“Walk the walk on climate change,” NASA scientist tells Obama
NASA’s James Hansen is a hero, having fearlessly defied the Bush regime by speaking
out on global warming. Now Hansen has sent President-elect Obama an important open
letter, telling him that current policies on climate change have failed, and must be changed
at once, and radically.
Here’s hoping that Obama pays attention, as he seems in need of just such urgent guidance.
According to the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/washington/03enviro.html),
Obama’s cabinet is divided on this issue, with Carol Browner, his coordinator of energy
and climate policy, calling for dramatic action, while Larry Summers, leader of Obama’s
economic team, urging a go-slow approach. “While Mr. Summers’s thinking on climate
change has evolved over the last decade,” John M. Broder reports, ” his views on the
potential risks to the economy of an aggressive effort to limit carbon emissions have not.”
It’s hard to find the words to capture the insanity of that position, which sounds an awful
lot like what we’ve heard from Bush & Co. these last eight years. In any case, here’s
hoping that, on this all-important issue, Pres. Obama listens not to Larry Summers and
his gnomes but to Prof. Hansen, whose expertise is pertinent, and vital to us all.
MCM
Climate change policies failing, NASA scientist warns Obama
Award-winning researcher James Hansen says new president’s rhetoric must be backed by action
James Randerson, science correspondent
www.guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 January 2009 15.23 GMT
Prof James Hansen sent an open letter to Barack Obama’s science adviser.
Current approaches to deal with climate change are ineffectual, one of the world’s top climate scientists said today in a personal new year appeal to Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on the urgent need to tackle global warming.
With less than three weeks to go until Obama’s inauguration, Prof James Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Prof John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.
Obama spoke repeatedly during his campaign about the need to tackle climate change, and environmentalists fervently hope he will live up to his promises to pursue green policies.
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In 2001, in the landmark court case Coleman-Adebayo v. Browner, Carol M. Browner and the agency she administered, the EPA, were found guilty of race, color, and sex-based discrimination as well as tolerating a hostile work environment. The case provided the impetus for the passage (unanimous in both chambers) of the No FEAR Act (Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation) that was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The law was heralded as the first civil rights law of the 21st century. Study of Coleman-Adebayo v. Browner is now mandated study for all new Federal employees within 90 days of their being hired, and every 2 years for all Federal employees. The extent of the racism and retaliation within Ms. Browner’s EPA was so pervasive that Congress and the Executive required study of it as the penultimate example of what was WRONG with government. When asked in Congressional hearings whether she accepted the judgement of the jury, Ms. Browner said she did.
The question for Mr. Obama, is: Given her unrepentant position on the deplorable conditions she oversaw at EPA, how is Carol Browner qualified to hold administrative position again?