President
seeks his help on executive orders, climate change
(Washington Post) – President
Obama’s new staff adviser, senior progressive strategist John Podesta, is a key
player in an initiative seeking more government regulation of the oceans and
the ceding of U.S. oceans to United Nations-based international law.
That background could inform
Podesta’s agenda in the White House, where he is to serve for one year as a
“counselor” to the president.
John Podesta’s decision this
week to join the White House staff will not only elevate the
importance of climate change within the Obama administration, but it could have
much broader implications for the president’s environmental policies.
Podesta played a critical role in
shaping Bill Clinton’s environmental record while serving as White House
chief of staff between 1998 and 2000, pushing for the designation of
several national monuments as well as a national roadless rule that preserved
tens of millions of acres of national forest. Since leaving the White House and
founding the liberal think tank in Center for American Progress in 2003,
Podesta has made climate change one of his top priorities for the past decade.
He is also a member of the Joint
Ocean Commission Initiative, which seeks to ratify U.S. laws and regulations
governing the seas.
“I am delighted to be joining the
Global Ocean Commission, which I see as one of the most dynamic initiatives
developing commonsense ways to manage fully 45 percent of the globe that
remains common property, outside any national jurisdiction,” said Podesta when
he joined the commission.
Brought in by White House chief of
staff Denis McDonough — a former CAP staffer — Podesta will focus on how the
administration organizes itself to deal with how to implement its agenda in the
second term and its opportunities to exercise executive authority, according to
an individual familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity because of its
sensitive nature. He will focus particularly on climate change given the fact
that it involves both of those factors, this individual added, and is a
longtime focus of his.
Gene Karpinski, president of the
League of Conservation Voters, said in an interview Tuesday that he and other
environmentalists are “thrilled” at Podesta’s one-year appointment. “He’s well
versed on a range of issues, and he shares the president’s values on
issues like climate change.”
In the past, Podesta has privately
urged Obama and his aides to appoint a senior staffer to oversee the
administration’s climate efforts, and he has encouraged them to use the
president’s executive powers given congressional Republicans’ resistance to the
White House’s agenda.
In many ways, Podesta has now
fulfilled the environmental community repeated call: that Obama fill the vacuum
left by former White House climate and energy czar Carol Browner’s departure by
installing an influential environmentalist in the president’s inner circle. “He
was the most effective chief of staff of all the Clinton years,” wrote former
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in an e-mail. “It is a great idea to bring him
in close.”
Podesta is also eager to use the
executive branch’s powers to promote the president’s environmental agenda. In
an interview this fall, Podesta told The Washington Post that Obama’s “path to
success” in his second term “is going to come through every single place that
you can squeeze some authority which he has. That is where you’ve got to focus
your attention and where you could spend your political capital.”
For that very reason, energy
industry officials such as Tesoro Corp.’s vice president and counsel Stephen H.
Brown are worried about Podesta’s move to the West Wing.
“The ‘climate creep’ agenda of this
administration — the agenda of implementing climate change
initiatives via regulation and executive order that which cannot
be successfully legislated — continues unabated and with an eye toward a
calendar that, thankfully, runs out in January 2017,” Brown wrote in an
e-mail.
And while climate policy is
Podesta’s highest profile assignment, he could influence the president’s
decisions on issues ranging from whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline to
whether to block a massive copper and gold mine near Bristol Bay, Alaska.
While he has not specifically
campaigned against Keystone XL, Podesta has spoken in scathing terms of the
carbon-intense oil the pipeline would transport, and he co-wrotean opinion
piece in the Wall Street Journal with billionaire and climate
activist Tom Steyer emphasizing the U.S. would be better off
producing renewable energy at home rather than importing more fossil fuels.
Steyer has given millions to CAP during Podesta’s tenure; the think tank just
co-sponsored a conference this month at Georgetown University with Steyer’s
NextGen Climate Action, entitled ““Can Keystone Pass the President’s Climate
Test?”
“Our economy can go from being
weighed down by oil imports to soaring ahead, powered increasingly by
domestically produced clean energy, and energy services and technology,” the
two men wrote in the Jan. 24, 2012 piece.
Podesta was even more harsh about
Canada’s oil sands in a June 23, 2010 speech. Speaking at a
Canadian-sponsored conference on “Greening the Oil Sands”:
“I’m skeptical about a ‘green’
vision for tar sands, and I want to level with you about how I see the future
of energy policy playing out,” he told the audience. “How we choose to produce
and consume energy today will change the world for either good or for ill for
coming generations. … Failing to curb our dependence on fossil fuels will
create a world dramatically different than the one we’re currently accustomed
to; one in which sea level rise, extreme weather, and reduced resource supplies
will not only cause irreparable harm to ecosystems around the globe, but also
tremendous human suffering and conflict. We need to do our best to absorb the
weight of that fact and incorporate it into our decisions.”
CAP has also questioned the
wisdom of allowing mining near one of the world’s biggest wild salmon
fisheries in Bristol Bay; the Environmental Protection Agency will have to
decide whether to block a federal permit for the project within the next couple
of years.
One former White House officials
warned that environmentalists shouldn’t forget the fact that during Podesta’s
time as chief of staff, the Clinton administration made plenty of compromises
with Republicans. “They were very adept at making deals,” the official said.
But David Hayes, who served as
Interior’s deputy secretary under both Clinton and Obama, wrote in an e-mail
that Podesta’s record in the late 1990s suggests he will leave a lasting
environmental mark on a Democratic administration once more.
“John Podesta’s return to the White
House is an early Christmas present for everyone who cares about the
environment,” he wrote. ”John has a clear-headed commitment to
environmental values, and he sticks to them, through thick and thin, as he
proved time and again as chief of staff to President Clinton.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/12/10/what-podestas-wh-return-means-for-obamas-environmental-policy/
Comments:
This is one more step toward global Communist governance
outlined in UN Agenda 21, based on the global warming hoax. It’s time to quit
the UN. Too many US commercial fishing operations have already been closed and
put US family businesses out of business.
The UN wants to close down all US fishing operations. The UN is a corrupt organization and can’t be
trusted to monitor anything, much less be in charge of anything. The UN wants to own everything, so they can
charge “taxes” for using everything.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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