How can the next president use the transition between administrations to ensure climate change will be a top tier issue during his first year in office? How should budget priorities be reallocated to include climate initiatives? During today's OnPoint, Clean Air Cool Planet's executive vice president, Brooks Yeager, discusses a new report outlining recommendations for the next president for tackling climate change during the transition period. He explains why the transition will be so key to the future of climate policy and discusses the successes of previous transition teams.

Transcript

Monica Trauzzi: Welcome to the show. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With us today is Brooks Yeager, executive vice president of Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming. Brooks, thanks for coming on the show.

Brooks Yeager: Thank you Monica, glad to be here.

Monica Trauzzi: Clean Air-Cool Planet recently released a report outlining recommendations for the next president for tackling climate change. And it specifically focused on the transition period, the first 150 days that the president-elect has. This is an interesting time for this issue because both candidates have signaled that they'd like to do something about climate change.

Brooks Yeager: Yes.

Monica Trauzzi: But why is the transition such a key phase in order to get this issue off the ground?

Brooks Yeager: Well, climate change is a very complicated issue and it's going to require really a lot of the resources and intellectual expertise of the executive branch and of the incoming White House to focus on it to make it a successful top-tier priority. Our belief is that this is an issue that deserves top-level attention. We're facing climate change at a level that really has the science community very concerned. Every day we get new news about that in the form of ice sheet melting in the Arctic or the commitments to sea level rise. But to make it a successful top-tier priority we have to recognize both the opportunity that comes with a new administration and the challenge of putting forward an issue like this at a time when Americans are also concerned by high energy prices and the economic situation, the turmoil that we find ourselves in.

Monica Trauzzi: Is there a specific candidate who you believe would be more successful at propelling this issue forward?

Brooks Yeager: Well, we're a bipartisan organization, actually a nonpartisan organization, and we had the opportunity because both candidates in this election have been committed to doing something about climate change and have a history of action on the issue. We designed this report so it could be picked up by either candidate, whichever is elected by the citizens tomorrow.

Monica Trauzzi: So, the 150 day clock starts ticking on Wednesday.

Brooks Yeager: Yes.

Monica Trauzzi: What should the president-elect start doing on Wednesday specifically with respect to climate?

Brooks Yeager: Well, we think the first thing is that the president needs to have, within his transition, a team devoted to climate change and that's because this isn't a normal issue. It's not just an energy issue. It's not just an environmental issue. It's an issue that bears on the revitalization of the economy, our future energy strategy, and restoring our environment. So, it needs input from both the environmental side of an administration and the economic side. And we think that's best done by building a team in the transition and, ultimately, a team in the White House that can work on this.

Monica Trauzzi: You've mentioned the economy a couple of times. How likely is it that the climate change issue could be put on the backburner because of the economy? Because if we want to put a cap and trade through, it's like we're going to cost money. How do you sell that to the American people?

Brooks Yeager: Well, there is some danger that just the sheer concern about both energy prices and the economy will end up making climate change less than a top-tier issue. We think that would be a mistake and we think there's a way to manage the issue so that it becomes part of our economic revitalization strategy and part of our energy diversification strategy, rather than something that's opposed to those two things.

Monica Trauzzi: The report says that a new and constructive approach to climate is critical. What specifically needs to change? Because we saw a couple of pieces of legislation in the last session of Congress that sort of got the ball rolling on climate change, did those pieces of legislation provide a good starting point and where do we need to go from here?

Brooks Yeager: Well, we think the legislation that was introduced and discussed last year was a good starting point at the time, but since then much has changed. And we think that legislation does need to be reframed and, in fact, we suggest in here that the president would do well by creating what we call a hybrid cap-and-trade possibility. That is, a possibility where we would use a cap-and-trade program to control carbon emissions to control carbon emissions, we would auction the permits rather than giving them away free to industry, and recycle the auction revenues to the American people in the form of income tax reductions and other means that would help keep the economy growing while we're reducing emissions.

Monica Trauzzi: You mentioned the transition team, the people that the president-elect would be putting in place to handle this issue. How important are those people in terms of propelling this initiative forward? And is there a dream team of sorts that you have in mind for who could really get this thing off the ground?

Brooks Yeager: Well, I'd say we haven't tried to name names in this report and we didn't think that was particularly useful at the time we were writing it, but we are focused on how to make a White House effort and then the interagency effort successful. Clearly, there are positions that are very important. We suggest in here that one possibility would be in the White House to create a White House energy and environment council that would have the responsibility for developing the administration's package of climate change initiatives. And the idea there, again, is to bring the economic side of the White House together with the environmental side of the White House in a way that puts forward a package that is ambitious in doing something about the issue, but realistic in the sense of the way it approaches the economics of what we do about the issue. We think, in doing that, the transition is important only in so far as it sets up the White House decisionmaking process and it's the process, of course, in which the president picks his key leaders in the area. And there we've suggested there's a certain set of positions throughout the government that if you want climate change to be a top-tier priority you have to pay good people for those positions and make those nominations early in the process so that you get your team in place as soon as possible.

Monica Trauzzi: Do you see a lot of Clinton administration folks re-emerging?

Brooks Yeager: Well, that would depend on who wins the election, which, of course, we don't know it yet. But even at that, I suspect that if Senator Obama is the victor on Tuesday, I suspect there will be some Clinton people involved, but not necessarily a majority. I think that enough time has passed and there are lots of reservoirs of talent to draw from in composing an administration.

Monica Trauzzi: In the report you point out that a successful transition period usually yields some very specific policy victories and you point out the fact that Republicans had been very successful at this in years past. Talk about that a bit and what we can learn from Republican administrations that have led them to be more successful in this area.

Brooks Yeager: Well, one of the unique features perhaps of this report is that we drew on over 40 expert interviews in taking a look at the issues that were outlined. And we did that in a bipartisan way. We wanted experts who had served in previous administrations for both Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle and also from the academic community who had studied transitions and even from the energy community. And I think one of the reflections that came out of various transitions, and I was in the Clinton transition, so I have some personal memory of this, is that, in a general sense, Republicans have tended to be more focused in their transitions and clearer about identifying their top priorities early in the game and that that resulted in some early success, for instance, for President Reagan. We think both transitions can be focused and we think this issue should be one of the top issues that they focus on.

Monica Trauzzi: Final question here. The international angle of the discussion is an important one because 2009 has been sort of set as a benchmark amongst the international community to develop a post-Kyoto policy. How does the U.S. position itself to successfully reengage its international partners in order to come to the table in either 2009 or 2010 with something that the international community is going to be happy with?

Brooks Yeager: Well, we think the new president will have some space, a few months of an international honeymoon to operate in, in the sense that they will be able to put forward a new policy. The world at large is really quite restive about the policy that we've had for the last eight years, which has been a do-nothing policy. Either candidate will change that, but it's very important in doing so to reach out for practical possibilities for success. There is also a tide of pent up expectation about what the U.S. will be able to do. We won't be able to turn on a dime immediately. We will have new leadership, but in order to make international commitments that count we have to pass legislation here at home. So, we suggest that the president focus early on practical collaborations with other nations, including reviving and revitalizing things like the major economies process. And we're working on the domestic side to build a base on which we can make the international commitments that the negotiations require in the long run.

Monica Trauzzi: OK, we'll end it right there on that note. Thanks for coming on the show.

Brooks Yeager: Thank you, very nice to be here.

Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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