Even Lisa Jackson is lying about enviro issues

Within Team Obama, I don't really expect the truth from the Secretary of the Interior, Kenny Boy Salazar. But, as part of a general screed about the Obama Admin's bad environmental policies, David Sirota notes EPA Administrastor Jackson is claiming she's unaware of any proof fracking for natural gas has hurt groundwater supplies.

She's probably using both "unaware" and "prof" in very narrow senses in her mind, so that in Washington-speak, she can claim she's not lying! That's the Village for you.

World climate plan clears hurdle, still weak tea

The weakest tea comes from the United States. Besides pledging to do less to cut emissions than EU members, or (it is expected, announcement later this week) Japan, America is guilty of, to use a football metaphor, moving the goalposts. What else can you call the Obama Administration wanting to use 2005, not 1990, as the benchmark year from which to measure cuts?

Indeed, that’s exactly the way the EU feels:

EU Commission representative Artur Runge-Metzger cautioned against moving the goalposts.

“It’s not about making numbers match and making them close to each other, I think at the end it’s a question of what's the effort behind it,” he said.

He added, though: “It's easy to say we start from a clean slate and we forget what the EU has been doing in the past, and what kind of efforts, what kind of economic burden we have been putting on ourselves in order to move forward.”

It’s clear Team Obama is NOT an environmental administration. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says CO2 emission is a serious health risk, but won’t do anything to regulate it, instead punting to Congress. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wasn’t a friend of the Endangered Species Act before he was first elected to Congress and he isn’t now. Economics czar Larry Summers, in past lives, made noises about environmental issues being means tested.

And, that brings us to this international foot-dragging.

When even the BushCo EPA slams your lack of action …

That must mean you’re Barack Obama’s choice to head the EPA!

Former New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Chairwoman Lisa Jackson is drawing criticism from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and others for her failure to do more about New Jersey’s toxic waste dumps.

“If the EPA is saying that New Jersey's enforcement is bad, you know there is a serious problem,” says Robert Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association, a New Jersey based non-profit that closely monitors several Superfund sites throughout the state. Spiegel says he had urged Jackson to take more immediate action on some sites, and that Jackson’s field staff had done the same, but their pleas had been ignored.

Jackson also has a fair degree of the classic neoliberal problem — wanting to outsource government functions (in this case, some of the toxic waste cleanup) to private industry.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club, doing its share of Gang Green lifing on behalf of Democrats, is trying to shift more blame to Jackson’s predecessor.

And, Jackson’s personal supporters blame Gov. Jon Corzine for having rhetoric but little action on environmental issues. Why, then, would Jackson quite her department to become his chief of staff? Oops.

There’s a number of good stories and comments linked from the main story; read some of them, too, for yourself.

I wouldn’t grade Jackson at an F, but I would, based on what I read, put her at the upper 70s or so.

Is that Change We Can Believe In? Probably not, but we’re being presented this as Change We Should Accept.