http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSTRE4B970320081210
By Kara Altshuler
Why is this significant? First of all, Dr. Chu is a scientist, not a lobbyist or former politician. This is significant because it represents a sea change in Washington politics.
For example, our current Secretary of Energy is Dr. Samuel Bodman, who was previously the Deputy Secretary of Treasury. Now Bodman's no idiot, he has a B.S. and a Sc.D. in chemical engineering, but his biography shows that after a brief stint as a professor, he switched to working for venture capital firms. So, he was more suited to helping with financial issues than he was being a big thinker regarding the pressing energy issues of our lifetime.
The Secretary of Energy before him? Spencer Abraham--lawyer, former Michigan Senator, and one of the founders of the Federalist Society--he's the one who basically let Cheney and the oil/gas industries run amok. So, for the last 8 years, we've been in the weeds, folks.
Dr. Chu, however, is completely suited to the task for which he has been chosen. He won the Nobel prize in physics in 1997 for work he did at AT&T/Bell Labs. He has been a professor at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Since 2004, he's been the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. While there, he and his team have aggressively been pursuing ways to combat global warming, and they've come up with some great results. He's big on energy efficiency--and he shows how research and development in this area can gain more energy than current alternative energy production in the US. How nice it will be to finally have someone in this Cabinet position with the intelligence to tackle the problems ahead.
http://www.lbl.gov/Publications/Director/
Once again, President-elect Obama shows that he's not paying lip service to the idea of change. We are going in a new direction come Jan. 20, 2009, and Dr. Chu is going to help.
By Kara Altshuler
Why is this significant? First of all, Dr. Chu is a scientist, not a lobbyist or former politician. This is significant because it represents a sea change in Washington politics.
For example, our current Secretary of Energy is Dr. Samuel Bodman, who was previously the Deputy Secretary of Treasury. Now Bodman's no idiot, he has a B.S. and a Sc.D. in chemical engineering, but his biography shows that after a brief stint as a professor, he switched to working for venture capital firms. So, he was more suited to helping with financial issues than he was being a big thinker regarding the pressing energy issues of our lifetime.
The Secretary of Energy before him? Spencer Abraham--lawyer, former Michigan Senator, and one of the founders of the Federalist Society--he's the one who basically let Cheney and the oil/gas industries run amok. So, for the last 8 years, we've been in the weeds, folks.
Dr. Chu, however, is completely suited to the task for which he has been chosen. He won the Nobel prize in physics in 1997 for work he did at AT&T/Bell Labs. He has been a professor at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Since 2004, he's been the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. While there, he and his team have aggressively been pursuing ways to combat global warming, and they've come up with some great results. He's big on energy efficiency--and he shows how research and development in this area can gain more energy than current alternative energy production in the US. How nice it will be to finally have someone in this Cabinet position with the intelligence to tackle the problems ahead.
http://www.lbl.gov/Publications/Director/
Once again, President-elect Obama shows that he's not paying lip service to the idea of change. We are going in a new direction come Jan. 20, 2009, and Dr. Chu is going to help.
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