THE ASPEN INSTITUTE ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 2011

Transcription

1 THE ASPEN INSTITUTE ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 0 PROTECTING PUBLIC HEALTH AND INNOVATING FOR A NEW ENERGY FUTURE: A DISCUSSION WITH EPA ADMINISTRATOR LISA P. JACKSON Greenwald Pavilion, Aspen, Colorado Tuesday, June, 0

2 LIST OF PARTICIPANTS: LISA JACKSON...Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency MICHELE NORRIS Host, All Things Considered, NPR Author, The Grace of Silence

3 P R O C E E D I N G S 0 MR. ISAACSON: (In progress) -- but this is a panel that I've really been looking forward to. Lisa Jackson is an old friend, a young but long-time friend of mine, Pontchartrain Park in New Orleans, and after the storm we really bonded, because it was people like Lisa who helped rebuild the city. Yesterday, Michele Norris and I were talking about whose gumbo recipe is the best. Michele said, she made a really good gumbo and she knows, of course, that Lisa did, and I try to make gumbo every now and then, until we -- I was giving her the quiz, how much okra, you know, do you put oysters in it, whatever. Then I said to Michele, where are you from? And she said, Minnesota. (Laughter) MR. ISAACSON: So, I said no way. So, we're going to have next year at Aspen Ideas Festival, a gumbo bake-off where Lisa and I are going to go up against Michele and a partner of your choice. MS. JACKSON: Okay. Maybe Donna Brazile. MR. ISAACSON: Donna Brazile, who is --

4 0 MS. NORRIS: Donna, yeah. MR. ISAACSON: Donna makes it right. She has a book, "Cooking with Grease." MS. JACKSON: I know. (Laughter) MR. ISAACSON: It's got a really good gumbo recipe. But that's not why we're here. We're here to talk with the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, somebody who has both the wisdom and the political fingertip feel to help the agency in troubled times. She was a graduate of Tulane in chemical engineering. After she grew up in New Orleans, she has been to Princeton and, of course, was New Jersey. I think, Michele will probably give you more, but I just wanted to say a couple things about her. One specific thing, what I want you all to keep in mind, we've talked about grand environmental issues, but one of the most important that's not quite as sexy you get enough attention, is the notion of coastal restoration. And that is something that affects the entire country. It gets involved with global warming. It gets involved with population. It gets involved with

5 0 everything we do. And as we channel rivers and other things so that they work well for our navigation, it also means that our wetlands tend to degrade. Now, whether that's at hurricane season or because of climate change or anything else, that can be dangerous. Lisa has done something absolutely remarkable, which is after the BP oil spill, she put together an entire plan that involves some of the BP fines and everything else, and you were in Galveston just earlier in this week. So from Galveston to, you know, Miami, in a way. MS. JACKSON: Yeah, yeah. MR. ISAACSON: The entire Gulf Coast, the notion of doing that coastal restoration is unbelievably important, in allowing the silt to rebuild the islands and the wetlands and the reefs and everything else, so we all get protected better from storms, oil spills, any climate changes. So, you've got to watch this. It's going to come out in September-October, and people are going to be picking a part at it. They're going to say, oh, let's use this money instead to build roller coasters up, you know, in the middle of America, to create jobs or whatever. I

6 0 want you to watch that report and make sure that what Lisa has come up with for coastal restoration goes through. Now, I would like to introduce Michele Norris after my little editorial. Thank you. MS. NORRIS: Thank you. (Applause) MS. NORRIS: I feel like I pulled the best draw here at Aspen because I get to interview Lisa Jackson. You all know who she is. I hope that in the course of this conversation, you will learn a little bit more about how she does her job, and you'll learn a little bit more about Lisa Jackson as a person. Walter told you that she went to Tulane and Princeton. She is from New Orleans, but I know from spending time with Administrator Jackson that New Orleans never left you. MS. JACKSON: Yeah, that's right. MS. NORRIS: It is still very much a part of what you do. You are not new to the EPA. You now run the agency, but you spent many years in the EPA. MS. JACKSON:, years. MS. NORRIS: In New York. You were leading the charge for environmental health in New Jersey and were

7 0 about to take a job as a chief of staff for Governor Corzine, in New Jersey when you got a call from the Obama administration. MS. JACKSON: That's right. It was pretty remarkable. We had -- literally, just the president -- governor -- sorry -- had just announced me as chief of staff, and that was an extraordinary moment. It was the first African American chief of staff for the state. And if any of you know Jon Corzine, he was proud to be able to add that to the list of reasons for doing it. And I had to walk into his office and say, you know, I got a call today from the transition for the President-elect and, you know, I think they want me to help. And he looked at me, and I'll never forget, he said: You're not going to Washington. (Laughter) MS. JACKSON: And I said, no, no, no, of course, not, they just need a little help. He said, you're going to Washington. (Laughter) MS. JACKSON: And he was right, he was right. MS. NORRIS: Tell me about the department that

