the president's key projects, the climate-change bill, could morph into an overlooked stepchild, as many conservatives hope it will become. "They had to pay off everybody to get it out of the House," says Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "There's negative momentum coming out of that."

If the Senate does not pass the bill, its death could have a domino effect, and slow movement on global environmental policy. It will be hard to negotiate carbon-emission standards at the December meeting in Denmark if the U.S. government can't pass stricter policies on its own turf. "Copenhagen will either be a milestone or a tombstone," says William Antholis, managing director of the Brookings Institution.

Members of the cabinet admit to feeling the heat. They all want to pass the bill, but they also need to work on conservation projects and push the economy in the direction of green technology. Already, there's pressure to act faster. Much of the stimulus still hasn't been doled out, and those green jobs? Well, there's money for them but the actual jobs don't yet exist. And, of course, there's doling out of the stimulus money. "They need to ensure the stimulus money is well spent," says William Reilly, a former EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush. "It'll be very challenging to get the funds out responsibly in the time frame that they promised—and make sure there are no embarrassments a year or two down the road."