Policy gap at UN climate talks as speculation narrows over Obama’s appointments

Although President-elect Barack Obama has named more than half the important cabinet positions for the incoming administration (13 out of 24), so far only one appointment has been related to science: Bill Richardson, the former head of the Department of Energy, has been nominated as head of the Department of Commerce, which runs the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Still to be filled are the secretaries of departments for education, energy, NASA, and--assuming Obama keeps his campaign promise to promote the position back to its cabinet status--the national science adviser. This situation is expected to change in the next few days as Obama aims to announce the significant remainder of his candidates for the cabinet before Christmas. This is faster than any recent presidential transition and reflects Obama’s publicly stated belief that, with the current state of the economy and threats to national security, he cannot allow months to pass before these appointments are made.

Since August, when he was appointed to head the transition team, John D. Podesta, President Clinton’s former chief of staff, has been collecting names and vetting potential candidates. In turn, Obama has been meeting potential candidates for the cabinet positions, sometimes weeks before he won the election, asking them for advice or briefings on a number of issues. Only in the last few days has he actually been offering candidates jobs in the administration.

The New Science Adviser

At least five candidates were seriously considered for the science adviser position, which number has now been whittled down to two, according to sources close to the transition team. Obama has several advisers who are helping with the selection process, including Podesta; Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff; Obama’s longtime adviser Valerie Jarrett; Pete Rouse, his chief of staff in the Senate; and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The final stage of the process will be completion of the candidates’ security checks and meetings with Obama, who will make the final decision. Harold E. Varmus, Obama’s science adviser during the campaign, has already ruled himself out as a candidate. A commonly-held view among policy analysts in Washington DC is that the nominee is likely to have a background in energy policy and climate change.

Climate talks

The science adviser appointment will have to be made soon as politics does not stop nor wait for Obama’s cabinet announcements. Earlier this week, Harlan Watson , the chief US climate negotiator , continued to push the current administration’s view at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Poznan, Poland. The talks form the basis of the next round of emissions reduction commitments after the Kyoto Protocols expire. Nearly 9000 delegates from 186 countries are attending the two-week conference. US Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky had requested Watson to defer the US position until next year, when Obama’s team was in place .

In a press conference, Watson said that “There are no differences (between Democrats and Republicans) on the fact that we need major developing countries on board,” and that Obama has been “relatively silent” on the international dimensions of climate change (for counter evidence, see last week’s summary and Obama’s campaign statements on climate change ). The issue of capping developing countries’ CO₂ emissions had caused the collapse of other climate negotiations in the past, although both the US and the European Union believe they have found a solution, which involves the reduction of trade tariffs to get around this point.

Watson stated that he thought there would be no Congressional action “anytime soon on the issue” and downplayed the prospects for an international agreement, saying that reaching international consensus to have quantitative greenhouse gas reduction goals realized by industrialized countries by 2020 and halving their emissions from 1990 levels by 2050 would be unlikely to be forthcoming. Earlier in the week, however, the UK passed a climate change bill , which aims to cut UK emissions by 80% by 2050. President-elect Obama stated that he would push for the same target in the US .

According to Dobriansky in a teleconference on Wednesday , the Obama team has not sent anyone to Poznan but is depending on Senator John Kerry and his staff to inform them of any developments on their return.

An electric goal

On Tuesday, Hawaii--which has one of the most ambitious goals among all the states to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels--and the Hawaiian Electric Company endorsed an effort to build an alternative transportation system based on electric vehicles with swappable batteries and an “intelligent” battery recharging network .

Such a vision is appealing to Wired magazine’s Dave Demerjian, who points out in an editorial that the “daunting list” of repairs to the nation’s transportation infrastructure requires Obama to pick an innovative transportation secretary . Among the list of candidates that are being bandied about, Demerjian particularly likes R.T. Rybak, the mayor of Minneapolis.

David Brooks at the New York Times has been studying the conflicting requirements for the education department . Brooks argues that there has never been a better time to implement change and improve US education.

A deadly threat?

Advice is something the transition team is receiving a lot of nowadays. A nine-member, bipartisan panel commissioned by Congress cites “growing risks” that the world will see a devastating nuclear attack within five years and provides some recommendations for the US to avoid such a fate. The report added biological terrorism to the watch list, calling it the greatest threat because of the growth of the biotechnology industry and lax controls at university and army labs . The report was given to Vice President-elect Biden as a roadmap to the incoming administration, who promised to implement some of the recommendations.

More advice was presented yesterday at an annual conference on US strategic nuclear weapons . Air Force General Kevin P. Chilton, the leader of the US Strategic Command, said that the US needed to modernize its nuclear weapons as the Chinese and Russians were upgrading their systems. “The path of inaction is a path leading toward nuclear disarmament. . . . The time to act is now,” he said.

Another report, this one from David Heyman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provides a blueprint of how homeland security should be developed under the Obama administration.

Paul Guinnessy