Lisa Jackson

Is Gen. Jones trying to grab part of the energy and climate portfolio?

Yes -- and no (unless you worry about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda, in which case, yes, you should worry that Jones might be talking his eye off the proverbial bomb ball).

The WashPost reported Sunday:

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council [NSC], expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues ...

New NSC directorates will deal with such department-spanning 21st-century issues as cybersecurity, energy, climate change, nation-building and infrastructure.

A highly placed source confirms for me that national security adviser and retired Marine Gen. James Jones wants to play in areas like the outercontinental shelf (i.e. offshoring drilling) and smart grid.

The players: Obama’s people

Obama’s green team Joe Romm says, “I honestly don’t know if it is politically possible to preserve a livable climate — but if it is, these are the people to make it happen.” I don’t know if I’d go that far, but Obama has certainly put together a team capable of great things. Coordinating is […]

EPA to drop Bush’s controversial mercury emissions policies and begin new rulemaking process

U.S. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced on Friday that her agency will begin a new rulemaking process on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, dropping a Bush-era legal challenge that sought to delay such regulations. Jackson said that acting solicitor general Edwin S. Kneedler will not pursue the previous administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court, […]

US EPA opens public comment period on California emissions waiver

The Environmental Protection Agency administrator announced Friday that the agency is beginning the process of reevaluating the request from California and 13 other states to set tough new automobile emissions standards. The move, announced by EPA chief Lisa Jackson, follows on President Obama’s directive last month that the agency take a look at the issue […]

EPA chief picks Center for American Progress fellow Bob Sussman as climate adviser

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Robert Sussman is heading to the Environmental Protection Agency to serve as senior policy counsel to Administrator Lisa Jackson on climate change and other environmental issues. Sussman served on the EPA transition team with Jackson. This will be his second stint at the EPA; he was deputy administrator under […]

Labor and environmental leaders come together in D.C. to talk jobs

I’m going to be at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference for the next few days here in Washington, D.C., where environmental activists, labor leaders, and politicos will be discussing how to make those jobs a reality. The Blue Green Alliance, United Steelworkers, and Sierra Club are coordinating the conference. They’re also set to give […]

Lisa Jackson on why the recession is not a reason to scale back environmental plans

“On Monday [Jan. 26], in the middle of all that was going on with the economy … the president was forceful that EPA should do an event on climate change on my first day in office … We have an answer for people who want to scare us from backing off of strong environmental protections.” […]

EPA Administrator Jackson's first public appearance

Those of you who did not make it to New York on Jan. 29-30 for the 20th anniversary celebration of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a national conference on Advancing Climate Justice: Transforming the Economy, Public Health and Our Environment, missed an inspirational high. You also missed a political milestone.

The event marked the first public speech by new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who laid out the nation's new environmental-justice and climate-change priorities. President Obama echoed Jackson's sentiments and made a statement to the Muslim world by giving his first TV interview to Al Arabiya television.

Civilized, reasoned discussion and debate on environmental health and inequality, on the complexities of climate change economics, on cap-and-trade, cap-and-dividend, carbon charges, and on greening the economy as we invest in new infrastructure framed the formal content. But those substantive sessions were just the subtext.

The Clean Air Act is President Obama's key to triggering cap-and-trade

The following is the third in a series of guest posts from the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive legal think tank that works on constitutional and environmental issues. It is written by online communications director Hannah McCrea and president Doug Kendall, who also help maintain CAC's blog, Warming Law. (Part I, Part II)

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A debate has been rumbling over whether it is possible for the EPA to establish a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions under the existing Clean Air Act. We'll discuss that debate in Part IV of this series. Setting aside that debate for a moment, the Act can still serve as an important catalyst for congressional action on climate change, if used effectively by the new Obama administration. Happily, Obama's all-star climate team seems to clearly understand this important truth.

The history here by now qualifies as environmental lore. Back in 1999, a group of concerned organizations, led by the tiny but bold International Center for Technology Assessment, petitioned the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the CAA, arguing that the threat to human populations posed by climate change meant each of these chemicals fell within the Act's definition of an "air pollutant" that "endangers public health or welfare." After several years of legal prodding, and under Bush-appointed leadership, the EPA denied the petition. EPA claimed it did not have the authority to regulate GHGs and that, even if it did, it would defer regulation until climate science and policy, including foreign policy, became better developed.

Several U.S. states and environmental groups then challenged the EPA's decision in federal court, ultimately resulting in a landmark 5-4 Supreme Court ruling against the EPA issued in April 2007. The Court not only held that the EPA had the authority to regulate GHGs under the CAA, but that it was unjustified in delaying its action based on policy considerations not enumerated in the CAA itself.

The Court's ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA [PDF] was an historic moment in the fight against climate change. With federal action at an alarming standstill, the highest court in the land informed former President Bush that his administration already had the power it needed to address GHG emissions on a national level. Specifically, the Court held that the EPA could apply its broad authority under the CAA to regulate CO2 as a pollutant, and therefore did not need to wait for Congress to begin aggressively addressing climate change on a more comprehensive basis.