Newsweek: The Green Fighter (Lisa Jackson)

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http://www.newsweek.com/id/235141

The Green Fighter

By Daniel Stone | NEWSWEEK
Published Mar 19, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Mar 29, 2010

Washington, D.C., is littered with the careers of well-meaning public servants who came to do good but fell victim to politics. Lisa Jackson is determined not to become one of them. As head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, she oversees the quality of America's air and water and monitors pollution levels. It's a job that endears her to green activists (and anyone who likes clean air and water)—but it puts her at odds with some of the nation's largest, richest industries.

For decades, big manufacturers and commercial farmers—who retain powerful lobbyists and make large contributions to the election campaigns of members of Congress—have pushed back against the EPA's efforts to enact stricter controls on pollution. In the George W. Bush years they often got their way, as the EPA rolled back on enforcement.

Now Jackson is out to change that. With the backing of her boss, President Barack Obama, she has announced that unless Congress acts by next January, the EPA will use its authority under America's Clean Air Act to phase in new restrictions on carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. It's an audacious gambit by a single agency—essentially a threat from Jackson to Congress that unless it gets its act together, she'll move unilaterally. The U.S. emits nearly a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide; late last year EPA scientists identified CO2 and five other less prominent greenhouse gases as a threat to public health, and Jackson has vowed to cut back on all of them. "The difference between this administration and the last is that we don't believe we have an option to do nothing," she says.

In making her announcement, Jackson and the White House weren't just putting U.S. polluters on notice. They were also sending a symbolic message to Congress and the rest of the world that, 12 years after it refused to sign the Kyoto treaty, and after offering virtually no concessions in Copenhagen, the United States is now taking climate change seriously. It was no coincidence that Jackson released the agency's research on the opening day of December's Copenhagen summit. "These long-overdue findings cement 2009 as the year when the U.S. government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform," she said then.

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