Obama unveils climate team

2008-12-16 13:01

Chicago ? US president-elect Barack Obama on Monday named his energy and environmental chiefs and vowed a new dawn for US leadership on combating climate change after eight years of Republican foot-dragging.

Obama nominated Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his energy secretary, placing the renewable energy expert on the frontlines of climate change policy and ending the nation's "addiction" to foreign oil.

"This will be a leading priority of my presidency and a defining test of our time. We can't afford complacency nor accept more broken promises," Obama told reporters.

"We won't create a new energy economy overnight. We won't protect our environment overnight. But we can begin that work right now if we think anew and if we act anew."

Chu's appointment "should send a signal to all that my administration will value science," Obama added. "We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action."

Joining Chu will be Lisa Jackson, the New Jersey governor's chief of staff, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Obama also appointed Carol Browner, who served as EPA administrator under president Bill Clinton, to the new job of White House "climate czar" overseeing the battle against global warming.

Nancy Sutley, a senior adviser to Obama's transition team, was named chairperson of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Unwind Bush policies

Despite an economic recession hitting the United States, Obama is promising to unwind the environmental policies of President George W Bush, whose refusal to ratify the Kyoto pact on climate change outraged green campaigners.

Chu, a scientist and Washington outsider, won his Nobel in 1997. Since 2004, he has been running the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, which has a budget of $645m and a staff of 4 000.

As energy secretary, Chu will lead Obama's ambitious agenda to generate 2.5 million new jobs through "green" and new technologies aimed at making America more energy efficient and less reliant on foreign oil.

"We've seen Washington launch policy after policy, yet our dependence on foreign oil has only grown, even as the world's resources are disappearing," Obama said.

"This time must be different," he said, promising to harness wind and solar power, new crops and new technologies, as part of an "all-hands-on-deck effort" to remake the fossil fuels-based US economy.

- SAPA