White House climate change coordinator resigns
Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change policy, is resigning.
Ms. Browner, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was charged with directing the administration’s effort to enact comprehensive legislation to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases and move the country away from a dependence on dirty-burning fossil fuels. Failing to pass climate change legislation last year, and in the face of new Republican strength in Congress, it is unlikely that major climate change legislation will pass in the next two years.
The E.P.A. is under siege by Republicans who are deeply sketical about climate change and strongly opposed to environmental regulation. They believe the EPA is strangling job creation by imposing costly new pollution rules and we can expect the administration to be defending the modest policy gains of the past two years rather than advancing new proposals.
No doubt the nation’s eyes will be on Texas as they continue to be locked in a death match with EPA over greenhouse gas regulation.