8 0 you inherited, the EPA that you inherited, and what you knew you had to change going in. MS. JACKSON: I think two things, well, maybe three. The first was an EPA that both inside and out, and especially inside felt as though their voice wasn't being heard, and more importantly, that scientific information wasn't driving decision making. And probably, one of the best-known examples of that was every five years under the law we set a standard for smog in this country. It's the ozone standard. Ozone is by far the biggest environmental cause of asthma, and asthma is still at epidemic proportions in our country, and especially amongst Latinos and African Americans, but actually it's everywhere. And the scientific studies that are called for by law said set a standard between 0 and 0, and the standard had been set at. Another good example was mercury, the past standards for mercury and air toxic emissions from power plants have been thrown out by the court. As had another really important set of regulations to deal with interstate transport of pollution, the idea that so many people in our country live on the eastern side of the country and about a third of the pollution

9 0 that they breathe, comes from sources that they can't control because it comes from the Midwest. That rule had been thrown out. So, on a number of fronts, and I could talk about water as well where the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act was very, very murky -- bad pun. We had a whole slew of business to do. So, we had work to do to fix and respond to court decisions, a huge backlog, but we also had a morale problem. And it was inside the agency, which I actually thought would be the easiest to cure, but outside because the Environmental Protection Agency is sort of like the CDC. If we lose the confidence of the American people that we are speaking truthfully to them about the challenges that we face, we really have lost most of the ability to do our job, which is to protect human health and the environment, to protect the environment and therefore keep people healthy. MS. NORRIS: When you say you had a morale problem, you mean the way that the agency was viewed outside or a morale problem inside the agency? MS. JACKSON: Right, both. I think that the morale problem inside was employees who had worked a long

10 0 time, whether it would be on climate change or water issues or mercury or whatever, whose work wasn't coming to the fore. They would see rules that they had worked on, go up to the third floor, which is where my office is, and be changed. And they never saw how those changes happened, so there was a transparency and integrity problem inside, but that you can fix with changes inside by management. What was harder was making sure that we didn't lose the confidence of the American people. And you know, I don't know if you've ever seen any of these polls, but poll after poll shows that EPA is a trusted agency by the American people. They believe that by and large, I mean, it's not absolutely overwhelming, there are a couple agencies that are higher, that EPA speaks with integrity, and you can't lose that. And that's what we worry about. MS. NORRIS: You came in with a five-point plan. There were five things that you wanted to take on. Why don't you tell our audience what it was that you wanted to do, and then I have a follow-up question on that? MS. JACKSON: Yeah, they are not really surprising when you think of EPA, but each point had

11 0 things we knew we needed to do. So, I just outlined for you a number of air regulations and standards, you know, guidelines, safeguards that were due to the American people. So we had a whole clean air agenda, to be strategic but be smart about resetting those safeguards, to deal what the law called for us to do and to answer these court cases. We call them the Alice in Wonderland cases because they were so scathing in their decisions that they literally just castigated the agency for how bad these rules had been written and how they did not follow the law. So, clean air was really to get us back on track. We set a separate strategy around climate, which was, you know, I came in as part of a green cabinet with the president and we all were and continue to be devoted to the idea that there are broad strategies across our agencies that can help move us to cleaner energy and lower carbon pollution. And EPA is a big part of that and we can certainly talk about our endangerment finding and the fact that most Americans don't realize that right now today, we regulate carbon dioxide pollution in our country from cars, soon-to-be trucks, soon-to-be cars again, and

12 0 from large industrial sources, like power plants, we're just beginning that process. We talked about the Clean Water Act. The number one environmental issue for most Americans is clean water. Most Americans can right now remember a place they went to as a child or used to take their children to or grandchildren or go to now, that's been closed, either because of nutrient pollution -- somebody told me the other day: Don't say nutrients, it sounds healthy. But, you know, it's when you see the green likes, toxic algae, you know, estuaries, bays outside of some of our most treasured areas, and then, of course, drinking water, and the connection between clean water and drinking water. We also set a priority around toxic chemicals because Americans are also very concerned about the predominance of chemicals showing up in their products, in their food, and in their bodies. Studies showed over 00 chemicals in the cord blood of women recently, and there is a really active and really vocal, sort of, mom's group, not only mom's group, public health group around the need for this country to more squarely face, chemicals, and how they're regulated and managed, which is

13 0 actually one of EPA's core functions. And we set a priority around what we call, expanding the conversation and working for environmental justice. And that was about making sure that as the country changes, we don't continue to see environmentalists as something that it was in, when people literally marched on Washington in Earth Day and caused -- their own government to respond, to address air pollution that you could see, and water pollution where we had rivers on fire, as you recall. But what environmentalism means today? What it means to a person who is in an urban environment, like I grew up? I grew up in the city of New Orleans. What it means to a person who may not be as blessed as we are today to see the beauty and the glory of the environment, how do we make sure that they understand and steward our natural environment and help us to protect it. MS. NORRIS: Did anything prepare you for when you laid out this agenda? Did anything prepare you for the political climate that you would find yourself in with the Republicans increasingly taking on the EPA, with people calling again for the elimination of the agency, and with the changing economic climate also, in an age of

