Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced earlier this month that she hopes to have a cap-and-trade bill blessed by her committee by the end of the year. Her announcement left room for criticism.

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Our guest blogger is Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

In his first days, Interior Secretary Salazar, the self-proclaimed “new sheriff in town” (note the cowboy hat), has made some welcome first steps. But these will be only feckless feints unless followed by meaningful action:

– In his first trip, he went back to Denver to read the riot act to Minerals Management Service staff where last fall’s infamous sex and cocaine partying with oil lobbyists was exposed. Salazar issued a new code of ethics that consisted of the previous rules, based on the curious notion that the revelers did not know what the rules were. Significantly, he was silent on sweetheart royalty deals that are costing taxpayers billions;

– He suspended 77 Bureau of Land Management oil leases near national parks in Utah. The Washington Post called this a “clear signal,” but on examination it is a bit more ambiguous. These leases were already enjoined by a court action brought by conservation groups and the Secretary withdrew them for further review, so they may be re-offered. Moreover, Salazar has not commented on the underlying BLM policies that have turned much of the Rocky Mountain West into a pin cushion; and

– Most recently, he delayed Bush offshore drilling plans for six months so that a “comprehensive” plan could be developed. His action takes none of the Outer Continental Shelf off the table and the final policy may call for just as many oil rigs off America’s coasts but sprouting wind turbines above the derricks.

When directly confronted with the first case of political manipulation of science – involving needed Colorado River flows through the Grand Canyon (charges leveled by the park superintendent no less) – Sheriff Salazar ducked. Meanwhile, the Park Service started a witch hunt for how PEER obtained the documents.

One big cause for unease is that Salazar keeps talking about “energy independence” as his top goal, similar to the Dick Cheney philosophy of maximizing energy production on public lands regardless of the toll. It is still not clear how much Salazar’s actions will ultimately differ from Cheney’s. With the top ranks at Interior remaining unfilled, who those slots go to may tell a lot.

[JR: Years from now, long after the economy has recovered, this moment may well be remembered as the time that progressives, led by Obama, began the transition to a sustainable economy built around green jobs. If, on the other hand, we don't stop catastrophic warming, that will almost certainly be because the conservative movement threw their entire weight behind humanity's self-destruction (see "Anti-science conservatives must be stopped") -- and the lopsided vote on the stimulus bill will be the first time in the Obama adminstration that conservatives in both chambers signaled their willingness to sacrifice the future for their ideology. This post detailing the green elements of the stimulus bill, including an excel spreadsheet, by the Center for American Progress's Daniel J. Weiss and Alexandra Kougentakis, was first published here.]

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