Obama Team of Two Minds on Climate Change Action

President-elect Obama may have some work ahead of him in resolving the conflicting views of members of his staff in regards to climate change action. Lawrence H. Summers, the head of Obama’s economic team, is at odds with Carol M. Browner, the coordinator of energy and climate policy, over how to approach the reduction of greenhouse gases.

The two previously found themselves in the same situation as members of the Clinton cabinet. Mr. Summers was then deputy Treasury secretary, and said at the time that though he believed there was a compelling scientific case for action on global warming, moving too fast could damage the economy. Browner, then EPA adminstrator, has long been a strong advocate for strict limits on carbon emissions.

From The New York Times:

While Mr. Summers’s thinking on climate change has evolved over the last decade, his views on the potential risks to the economy of an aggressive effort to limit carbon emissions have not. But he now works for a president-elect who has set ambitious goals for addressing global warming through a government-run cap-and-trade system.

It may once again prove to be Mr. Summers’s role to inject a rigorous economist’s reality check into the debate over the scope and speed of an attack on global warming.

According to a transition official familiar with Mr. Summers’s thinking, he is wary of moving very quickly on a carbon cap, because doing so could raise energy costs, kill jobs and deepen the current recession. He foresees a phase-in of several years for any carbon restraint regime, particularly if the economy continues to be sluggish, a slower timetable than many lawmakers and environmentalists are pressing.

Summers, along with Obama’s pick for director of the White House budget office, Peter R. Orszag, argue that a tax on carbon emissions would be more economically efficient than a cap-and-trade system – but Obama and Browner have already ruled out a straight carbon tax.

Obama’s spokesman said that Obama had appointed advisers with different views but ultimately it would be he who set the policy.

“At the end of the day,” Mr. Shapiro said in an e-mail statement, “the advisers will be charged with implementing President-elect Obama’s strong targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 percent by 2050. However, the president-elect appointed a cabinet with diverse views and looks forward to strong debate within the cabinet on how best to achieve those outcomes.”

Hopefully this team will be able to come together and reach a solution quickly, because we don’t have any time to lose.

Link [The New York Times]

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