14 0 economic turmoil, the companies are saying, we just can't afford these standards, it's not a time for this kind of thing. If you talk about innovation on one hand and if you talk about more regulation on the other hand, it's just too burdensome right now, given the economic changes in the country. MS. JACKSON: But I don't think "prepared" was the word. Certainly, you know, you are in Washington D.C. You know you are in a political environment. You know that there are elected officials, you are one of three branches of government. But what's interesting to me is the shifting nature of the sands upon which Washington are built right now. It's a moving target. I mean, things that were, I think, acceptable even years ago, maybe years ago, not to make it about any one party, are suddenly, you know, extremely shocking and extreme. I had made a career, believe it or not, out of being a pretty pragmatic person in New Jersey, which has its own share of environmental challenges. One of the things people always said about me was, she'll take any meeting, she'll talk to you, she listens, she makes a decision, she is principled, and yet, the same actions

15 0 through the shifting sands, through the changing lenses of Washington are now labeled extreme. I've been called all kinds of things and sticks and stones, but I don't think anything can prepare you because you don't know where it's going tomorrow. The mind keeps moving and it's moving in a direction that no amount of sitting and trying to be pragmatic and practical is seemingly helping to change. MS. NORRIS: Would you change the things that you laid out in your agenda, knowing what you would inherit, knowing how the political climate would change, but also knowing what happened with the economy? MS. JACKSON: With the economy? MS. NORRIS: Uh-huh. MS. JACKSON: I don't think so. I don't, I don't. I have a couple of fundamental beliefs in me. They drive me. Although I listen, I do believe that the history of EPA is 0 years of showing that exactly the opposite is true. This country has had an EPA for 0 years. It's had a Clear Air Act for 0 years, a Clean Water Act for 0 years. came the super fund laws, you know, name the law, it came around,,.

16 0 The most recent big environmental law was really in the, amendments to the Clean Air Act. So we haven't been able to muster that. You could, sort of, see that changing over time. We used to come together, new big political laws and things. We haven't done that for a while. But I really do believe that what EPA, because we get criticism from the left too, we're not doing enough and we're not moving fast enough on a number of issues, has shown that you can make progress on environmental issues. Ozone levels in our country are lower than they were when we started regulating ozone when Bill Ruckelshaus was the administrator. Water pollution is down from point sources but up from run-off. So we now have to switch to the issues of the day. We regulate pesticides all over this country. Every single day, we register and regulate pesticides. So I believe, and in that period of time, our GDP has gone up 00 plus percent. So when you're in a time now, where we are trying to pull out of this recession, grow our economy, grow jobs, it's important to be mindful that time is helpful that when business has certainty, they want certainty, they want a

17 0 level playing field, what are the rules, can I have the rules, but they also need time. And in some cases, I think, where we've been able to give people some amount of flexibility has been to say, okay, here are the standards, they're coming, they're coming in time. But I don't think that means you walk away from the standards, because we, you know, the job I have is actually to make sure that we don't sacrifice air quality in order to get those jobs, and to make sure everybody is working with that in their mind as well. MS. NORRIS: Can you achieve some of the things that you laid out without congressional action? MS. JACKSON: Oh, yeah, I think so. I absolutely think so. You know, we all joined the president in calling for a climate bill, a climate law in this country because it's the most efficient way to deal with the issue. But if any of you are veterans of the clear air wars for the Clean Air Act or the clean water wars, or any big environmental law, you know that those didn't come overnight. They didn't come because people started calling for them in one administration or another, it's almost as though, finally, at some point, the country

18 0 phased through its Congress the need to deal with it on a national level, I think that between EPA's actions under current statutes. So, for example, we are regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. Supreme Court says we can. Supreme Court says we should. We'll make progress, we certainly owe the American people clarity on the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. And it has been rewarded last week with a bill that I think passed the entire House or at least the committee to take away national bill -- the federal jurisdiction over the setting of water quality standards. Those are discussion we have to have, but the act is very clear. I mean, the Clean Water Act as it is will have to be amended. So, in some ways, it's almost the reverse question, can we do our jobs without having the laws rolled back, which is what the discussion in some quarters is. MS. NORRIS: And, you know, there is discussion also, some people think that what the administration would almost prefer is that some of these things be achieved through congressional action, even if it falls short of the goals that you were laying out so that it happens through the legislative body as opposed to being attached

