By Christiaan Perez

The University hosted an entire day of environmental

lectures to coincide with a national teach-in on global warming last Thursday. One event in particular, held by Professors Meena Bose and Stephen Lawrence, spotlighted President Barack Obama’s appointment of Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy and Carol Browner as Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

Both Bose and Lawrence talked about the credentials Chu posseses as vital to his position. Chu was director of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in

2004 and also founded the Energy Bio-Science Institute.

“Climate change is the greatest threat we face as a nation,” Bose said. Lawrence added that as a scientist, Secretary Chu is “much needed” in the role of Secretary of Energy.

Chu had spoken in favor of taking measures towards climate change long before his name was put up for consideration by the Obama Administration.

Browner whose position was created by the Obama

administration for the purpose of providing Obama with another vantage point to view the nation’s environmental issues. Browner was a legislative director for Al Gore and head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for eight years.

“She understands that good ideas can be co-opted by a

powerful lobbyist,” Lawrence said.

When asked how the two cabinet positions would work together, Bose responded that “we will have to wait and see.” She added that both Chu and Browner have different vantage points which, combined this with the affect of various other influences on legislative actions, might lead to “less cohesive thinking” about specific action for the environment.

The goals of the departments include a plan to “ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025” as well as “implement an

economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050,” according to the White House Web site.

However, Lawrence added that “even Obama’s green thumb has some dirt under the finger nails,” and he drew the analogy of the cap-and-trade program is similar to an “I have not robbed a bank in a while, which means that you can go rob a bank” program. Lawrence said that because entities are not required to cut back on green house gas emissions as long as other business entities cut back on green house gasses.

“This is one of the few issues that most people can agree with,” Lawrence said. “Every dollar spent [on the

environment] now is an investment in the future.”

Yet legislators still view action on the environment as only necessary in the most dire of situations, and some people still believe that “we haven’t gotten there yet folks.” This may be, but at the same time Lawrence said that Obama’s environmental list is “very ambitious” and this may mark a change in the conventional approach towards the environment.