Obama's Environment and Energy Team

Looks pretty good so far, although it is all conjecture at this point still but it is also true that most all of the transition leaks have proven accurate to date.

That doesn't change the fact that I think the lede to the WaPo story this morning is disingenuous at best. Under the headline Nobel Physicist Chosen To Be Energy Secretary Steven Mufson and Phillip Rucker write:

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next energy secretary, and he has picked veteran regulators from diverse backgrounds to fill three other key jobs on his environmental and climate-change team, Democratic sources said yesterday.

What's wrong with this single sentence paragraph? By opening with the statement "President-elect Barack Obama has chosen", the Post indicates that the selection has been made and announced and it is only at the very end of the paragraph that the authors offer the important modifier that this is all according to unnamed sources. That modifier, "Democratic sources said yesterday", should preface the entire paragraph. Which would then much more clearly and accurately portray the situation. Like so:

Democratic sources said yesterday that President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next energy secretary, and he has picked veteran regulators from diverse backgrounds to fill three other key jobs on his environmental and climate-change team.

I'm left to assume that the Post and the authors didn't want to open with the fact that they are reporting rumor under that big definitive headline.

Ok having blown off some steam, it seems like the energy and environment crew that Obama will be nominating and appointing are pretty tip top. Andrew Leonard has a good run down on Chu and they all sound pretty good in that WaPo piece. The WSJ's Environmental Capitol blog has a short post on what the new team will mean especially in contrast to the outgoing administration.

(I was going to tell you what Grist had to say but their site wouldn't load)