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Obama picks Nobel man for Energy
BBC
Barack Obama has named physics Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu as his energy secretary and tasked him with finding alternatives to fossil fuels.

The US president-elect said the new administration's priorities were to end US dependence on foreign oil and fight climate change.

Naming his environment team, he said US energy dependence had grown even as global resources were disappearing.
(16 December 2008)

Obama's Green Team
Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation
Leading environmentalists in Washington are ecstatic about most of President-elect Barack Obama's newly announced cabinet choices, though a closer look suggests that greens may soon be unhappy with the Obama administration's positions on greenhouse gas emission cuts, nuclear power, so-called "clean coal" and other key issues.

More than any president in US history, Obama seems to understand both the threat global warming poses and the economic opportunities it presents. Obama gave the climate issue unprecedented emphasis during his campaign, most notably on election night, when he called "a planet in peril" one of the three biggest problems awaiting him as president (giving it equal billing with "the greatest economic crisis in our lifetimes" and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). As president-elect, he has promised "a massive effort" to invest in green energy as a way to heal both the economy and the atmosphere, as well as a vigorous return of US leadership on international climate negotiations. Now, with his cabinet selections, Obama has given some indication of how he hopes to pursue these ambitions.

The most important picks so far include Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, from which post she will oversee America's participation in the negotiations in Copenhagen next December on creating a successor to the Kyoto treaty; Stephen Chu as secretary of energy, an agency whose budget is mainly devoted to nuclear weapons but that takes the lead on energy policy; Carol Browner as a special assistant to the president, who will have the job of coordinating energy and climate change policy across the administration; Lisa Jackson as administrator of the environmental protection agency, which is responsible for enforcing US environmental laws and regulations; Ken Salazar as secretary of the interior, who will oversees public lands and endangered species issues; and Bill Richardson as secretary of commerce, who will play an important role in Obama's green economic policies.

Green activists have been far more enthusiastic about these picks than their counterparts in the spheres of economics and foreign policy have been. Obama chose a "Green Dream Team," gushed Gene Karpinksi, the president of the League of Conservation Voters.

... No one gives the administration more scientific credibility than Chu, a a Nobel Prize winner (for Physics, in 1997) who ranks among the world's most decorated scientists. Chu seems likely to ask hard questions about coal, which he has called "my worst nightmare." He has termed energy "the single most important problem that science has to solve," adding that while it "would be tragic" if science does not solve such well-funded problems as heart disease and cancer, life would still go on. Energy is different, he said: "If we don't solve [the energy] problem, life could really change." According to Romm, Chu understands that better energy efficiency should be the first priority.

... But a grounding in science can cut both ways, and environmentalists may be dismayed by some of Chu's other opinions: he believes nuclear power must be part of the nation's energy mix. He also supports genetic engineering and nanotechnology as possible solutions. These views place Chu in the scientific mainstream, but they may also reflect his appreciation of the looming prospect of peak oil. Speaking in 2004, he said he expected world oil supplies to plateau within ten to forty years. (The International Energy Agency, the voice of the global energy establishment, announced last week that it expects peak oil to arrive by 2020, while outside analysts believe it will come much sooner, if it hasn't already arrived.) Chu said better energy efficiency could delay the arrival of peak oil by twenty to eighty years, but "the fundamental problem remains.
(16 December 2008)
Added bold to original text. Suggested by Lisa Wright. -BA

Vilsack and Obama: Farmer-in-Chief my ass!
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
So Tom Vilsack is going to be Secretary of Agriculture, hmmm… Let’s see, rabid ethanol proponent…check! Enthusiastic supporter of GMOs and biotechnologies…check! Totally indebted to and under the thumb of agribusiness…check! Yup, it seems clear that Obama really took Michael Pollan’s “Farmer in Chief” piece to heart ;-P. Short of actually appointing, say, Monsanto’s chairman, it is hard to imagine a choice less likely to make real shifts in our food system.

But of course, as Rod Dreher points out (quite correctly) and as Carolyn Baker points out (equally correctly), so far there’s very little from the Obama administration that should make us feel secure that what’s coming is going to shift the status quo. Ultimately, Hillary, Geithner and the rest of the crew mostly can be described as people who did things not as badly as George W. Bush and his primary appointees - but that’s hardly saying anything of note.

... In order to be the president many of us hoped Obama would be, he would have to be willing to betray many of the people who brought him, and their hopes and investments in his future. This is no easy feat for anyone, and is probably less so for someone who came so far, so fast, with the hand of so many. It isn’t impossible - other presidents have done it. The man isn’t even president yet.

But presidents are known by the company they keep - the reality is that no man can supervise all the elements of the nation alone - they depend enormously on those people that Obama is appointing right now. He will not be out in the fields, or at the soup kitchens - he will rely on reports and summaries from those he appoints. And those summaries will be given by men whose viewpoints are already formed. Vilsack cannot but describe our food system through the lens of his prior investments, and this will be disastrous.
(17 December 2008)
If one expects instant change from politicians who are 100% pure and heroic, one will be disappointed.

The reason an Obama presidency is so important is not so much in his explicit policies (which are likely to be middle-of-the-road Democratic), but in the possibilities that are opened up. Already I've noticed that the Voice of America and public broadcasting have gained about 15 IQ points - reporting on subjects that previously would have been taboo, and drawing upon a much wider spectrum of commentators. Just a few days ago, NPR broadcast 'Peak Oil Theory' Demands Energy Alternatives. -BA

Obama's Farm and Food Appointment
John Nichols, The Nation
The most telling Cabinet pick that Barack Obama will make -- and from a long-term standpoint perhaps the most meaningful one -- is not his selection for secretary of State, secretary of Defense, Treasury secretary or attorney general. Obama, constrained by circumstance and the demands of official Washington, has filled those positions with predictable players from the usual D.C.-insider lists.

The pick that will give us the most insight into where Obama will lead the country could well be the one he makes in coming days for the most misunderstood position in the Cabinet: secretary of Agriculture.

The Department of Agriculture is, to be sure, misnamed. Ever since Abraham Lincoln evolved what had been a subdivision of the Patent Office and then a section of the Department of the Interior into an independent federal agency that the 16th president referred to as "the people's department," the department has been about much more than just farming. And that is only more so today, as the agency deals with everything from food safety and the spread of organic farming to buy-local food initiatives, rural development, food and nutrition programs in urban areas, and overseas aid.

The USDA is a key player when it comes to energy policy, both because of the rise of biofuels and because of the increasingly adventurous grant-making by its Renewable Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency Improvements Program.
(16 December 2008)
Reactions from:
Organic Consumers Association
Tom Philpott at Gristmill
Sharon Astyk ("Vilsack and Obama: Farmer-in-Chief my ass!")