Obama's energy team

Just wanted to respond to a classmate's assertion that Obama's climate change team is simply a recycling of former Clinton staff and will make no difference. This is simply false.

Stephen Chu, the new Secretary of Energy is a Nobel physics laureate at the University of California Berkley and has not been involved in any previous adminstrations. For White House science adviser, Obama chose John Holdren, a Harvard University expert on climate change.

Though some candidates have been around, it shows their experience. It's the position and area of responsibility that is important here. For example, former New Jersey environment chief Lisa Jackson now heads the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor of Los Angeles, will run the White House Council on Environmental Quality. These are people with proven track records of speaking out on climate issues being put in positions of power.

Same goes for Carol Browner, who headed the Clinton administration's EPA, who will now take a new White House position coordinating policy on energy, environment and climate change.

More importantly, Obama now steers the ship and he chose his first speech as President elect to be on climate change, committing in front of the world to a return to 1990 emission levels by 2020. That is a huge commitment considering the growth of emissions between 1990-2009. If Obama brings that to the table at Copenhagen, the Europeans would grab it and run. Done. US on board.

For me, there is no doubt that a seachange has ocurred in US Climate Change policy compared to Bush's deliberate ignorance over the last 8 years. To state that Obama "brings nothing new" is cynical in the extreme and unhelpful in my view.