ASG Senior Counselor Carol Browner defends Obama's commitment to the environment

Obama Doing Just Fine with the Environment

PoliticoPro

By: Darren Goode

President Barack Obama’s former top climate and energy adviser Carol Browner defended his environmental record amid complaints from green groups that his “all of the above” energy philosophy does too much to help fossil fuels and not enough for clean energy.

“We all recognize that there’s a transition that has to take place from the energy we use today” to energy sources of the future, she said on a conference call with reporters. “I think the real question is the president committed to that transition? What we see is a real commitment to moving us forward.”

Browner was joined on the call — which was to promote the administration’s work on climate change and what still needs to be done — by League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski. He joined 17 fellow environmental community leaders last week in the letter to Obama that Browner was asked about on the call.

What was said in that letter “has been said before,” Browner said. “I don’t know if there was a lot new in it.” What’s important, she said, is “what the president is doing, what EPA is doing, what the Department of Energy is doing,” she said.