Obamas Dream Green Team

By Nancy Cook | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 27, 2009
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During the first seven months of the Obama presidency, the administration charted a new course for a green economy. It approved a stimulus package with roughly $50 billion for renewable energy and environmental projects while devoting other funds to everything from Cash for Clunkers to improving energy efficiency in the homes of Native Americans. So, who is behind the White House's environmental efforts?

The League of Conservation Voters calls them President Obama's "Green Dream Team": Carol Browner, the White House climate czar; Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator; Ken Salazar, U.S. secretary of the interior; and Steven Chu, U.S. secretary of energy. These men and women have the ear of the president, as well as the power, budget, and commitment to right what many environmentalists see as the wrongdoing of the Bush administration. This fall they will try to pass landmark climate-change legislation in the Senate; approve and oversee countless projects funded with stimulus money and push for international standards for carbon emissions at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. They've been lauded by green advocates and lobbyists and pilloried by Republicans and moderate Democrats (particularly from states where industries such as coal still dominate). Whatever your feelings may be about their agenda, one thing is certain: they've only just begun.

Carol Browner keeps the lowest public profile of the foursome but arguably has attracted the most criticism. She's the first-ever White House czar on climate change, a position that some conservatives say is too vaguely defined. Yet, she's hardly new to Washington. She served as the EPA administrator under President Clinton, worked as Sen. Al Gore's legislative director, and remains close to John Podesta, President Clinton's former chief of staff who ran the Obama transition team. Originally, she supported Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination. But thanks to Podesta, she ended up on Obama's original tight-knit transition team and never left that fold.

She has always been viewed as a staunch environmentalist who once called President George W. Bush the "worst environmental administrator ever". Critics argue this makes her a poor ambassador to Republicans and moderates in Congress. This question of whether Browner can build consensus will be crucial in the coming months. She's the administration's go-to arm twister: the person who wooed House members and counted votes to narrowly pass the climate-change bill on June 26 in the House, 219 to 212. Her goal is to get multiple federal agencies working together, rather than independently of each other—which has historically been the case in D.C. One success story so far is how Browner helped to broker a partnership between the EPA and Department of Transportation to come up with new fuel-efficiency standards that will require cars made in 2012 and beyond to ultimately get at least 35.5 miles per gallon. And, in the fall, all eyes will be on her to push the climate-change legislation through the Senate: a topic she didn't want to broach on the record. Through a White House spokesman, Browner said in an e-mail: "As we continue our dialogue with the Senate, we are confident that most senators share the president's goal of providing clean energy incentives that will wean the U.S. off of our dependence on foreign oil by transforming our energy economy."

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is another Washington insider, who spent four years in the Senate representing Colorado. Salazar originally raised his national profile by working with Republicans on the immigration bill, but he's studied energy and environmental policy for years. He's also worked as Colorado's attorney general and as the director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. Still, he's not a total tree-hugger; his family background in farming and ranching gives him some street cred in those industries.

Salazar speaks in a low-key, friendly style—an attitude that can belie the complexity of some of his initiatives, such as renewable-energy projects, particularly solar. His agency hopes to set aside tracts of public land in Nevada, Arizona, California, and Wyoming for solar energy facilities. "On the renewable-energy front, I don't think there's much more that we could be doing," he says.