19 0 directly to your office or to the administration. MS. JACKSON: You know, I think that might be a concern people have when it comes to climate because I don't know -- if you followed the climate law and the debates that were going on, one of the things that I never agreed with was this idea that EPA was the bludgeon, you know, either pass the climate law or EPA is going to get you. Pass the climate law or the Clean Water Act is going to be using your -- it's going to real pandemonium. We have worked really hard to not have that be the case, but I never agreed with that characterization because what it fundamentally does is make people go, well, maybe this Clean Water Act is the problem, and that's not a good thing. The Clean Air Act is the most cost-effective environmental statute that the American people have passed for themselves. It's our -- it's our law. It has saved by peer-reviewed estimates. It will save us $ trillion in health care costs, $ trillion with a T, by 00. Those are real and those are -- that's money, but those are lives. I'm the mother of a child with asthma. That's nice to not spend in the hospital hoping that child takes another breath. That's premature

20 0 0 deaths avoided, because one of the absolute causal links to premature heart attacks and death is fine particles in the air that we breathe. We don't exactly know how they kill you but they kill you. And so, you know, when you talk about things like that, you shouldn't play around in a poker game. That shouldn't be the ante, is the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is part of what it means to be American. We demand that our industries operate in a way that give us healthy air. We're not other countries, which frankly are now trying to figure out how to get back healthy air that they've sort of sacrificed, and I'm sure if any of you have traveled, you know some of those examples. MS. NORRIS: President Obama made a pledge at the Copenhagen International Climate Talks to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by percent by 00. Some wonder if that is a realistic goal. MS. JACKSON: Well, it's from a baseline that's I think from 00 levels. It is certainly doable, it's how you get there. And there are a couple of things. First, I don't want anyone to leave here saying EPA is going to get that percent by itself, because it's

21 0 absolutely impossible. Most of -- for exactly the reasons I said, most of our standards and safeguards are regulations. When we set them, they have time periods. Some are 0 years in the future. Our Regional Haze, when you talk about the Haze standards are -- I think 0 is the due date for when we'll all be able to see the national parks again. That's how long they go. So, it's not correct to think we're going to set a standard today at EPA. Even for power plants, probably the marquee issue right now, that's going to give that kind of reduction by 00. But it does, you know, it's just like the ship; it does change the direction of industry. It makes them look towards when a CEO or a board of directors or company managers are making their analysis, they say, okay, well, don't forget, we have to make sure we are in compliance with the mercury standards. They'll be done in years and come due. So, you know, that's how they actually work. Now, where we can make really wonderful improvements and where we have is on the cars. We'll soon be doing it for heavy-duty vehicles, trucks. We'll soon be proposing a standard for cars for the years 0 to

22 0 0. Those standards are always expressed in miles per gallon because that's how we have come to think of it. Remember, EPA estimated miles per gallon. It's the fine print on every commercial. But there are also standards expressed in grams of CO emitted per mile. So, we actually in this country are making our cars cleaner, and since the biggest sectors of greenhouse gas emissions in our country are how we get around and how we generate power, and the next one is actually refineries that, you know, we are making process, and we will, and those because car standards come into effect. So, by 0, we'll be making cleaner cars, but then it'll be, when you buy your new car. You may not buy a car in 0; you might buy one in 0. So, they phase in, and as you move to something like 00, you see enormous reductions in energy usage. MS. NORRIS: One of the things that happens when you join the administration, you never drive yourself. You're always in these big black SUVs and someone else is at the wheel. MS. JACKSON: I don't have one. I do not have a big black SUV.

23 0 (Laughter) MS. NORRIS: But I'm curious, what kind of car do you drive? MS. JACKSON: We have two cars. I always say it's the dichotomy of American life. We have a Toyota Prius, and we have a minivan. I think it's a Honda Odyssey. I have two kids. They are and. So, you know, practically, you need to be able to get six or seven kids around because they are at the age now, they do not travel alone. They don't want to be with me and my husband, right? (Laughter) MS. JACKSON: We are leaving to go to vacation and they bring friends, because god forbid, they should have to actually spend the night talking to us. (Laughter) MS. JACKSON: But -- so you need the minivan, but on the other side, the Prius, and here is the good news, when I talk to my -year old who, of course, is already lobbying for the car he is going to get when he goes away to school. He loves the Chevy Volt. So, it's kind of cool.

24 0 (Laughter) MS. JACKSON: Well, and that matters because if you can't get the young people to think they're cool, the styling of them are cool, you know, he wants a red one, of course. That's good news for us; that's very good news. MS. NORRIS: So, that was the message to you that young people are actually embracing these. MS. JACKSON: I think so, absolutely. I think, you know, we had to get past the Hummer phase. (Laughter) MS. JACKSON: Where -- (Laughter) MS. JACKSON: And you know, we still have some work to do and some of our pop idols to make sure they recognize how much influence they have on sort our culture, but you know, 00 TIME Magazine called it the year of the electric car. They had, sort of, what were the big marquee items. And I do think it's true that 0 was the year when many Americans who weren't living and breathing energy, went, "Oh, there is an electric car," "Oh, GM makes it," "Oh, there was a commercial during the Super Bowl." I remember in Thanksgiving, remember the

