Hill Heat

From the Wonk Room.

The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman “is returning to the Environmental Protection Agency” as “senior policy counsel to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, advising her on climate and environmental issues across the agency.” An official announcement is expected shortly. Before joining the Center for American Progress, Sussman was the Deputy Administrator during the Clinton administration, serving under Carol Browner, now President Obama’s White House energy and environment adviser.

Sussman was a regular blogger for CAP’s Wonk Room, writing on the Mary Gade scandal, the Bush administration, and climate legislation. Sussman challenged the argument that laws like the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act are not applicable to the threat of global warming:

The truth is that our environmental laws were not written to be static. They are flexible tools to address unanticipated or emerging problems that science identifies over time.

Sussman’s work for the Center for American Progress highlighted that approach. He crafted recommendations for regulatory and funding mechanisms to spur the development of carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal plants, “to reconcile reliance on coal for electricity with the need to reduce the threat of global warming.”