Statement on Obama Energy Nominees

Obama Picks Browner, Chu, Leads America in Wrong Direction

Washington, D.C., December 15, 2008—President-elect Barack Obama today named Carol Browner and Dr. Steven Chu for top energy policy posts in his administration. That’s the wrong direction for America, explains Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Statement by Myron Ebell:

Today, as expected, President-elect named Carol Browner and Dr. Steven Chu to lead his administration’s energy and global warming team. They are well-qualified and capable. The problem is that Ms. Browner and Dr. Chu enthusiastically support President-elect Obama’s energy and global warming policies, which would push America in the wrong direction.

Mr. Obama has said that he wants to lower oil prices, yet his policies would raise gasoline prices to European levels of five or six dollars a gallon. His other global warming policies would send electricity prices through the roof.  Mr. Obama proposes to achieve energy independence from foreign oil, yet he has consistently opposed increasing domestic oil production. He proposes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically, yet hasn’t noticed that emissions are going up in the European Union and Canada, which ratified the Kyoto Protocol requiring emissions cuts. He wants to create 2.5 million green jobs (down from the campaign promise of 5 million), yet doesn’t recognize that this will be a net negative to the economy. Forcing consumers to pay more for “green” energy will mean less money in their pockets to spend at their local Starbucks or Wal Mart or on vacation travel.

Browner, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator under President Bill Clinton, is Obama’s pick to head a new White House post overseeing energy and environment policy. Chu, who runs the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, will be nominated to head that agency.

For more commentary on energy policy, visit globalwarming.org

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