On January 20th 2009 the 44th US Presidency will begin. What could the new President do in the first 100 days?

Here’s a good start: Refocusing on the Environment

1. Kick start federal action on climate change, plus give a kick in the pants of the EPA to get on with regulating carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act.

2. Appoint a climate change tsar (dear old Al G is always the preferred choice…), but more fundamentally set up an inter-agency coordination body on climate change (joining the dots and dashes).

3. Put domestic power utilities under stronger regulatory control (and a longer-term framework for cleaning up their act).

4. Restore and strengthen land management safeguards and increase local governance.

5. Boost funding for research on climate change science.

UPDATE (May 2008): The (self-styled) Presidential Climate Action Project

will continue to study climate-change policies over the next few months and will release the final draft of its plan for the next president in the fall of 2008. The objective is to give the president a thorough, comprehensive, science-based agenda for effective climate action to be implemented in the first 100 days of the new administration. It’s a bold, ambitious strategy, but the United States has to make up for a lot of lost time.

See FACET Commentary #8, May 2008