Stymied by Congress, President Obama is staffing his administration with appointees ready to take aggressive action on climate change.
As President Obama tries to fight
global warming without any backing from a gridlocked Congress, he's
using every weapon in his executive arsenal. His Environmental
Protection Agency will soon roll out controversial regulations on carbon
pollution from coal-fired power plants. He's told every Cabinet agency
to look into ways it can use its authority to act on climate change. And
now the administration is stocking the executive branch with an army of
new appointees who have a history of working aggressively on climate
issues and clean energy, often from leadership jobs at environmental
advocacy groups.
It's not surprising to see a president name a top
nominee—for Cabinet secretary, say—who has led the way on an issue the
White House cares about. In his first term, for example, Obama named as
his Energy secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel physicist who had devoted his
career to fighting climate change. With the executive branch the only
avenue for the president to make an impact on climate policy, the Obama
administration is filling out the second and third tiers of
agencies—influential workhorse positions such as chiefs of staff,
assistant secretaries, and heads of regulatory commissions—with
appointees just as devoted to the cause, with the expectation that
they'll muscle through a climate and clean-energy agenda wherever they
can.
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