Podesta To Push Climate Change

John Podesta has returned to the White House where he served as Chief of Staff to President Clinton.  And his top priority:

The deal-sealer for Podesta, who has vowed to stay for only a year, was Obama’s assurance that he would be given broad oversight of the administration’s climate change agenda—even though Podesta has agreed to recuse himself from the decision on the Keystone pipeline, which he opposes. And here is where the template for Podesta in action might first become apparent: With chances of major legislation on climate change all but dead given congressional opposition, Podesta will push for aggressive executive action, in addition to backstopping new Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy on controversial new emissions guidelines for power plants. Moreover, he is almost certain to side with environmentalists over energy companies, as he did during the Clinton administration when he teamed with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to protect vast new tracts of national forest and wetlands from gas and oil exploration.

If Congress continues to dither, climate change regulations will be the most important policy accomplishment of Obama’s second term.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.