[Vision2020] Obama: Nobel Scientist Chu For Energy: Climate Change "Crisis Situation"

Ted Moffett starbliss at gmail.com
Tue Dec 16 08:32:18 PST 2008


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003681.html
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Text below from article above:

Chu, the son of Chinese immigrants, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997
for his work in the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with
laser light." But, in an interview last year with The Washington
Post<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+Washington+Post+Company?tid=informline>,
Chu said he began to turn his attention to energy and climate change several
years ago. "I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly
alarmed," he said. "Many of our best basic scientists [now] realize that
this is getting down to a crisis situation."

He sought and won the top job at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in
2004, leaving the Stanford
University<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Stanford+University?tid=informline>faculty
to focus on energy issues. Chu was in London last night and
unavailable for comment, but the physicist has been, in the words of his Web
site, on a "mission" to make the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory "the
world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the
development of carbon-neutral sources of energy."
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The Obama administration faces an unusually big agenda in this area. The
president-elect is expected to tackle cap-and-trade legislation that would
put a lid on and then lower greenhouse gas emissions. European governments
are expecting him to do that before a crucial climate-change summit a year
from now. Meanwhile, energy industries and environmental groups are lobbying
on issues such as offshore drilling restrictions, permits for coal plant
construction and expansion, nuclear reactor permits and loan guarantees, and
tax breaks for renewable energy.

In addition, the new administration has to figure out how to wield the power
given to the EPA last year by a Supreme Court ruling that said carbon
dioxide emissions should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
How the EPA uses that power could determine the fate of all sorts of
energy-intensive projects. Yesterday, the EPA said it would not finalize
rules on new electricity-generating units, disappointing industry lobbyists
and punting the issue to the Obama administration.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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