25 0 thank you GM commercial, I cried with goofy -- I loved that commercial. But I think all those things -- MS. NORRIS: You cried? MS. JACKSON: It was really cool because it was something I had never seen. It was our icon of American industries saying, we can do this. And you know, we still fight with them and we will, and that's the way the world goes. But when we set the next set of standards, we're saying to the world that this country finally is moving more aggressively. I shouldn't say, finally, is moving more aggressively than we have been in the past to make our cars efficient. And we can do it and still have cool cars that our -year-olds, you know, are going to ask for. MS. NORRIS: You've been at this for a long time. MS. JACKSON: Yeah. MS. NORRIS: And when you go in corporate offices, you know, people whether they are economic forecasters or they're involved in environmental policy or they're looking at in health care, there are moments where something happens in a space outside Washington where you

26 0 understand, okay, people are starting to change the way they think and the way that they do business. You know, reaching back to when you were working for EPA in New York to now when you're running the agency, where are those moments where you've seen change on the ground? In corporate offices when you go out and travel, you travel more than past administrators. You spend a lot of time on the ground. Where are the harbingers of change where you see those moments, where people are changing the way that they process these policies and where they're thinking about this in a very different way? MS. JACKSON: That was great. Let me give some examples there sort of just as they come into my head. I do travel a lot and I also have a lot of CEOs come to see me. We sent out a letter early on to CEOs and asked them to come or send people to see us. Here's a couple of harbingers. I think something like 0 percent of Fortune 0 or Fortune 00 companies have chief sustainability officers, you know, a title that didn't exist before. Now, some of them will say to you privately, yeah but I don't have any power, because I don't make money for the company. So, the question is, they don't make money by

27 0 making widgets, right? But they make money by saving on energy. So, your profit goes up because your costs are lower. So, one of things we have to do, and I'm really excited about this over the next year, is to find a way to help those CSOs, if they are chief sustainability officers, be a force in their company where the CEO or the board goes, "Oh, I like what Michele did. She just saved the company x million in costs. Therefore, you know, our dividends are higher." MS. NORRIS: So, how do you help them? MS. JACKSON: Well, sustainability as the industry defines it, as the private sector defines it, is all about not just doing good for the environment, but doing it in a way that's economically sustainable. So they're looking for how much do I have to pay right now to get cost savings and what's the payout time and what's the benefit. And we can help them show that and we can make sure that any standards we set are aligned with helping reward the people who think that way. And that's going to change. That's going to require a mindset at EPA just as much as at companies. So, now you got me off on a tangent because I want to go back to your other question, but we

28 0 have a study coming up from the National Academies of Sciences this year and it's on sustainability. Right now, EPA's work is all about stopping bad things from happening. It's a risk assessment model. We assess the risk from breathing bad air and we say, how much would it cost to get that risk down and lower, and it's all about risk management. What if our standards were based on accelerating the good things? What if? And I don't know how that would change us as an agency, it's a little scary. (Applause) MS. JACKSON: But because change is hard, but if you can get to that point -- and it's going to take time. It's just not going to happen while I'm administrator, but if we point this ship in that direction, we might find that all of a sudden, the momentum just takes over, and we have a much greener economy. So, there is that opportunity. So, see ourselves as a huge game changer. In agricultural America, I have now started to do trips out to -- I went to Iowa, I went to Central Valley in California. We have a couple of other planned. It's very interesting to see the young people who farm very

29 0 differently or ranch very differently than their parents. And it's not entirely an issue of age or generational, but there is a generational, maybe divide is accurate, but a very different way of thinking. Young people see stewardship as part of their job, so do their parents, but they see technology as their big assistant. They're bringing -- just like young people bring technology to us, they're bringing it on to the farm. And so I think that's going to be a game changer in that field as the next generation of farmers is coming. They're going to ag schools. I mean, they -- these ag schools are doing things to manage pesticides and waste and runoff that, you know, are literally setting the standard. So, we have to make sure we encourage that. We'll have -- you know, we'll have disagreements and discussions, but I think that's going to be a game changer in that field and empowering those voices to help their own sector, I think, will be very, very important, partly because of the mystique of farming and ranching in this country. It's going to have to come from within. I do think that the change in the environmental movement, if you will, to young voices, I went to hear

30 0 0 Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins speak this morning to voices that are all about engaging the community in the job and economic prosperity side of the discussion, taking the next steps from talking about green economy as a concept to putting that on the ground, is going to change the demographics of the movement. And if the demographics of our movement don't change, our movement is not going to survive, because the demographics of this country are changing. So, it's really important that we not think about environmental protection as something that comes at the end of the process after we got mine, "I've got mine. Now let me see what I can preserve," but "I want to be part of the process of getting -- my getting mine is actually because I'm helping to work in the green economy." MS. NORRIS: We're going to take questions from the audience in a minute, but I want to engage the audience in something -- on a topic that's very important to you. Lisa Jackson, you talked about changing the face of environmentalism in this country, and environmental justice, the concept of environmental justice is very important to you. A little bit of word association with

