As the NYT editorial notes, one advantage of having Obama in office (in spite of his embrace of homophobes) is that global warming will finally get its due.
Like Mr. Obama’s earlier appointments — in particular Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, to run the Department of Energy — these choices solidly affirm Mr. Obama’s commitment to aggressively address the challenges of energy independence and global warming.
The broader point, though, is what they say about his appreciation for the processes of science. That was not much in evidence in the Bush administration, some of whose appointees edited and suppressed scientific documents to serve the administration’s political agenda.
As Ms. Lubchenco observes, identifying a problem is not synonymous with solving it. But Mr. Obama has at least surrounded himself with serious scholars of some of the most critical issues of our times.
