Obama becomes bolder on the environment

President Obama's environmental policies are likely to play a prominent role in defining his second term, even as the budget, immigration, and health care still dominate the current political debate. When Gina McCarthy first met with Obama in the Oval Office on Jan. 10 to discuss the prospect of heading the Environmental Protection Agency, she recalled, "the first words out of his mouth was the need for EPA to focus on climate." "He sees this as a necessary part of his legacy," she said in a recent interview. Cutting carbon emissions and preparing for the impacts of climate change are the biggest environmental policies the president is pursuing, but not the only ones. His deputies are laying the groundwork to manage public lands across broad regions, drawing on high-tech mapping to balance energy interests against conservation needs. They are also preparing to weigh in on a controversial mining proposal in Alaska. In the administration's first term, it framed climate initiatives as ways to promote energy independence or cut consumer costs. It also made modest concessions to business interests, such as rejecting a controversial smog rule that would have affected a broad swath of industries and delaying other regulations. Agency heads have been given very different guideposts for the second term as Obama deputized a new team of Cabinet members to enact a series of rules and policies aimed at tackling global warming. In his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, Obama has a policy manager who has written and contributed to several pieces on climate change as a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank in 2006 and 2007. He is a sharp contrast to former Obama chiefs of staff William Daley and Rahm Emanuel, both of whom privately saw global warming as a political liability for the president.

His deputies are laying the groundwork to manage public lands across broad regions, drawing on high-tech mapping to balance energy interests against conservation needs.

Not sure, but that sounds like the Blueprint For Balance, which means more monuments. You can read about it here. And guess who is pushing this policy? The Center for American Progress, McDonough's former employer.