31 0 our audience, when you think of the word "environmentalist," close your eyes and what comes to mind? What does that person look like? SPEAKER: A tree hugger. MS. NORRIS: A tree hugger, okay. What does that person look like? SPEAKER: Looks like me. MS. NORRIS: Looks like you. (Laughter) MS. NORRIS: Woman with curly hair who is Caucasian. (Laughter) MS. NORRIS: What does that person look like? SPEAKER: Informed. MS. NORRIS: Informed. MS. JACKSON: Informed? MS. NORRIS: Does that person look like someone who lives in Harlem, or in inner city Detroit? SPEAKER: No. MS. NORRIS: No. MS. JACKSON: And yet I will tell you that in my travels, I've been to Harlem and done plantings and there

32 0 are green gardens springing up all over the place. I wish Phaedra was here. Is she here? I did that one with here. She is here. Oh, she is outside. Oh, yeah. Okay, sure. Or Detroit, where you talk about Detroiters for environmental justice, who are working so hard to include that in their policies; or Jackson, Mississippi, where their biggest issue is that in the gentrification of the suburbs, they have an old and aging water system that they can't pay for because all the ratepayers left and don't want to invest in that system. So, they don't have clean water and can't afford to meet their federal obligations, and so they're going bankrupt. Every single community, just like -- just like any environmentalist, every single community has somebody who looks up and goes, this shouldn't be -- this lot shouldn't be vacant -- contaminated and making me sick. The air here means I was in the hospital again last night with my child, or the water here, you know, is not healthy. And they get angry and they get active. But in the past, the voices in that movement that came forward were big voices that talked about big things like conservation and big things like air and water quality.

33 0 So, I think one of our other priorities, we talk a lot about empowering communities to help make their own communities healthier. And we really, really need to be willing as an environmental movement to let those other voices be the lead sometimes. And what will happen, and this is a little scary, you will hear people say, "Well, I'm not sure I can embrace this environmental thing," because what it means to them is that the environment is the only thing that matters. So you're asking me to say that I would give up my job, give up my home, whatever. You know, I get accused all the time that we're going to start going back to walking and we -- none of us can have TVs and you can't have a car because it's so bad -- you know, people think of the extreme of the environmental movement, whereas if we have a new kind of environmentalism, it is going to talk about jobs in our economy and it is going to talk about prosperity because those communities know that if they don't have prosperity, they don't have anything. They can't feed their families. So it's all of that together. We have to be willing not to see that as a threat that somehow we're deluding the movement, we're actually making it much, much stronger, I

34 think. 0 MS. NORRIS: How do you make sure that the people who lead the environmental movement as it's broadly understood, both in the non-profits, but also in Congress, the members of Congress who come from, sort of, open sky states, also think about the people who live in Detroit and the people in Harlem, and the younger people that are involved in the environmental movement and include their cause and their voices. MS. JACKSON: Well, one of the things I like to say about environmental justice is that -- the environmental justice is also to me about unfinished business. It is great to say that now, I don't know, let's say 0 percent, 0 percent of the country meets the daily standard for ozone, except for Houston, except for LA, except for the Central Valley, except for New Jersey, except for. So, you name all these big swathes of the country that tend to be densely populated. Part of the reason for their ozone problem is they have so many cars, all that kind of thing. Well, first off, that's not fair. That's an injustice that those communities are dealing with the

35 0 level of sickness and health care costs, and all the sort of tragedy that comes with it. But second, the wind does not stay in one place and water flows downhill. So, one of the things I say to people who love their open spaces and fight to protect the rural nature of their communities, "I don't want development," "I love it here," "I want to preserve this watershed," "I think conservation is the way for me to go," is yes that's right, but your watershed won't be healthy if upstream we are sacrificing the watershed so we can have industry or so we can mine, you know, do mountaintop removal practices. So, in those valleys where we are dumping all that mountaintop removal mining, there is the beginning of really bad water quality, and by the time you get down gradient, somebody is going to have that water. So we -- you know, you have to remind people that air blows and water flows downhill and maybe realize that this is, you know, what we did when we said we wanted a Clear Air and Clean Water Act was realize that I can't have clean air if you don't have clear air. And that's really, really important. And increasingly, with the exception of climate, there is huge regional transport issues

36 0 associated with, you know, water pollution and air pollution. MS. NORRIS: Administrator Jackson, I want to ask you about BP and the oil spill in the Gulf Region. You're from Louisiana. You're a chemical engineer by training. MS. JACKSON: I am. MS. NORRIS: And so this was a catastrophe that touched you in many ways, in many personal ways, and your role in the administration of this catastrophe will be examined for years and years to come. With the wisdom of time looking back, particularly in the early weeks before it was understood that this would be with us for weeks and even months. Looking back now, are there one or two things that you would do differently? MS. JACKSON: Sure, sure. I do that constantly. You know, I have to get outside my own head every once in a while. There are big policy things like maybe come to a better understanding with the US Coast Guard who are our partners in cleanup and, of course, in BP the Coast Guard was the lead because the BP spill happened offshore, so the way the law works, offshore them, onshore EPA,

