Earth Equity News

Obama to Name Cass Sunstein His Regulatory Czar. By Philip Elliott, AP, January 16 2009. "President-elect Barack Obama has tapped legal scholar Cass Sunstein as his administration's regulatory czar, a Democratic source said Friday. Obama hired the Harvard law professor to run the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the administration's central approver of rules that has say over environmental policy, workplace safety issues and federal health care policies. All major agencies' rules will pass across Sunstein's desk, giving him great influence in the new administration... He is married to Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign policy adviser who was forced to resign from the campaign when she called Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then an Obama rival, 'a monster.' Power has since rejoined Obama's circle, helping his transition team assess the State Department that Clinton would lead as secretary." Nudging Polluters. Commentary by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, ChicagoTrib, April 6, 2008. "To make progress on climate change, we need to address the problem's economic and behavioral aspects. The economic solution, which we support, is to line up incentives properly by getting prices right. The method preferred by most knowledgeable experts is a carbon tax, the equivalent of charging the dairy farmers for each cow they add to the pasture. A carbon tax not only helps solve the climate change problem, it also can be a source of revenue that could be used to lower other taxes, improve education or solve other social problems. But imposing such a tax would be politically difficult right now... So while we wait for the political climate to change, we can get started with more palatable steps."