what is so hard to understand ? Do we want to dominate the energy industry in the future and at the same time be a healthier nation ?or do we want the oil producing middle eastern contries to be in command . the choice should be clear.
Khue Bui for Newsweek
Pretty Crunchy: Browner runs a mile to work every day
POLITICS
The Lioness In Spring
A kinder, gentler Carol Browner is backing Obama's green agenda.
Published Apr 4, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009
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Carol Browner is in a better place than she was a decade ago. Back in the '90s, Browner was the agitator on the ramparts, the true-blue protégé of Mr. Environment himself—Al Gore. From her perch at the Environmental Protection Agency down Pennsylvania Avenue, she battled with the economic mandarins of the Clinton Treasury Department—often unsuccessfully—and became the bane of America's utilities and smokestack industries. Even at the EPA, Browner was sometimes known by the Voldemort-ish moniker "She Who Must Be Obeyed."
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Today Browner, 53, is trying to project a different image entirely. Brought into Barack Obama's inner circle as his "czarina" for energy and climate issues—a brand-new White House post—she is now mainly a back-room coordinator. To fulfill her boss's vision of a roaring green U.S. economy that marries environmental progress with industrial rebirth, Browner is trying to bring the cabinet agencies she once squabbled with—Energy, Transportation, EPA and so on—under one tent. Now her power lies mainly in persuasion—for example, encouraging Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel-winning physicist, and his team to supply new scientific and technological ideas for greening the economy. "They're much smarter at this than I am … What I can do as these things start to materialize is ask what are the ways we can bring them to market," she says in an interview, adding: "I don't have any independent policymaking authority. It's not like when I was at EPA and I could depend on regulation."
Browner is still pretty crunchy. Though she lives a mile from her office next to the White House, she walks to work every day (while managing to dress fashionably). But the infighting, Browner insists in an interview, is a thing of the past, not least because Obama doesn't tolerate it. "I don't spend a lot of time thinking about am I in this meeting or am I not," she says. "That can destroy you in a place like this. I know what I think we need to accomplish for the president."
Looking at her now, tall, slender and still zealous in her cause, one has a sense that Browner is something of a lioness in spring, at ease with herself and savoring the landscape she now oversees. The issues she fought so hard to bring to public view in the '90s are now front and center, especially after eight years of relative inaction under George W. Bush, whose presidency Browner calls "the worst environmental administration ever." The dangers of global warming are a given. And while the Kyoto accord on reducing greenhouse gases is all but dead—having been unilaterally rejected by Bush—the administration plans to bring a far more activist approach than even Clinton to the next global climate conference, which takes place in Copenhagen in December. "There's been a tremendous evolution in terms of the green issues," Browner says. "Sixteen years ago, there was a lot of focus on conventional pollution issues"—in other words, cleaning up the old messes in the water and air and at Superfund sites. Now "there's much more focus on clean-energy opportunities" to move U.S. industry into a new era.
Most significant of all, perhaps, is that while Bill Clinton mouthed the right words about the environment, he didn't achieve all that much. One, he faced a recalcitrant GOP-controlled Congress. Clinton was also concerned about what restrictions on industry might do to his pride and joy, the thriving U.S. economy. Obama is, by all accounts, a true believer in the idea that good environmental policy is to a large extent the future of the U.S. economy, which needs something of a pick-me-up these days. Browner says a major source of America's next great growth spurt will be "green jobs and green technologies." Hence, Obama loaded even his temporary stimulus bill with almost $40 billion in grants and loan guarantees and renewable energy, as well as $11 billion for new transmission lines that will carry solar power and wind from places like Arizona and North Dakota to other states. Obama's 10-year budget proposal also contains nearly $75 billion to make tax cuts for energy research and experimentation permanent.
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