37 0 establishing a better relationship with them about who might lead some of the onshore cleanup efforts, because I think when people see an onshore spill and they see somebody responding, they assume that that should be the EPA. And so I would have sat down early on with Thad Allen, who I got along with and have immense respect for, and said, "Hey, let us do what we do best so you can focus on what you do best. Let us take some of these areas and be the lead in cleaning up those areas." I think that would have helped a lot, and I think it would have been a better partnership. As it was, I just need to say for the record, I think the US Coast Guard did a great job. So, it is not in any way meant to be a knock against them, his leadership, any other strategic decisions, but it would have been an opportunity. Second, I think, you know, shame on us if we don't learn the lesson of -- we don't have right now the kind of response technology that allows us to assure people that they shouldn't worry when we use dispersants to disperse oil, for example. That was probably the piece of the response that EPA had direct control over. If at any point in that response, I really believe that

38 0 dispersants were harmful to the environment, to the point where if you look at weighing the whole picture, we should stop, then I could have done that. I had that authority, I think, under the Clean Water Act. We didn't test it, but we believe probably so, and Thad Allen and all the way up to the president, I think, respected that authority. I don't think we would have had to test it. I think, they would have -- MS. NORRIS: Can I ask you a question there though? Were you comfortable at one point when they were using a particular dispersant under, you know, deep under the sea, before you really had the testing that gave you full guarantees that this was not going to be harmful to the -- to life undersea or to people, you know, onshore. I mean, you were sort of flying blindly for a while there allowing the use of a dispersant that we really didn't know a lot about. MS. JACKSON: Yeah, absolutely. And it's the one decision that I actually do think -- most people wonder, well, do you wish you hadn't? I don't think so, because at the time -- and this was the hardest decision, do you stop using something, that NOAA for one, as a

39 0 fellow research agency, Coast Guard, certainly, the industry felt would really help, would keep this oil out of the wetlands, I love so much, out of the beaches that people in Alabama and Mississippi and Florida love so much. I mean, these nightmare, sort of, scenarios with just huge amounts of oil washing up, which we had, we certainly had bad pictures, but imagine that same picture across the Gulf Coast, just sheets of oil and, you know, some evidence that by injecting it, you would use less of it, which was really important to me and be more effective. So, what we did was we -- MS. NORRIS: Ejecting it under water as opposed to dropping it from the sky. MS. JACKSON: Yeah, because you got it when it was coming out it was -- there is a turbulent mixing zone, not to get too much engineering in there. That was the theory. And I called, you know, we called the experts, we talked to people at LSU, we talked to people -- I talked to people at Tulane, I called one of my old professors, I sit on the board of chemi (phonetic) there and we talked about fluid flow. And there was concern, but all you can do when you just don't know because you don't have the

40 0 0 science, is either say; yes, I'll try it with monitoring; or no, we won't. And we went for, yes, we'll try it with monitoring. And I believe that was the right decision, but it was a tough one. And I believe it was the right decision because we were trying to stop something that we'll never know whether it would have happened, which is a lot more oil coming on shore in ways that would have just devastated that coastline for a lot, lot longer period than it already has. MS. NORRIS: Are we better prepared now if the same thing, god forbid, were to happen again? MS. JACKSON: Yes, we are. We absolutely are. I don't think the President of United States gets nearly enough credit for his courageous decisions to do a number of things. Obviously, say we're not going to drill until we understand how to cap this. I don't think there is anybody who watched that parade of, you know, attempts by BP to stop the flow of the gusher who didn't say: Gee, it seems like we ought to be able to do this before. And I think the industry has really stepped up and designed caps that they believe will work, and I haven't followed that,

41 0 but I believe the experts who oversee them believe it. But dispersants are still in the mix. You know, we are doing testing to try to develop green dispersants. And my belief is that one of the things that we can do as an agency is, drive that chemistry. There must be a way to disperse oil without putting things into the system that we know are harmful to marine life. I would say one other thing which someone pointed out to me yesterday. When we look at studies, the amount of pollution flowing out of the Mississippi River into the Gulf is not insignificant. The Mississippi River picks up all kind of pollution, from publicly owned, from sewage treatment plants and run off all the way down. And when you look at the amounts of pollution, the River dwarfs that. So, what was going on here, which is sort of a fundamental piece for I think environmentalists is, first of all try to do no harm, leave no footprint; make sure that in the response you don't make it worse. And that's where I could never get -- there was some frustration with BP because they seemed to feel like we should just say to people, you know, well, this works and it helps, just be

