Obama's climate team appears primed for action

February 4, 2013

POLITICO

Darren Goode

Who will help President Barack Obama meet his ambitious promises to tackle climate change?

Eco-celebrities and tree-climbing protesters need not apply. This is a job for wonks.

The president’s top climate appointees and the outside advisers best positioned to shape his agenda are a team replete with heavy hitters — including green-minded business leaders, buttoned-down environmental lobbyists and bureaucrats who have spent years wrestling with the minutiae of regulations.

At the outset, the group might be light in executives from the industries that would be most affected. Some of the CEOs the administration drew support from during Obama’s first term are leaving the business or moving on to other things.

Still, energy insiders overall say these types of climate thinkers can help Obama advance a second-term strategy that relies on dribbling out regulations and industry-specific agreements with less focus on pushing legislation through Congress.

“There are two types of people who can be influential here,” said Manik Roy, vice president for strategic outreach at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, whose 30-year environmental career includes stops at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Hill. “Those who will shape the options that the president faces — how ambitious will the emission standard be, what the timing of it will be, that sort of thing — and those who will help the president decide whether to go forward with a given option.”

Here are several crucial players in the climate debate:

1. Denis McDonough

The president’s green brain trust starts with his chief of staff — best known as the former deputy national security adviser whom the president described last month as “one of my closest, most trusted advisers.”

Less well known is the fact that Denis McDonough has spoken for years about the urgency of tackling global warming and assuring supporters that Obama’s heart is in it.

Obama “recognizes very clearly that this is an urgent problem that we’ve now lost far too much time in addressing,” McDonough said during a May 2007 discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution, speaking as a campaign surrogate. Inserting a personal touch, the Minnesota native noted, “When I was home at the holidays, there was no ice fishing this year for the first time that I can remember in a long time.”

The same year, he co-wrote an op-ed for the Center for American Progress on the “obligation” the U.S. and other wealthy countries owe to help poor nations cope with climate change.

As chief of staff, McDonough will help Obama navigate the hugely symbolic decision on whether to approve TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, a lightning rod for green critics. He’ll also oversee the rollout of EPA greenhouse gas regulations, one of several ways the administration can move forward without Congress.

McDonough might also have a role in choosing who gets the reins of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which signs off on EPA rules. Former OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein, who had a reputation for slow-walking regulations, left in August.

More broadly, McDonough can ensure that climate retains a prime spot in the president’s inbox — much the way former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former senior adviser David Axelrod helped steer the health care agenda in Obama’s first two years.

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