Sometimes good news mostly illumines the bad news that went before. Take president-elect Obama’s appointment of a four-person "energy and environment" team, including Energy Secretary-designee Steven Chu, Interior Secretary-designee Ken Salazar and a "climate czar," former Environmental Protection Agency leader Carol Browner. Even recognizing the links between energy and environment is an enormous step forward from the isolated, politicized Cabinet departments of the Bush administration. The new team will have endless damage to undo, large and small, including a major oil industry threat to the West’s scarce water.
At least the Interior Secretary-designee, Sen. Salazar of Colorado, completely grasps the damage done by a multi-part Bush administration effort to reopen desructive oil shale mining and extraction in the West. In a recent statement, Salazar was furious:
“The Bush Administration has fallen into the trap of allowing political
timelines to trump sound policy,” Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar said in a statement to the media.
“Over and over again the Administration has admitted that it has no
idea how much of Colorado’s water supply would be required to develop
oil shale on a commercial scale, no idea where the power would come
from, and no idea whether the technology is even viable on a commercial
scale.”
As to the larger undoing of the public good that the White House is furiously engaged in, here’s President Bush’s Christmas message, as envisioned by subversive filmmaker Robert Greenwald.