42 0 quiet. And I kept saying to them, the people of the Gulf region don't know much but they know it sure doesn't feel good to put millions of gallons of something else in there unless you absolutely have to. So, our fight turned out to be -- no, not fight, but our challenge turned out to be day by day, how do you make sure BP doesn't, because they really believed that it was good, use more than they had to. How do you make sure that if you're going to at least minimize it, you don't maximize it, and that's hard. MS. NORRIS: You talked just now about courageous actions that President Obama has taken. There is one person who says that the administration has not been courageous enough when it comes to environmental policy and climate change. I'm talking about former Vice President Al Gore. Did you feel personally stung when he leveled that criticism at the administration, and tell me why you think he is wrong. MS. JACKSON: Personally stung, no, but that's because my personal armor is much higher than that, if, you know, compared to some of the things I have been said to my face, this is pretty mild stuff. (Laughter)

43 0 MS. JACKSON: And that's not -- you know, it's funny but that's a mark of the lack of civility I think that's happening in someway. So you can't take anything personally and I don't think we should. I think this is obviously the cause and the passion of the Vice President Gore's life. I think what he was saying is that, and it's something that frustrates so many of us including the president, is that there is a very well-financed effort to sow doubt in the mind of the American people about that which percent of scientists who are experts in the field, agree is happening. And you know, it is not unlike other issues. I mean, look back at cigarette smoking, or look back at -- there are still people today who will tell you cigarette smoking is not harmful. So, there is always going to be a minority of people, voices, well-educated, smart people who disagree, but the overwhelming science is not only that the climate is changing but it is changing faster than we thought, that we are on a bit of an acceleration. The concern is that, and this is true for me as well, oftentimes, when I speak to communities, I talk about air pollution that's much more present. It is really hard when the economy is

44 0 the way it is to talk about a threat that will manifest itself in 0 years. Even though as people, as human beings, we all worry about our children and our grandchildren. It's a little hard to worry about them when you're worrying about the house you have right this second, right? So, that was to me what I think is missing. It's not that the president of the United States doesn't get the opportunity to this moment. He went to Copenhagen. He personally engaged. He ran a campaign on the promise of clean energy for this country, and for whatever set of reasons the electorate is coming on a little slower than we might want. They are not demanding. They are not marching on the capital like they did in Earth Day and demanding that the elected officials take up this challenge. They will. I absolutely believe they will, but in the meantime, what the president has done is said, well, let's do what we can do. Let's make our transportation sector cleaner. Just so far, billion barrels of oil we'll never have to buy because our cars are. miles per gallon in 0 instead of 00. Now, we're looking at

45 0 another leap forward. Let's make our power sector clean. I like to use the term, the usual suspects. If you want to know who the big belchers of CO pollution are, where are the big belchers of mercury pollution, where are the big belchers of acid rain pollution, where are the big belchers of smog and asthma pollution, where are they? It's the same suspects. If we want a cleaner power sector, we can protect public health in a way that the American people will see right in front of them. And I think part of expanding the conversation on environmentalism, if I want to go and talk to people in Detroit or people in Jackson, I have to be willing to realize that their environmental priorities are the ones that are right in front of them, and that it is hard, really hard to explain until we let people like Phaedra get those green jobs on the street, how the other piece of it, this climate piece of it is so earth-changing as well. So, I do think that the vice president has played an incredibly important moral purpose in being that voice on climate and we should lift that voice up, but we are also not standing still. MS. NORRIS: Shall we take some questions from

46 0 the audience? MS. JACKSON: Absolutely. MS. NORRIS: Let's do that. There are microphones on either side and there is a question right here. The gentleman in blue, you were the first to raise your hand. Can you give us your name when you ask your question also? MR. VICE: Thank you very much, I'm Jeff Vice from Washington D.C., and I am a solar developer, solar energy developer. And I'm going to offer some comments on sustainability to your sustainability officers, because as a developer what I do is I give solar energy away for free. I go to my customers and I offer it to them for free, our capital and our risk, and then we charge them for the electricity that's produced. You know that model very well. We don't do it out of the goodness of our heart, we do it because we get an attractive return on investment to our investors, and our customers do it because they find in it an attractive return. To the sustainability officers' perspective, we have customers who are doing it and are trumpeting to their customers that they are now sustainable and are reducing their

47 0 carbon footprint and they are finding that they are improving both what the retention and that which they're able to charge. One example, and I'd be happy to introduce this person to you is the man that owns the BWI Hilton, where we've put solar energy. He put the solar energy and had us do that because he thought it was a good return for him. They now have a kiosk in the entrance of the hotel talking about solar energy showing, and he said, for the first time ever, people are gathering in the lobby of the BWI Hilton, which is a business hotel that people travel through and they are gathering there and they're talking about solar energy. And he finds that they're getting repeat customers and it's improving the performance of his hotel. So, from a sustainability officers' point of view, it's not just about savings, because you're right, it's very hard to talk about savings and to get people excited. But when you start talking about customers and retention and improved profits, you really get board's attentions. MS. JACKSON: Yeah, that's -- MS. NORRIS: Thank you for your comment. MS. JACKSON: That's a really interesting