“Lisa Jackson is doing exactly what an Environmental Protection Agency Administrator is supposed to do – thoughtfully and carefully but aggressively implementing our environmental laws to protect public health and our environment. The job of the EPA Administrator is not to make people happy but to make them and their environment healthier.” That was Time’s lead in their article on Lisa Jackson – one of their 100 most influential people for 2010. For climate change, I’d rank her in the top five worldwide.
She, with the power of the White House squarely behind her, has launched a robust regulatory program that includes lowering the mileage on cars, requiring the registration of greenhouse gases and, as we move along, under the mandate of the Clean Air Act, a reduction in the billions of tons of GHGs that US power plants and industries emit annually.
This quick interview at NPR touches on the regulatory regime that is slowly but surely coming into full flower. Jackson is walking softly, but she’s definitely carrying a great honkin’ stick. Half measures, if you hadn’t figured it out by now, are not going to do the trick.
I was sitting in on a sort of climate and energy focus group a few months back and one knowledgeable policy wonk seconded my perception that EPA’s initiatives in this regard are real and robust. This, of course, is one of the reasons that industry and their myrmidons are trying so desperately to clip EPA’s wings.
Meanwhile, EPA is furthering its attempts, along with Ray LaHood’s Department of Transportation, to get those miles per gallon down. This story, from Reuters, is about an initiative to grade the performance of cars. It’s like Energy Star for cars.