Top 5 Reasons Steven Chu is a Great Energy Pick
Belief:
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
Greta Christina
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams
David DeGraw
DrugReporter:
When It’s Crunch Time at College, Students Turn to Adderall
Erik Hayden
Environment:
20 Weird, Crazy Ideas for Helping the Earth
Food:
The War on Soy: Why the 'Miracle Food' May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare
Tara Lohan
Health and Wellness:
Pharmaceutical Giant Paid $500,000 to Psychiatrist Who Used Chicago's Poor as Guinea Pigs
Christina Jewett and Sam Roe
Immigration:
Dobbs' Resignation Was Long Overdue
Janet Murguía
Media and Technology:
Is Right-Wing Media Hustler Trying to "Blackmail" Obama's Attorney General over ACORN Videos?
David Edwards, Muriel Kane
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
New Right-Wing Craze: Using Bible Quote to Pray That Obama’s 'Days Be Few'
Amanda Terkel
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Hey Guys, Don't Want Kids? A Vascetomy Is Probably the Way to Go
Anna Clark
Rights and Liberties:
Economic Crisis Is Getting Bloody -- Violent Deaths Are Now Following Evictions, Foreclosures and Job Losses
Nick Turse
Sex and Relationships:
How Abstinence-Only Programs Perpetuate Dangerous Stereotypes
Martha Kempner
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Army Sends Mom to Afghanistan, Infant to Protective Services
Dahr Jamail
Obama will formally name Steven Chu his nominee for energy secretary at a press conference this afternoon. Here's the top 5 reasons he is one of the best cabinet picks in recent memory:
5. His "views on climate change would be among the most forceful ever held by a cabinet member." He said last year, scientists had come to "realize that the climate is much more sensitive than we thought" [see Scientists are Underestimating Climate Change, Part I]. He said people who said they were uncertain whether climate change is being caused by humans were "reminiscent of the dialogue in the 1950s and '60s on tobacco." In a speech earlier this year, he said that climate change of the scale we face "will cause enormous resource wars, over water, arable land, and massive population displacements…. We're talking about hundreds of millions to billions of people being flooded out, permanently.
4. As a Chinese American and Nobel Prize winner, he will be uniquely poised to help enable the crucial energy and climate negotiations the Obama team must undertake immediately with the world's other big emitter (see What will make Obama a great president, Part 2: A climate deal with China). The AP reports from China:
China's media are cheering President-elect Barack Obama's pick of Chinese-American Steven Chu for the post of U.S. energy secretary, saying it bodes well for future cooperation between the two countries.
Photographs of Chu, who was born in St. Louis to Chinese parents, were printed on the front pages of major newspapers Friday, illustrating the pride China takes in the achievements of the vast Chinese diaspora.
The state-owned China Daily cited Chinese academics as saying Chu's ethnic background would ease cooperation between China and the U.S.
"Chu's presence will make the cooperation smoother," it cited Tsinghua University scholar Zhou Shijian as saying.
See more stories tagged with: energy, global warming, climate change, chu
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
You've chosen to turn comments off for the entire site. Would you like to turn them back on?
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.