EPA chief Lisa Jackson has resigned. Is Obama's #climate silence to blame? Secret email account use?

  

There has been no fiercer champion of our health and our environment than Lisa Jackson, and every American is better off today than when she took office nearly four years ago. For that, we are deeply grateful to Lisa for her service, and to President Obama for having appointed her to this vital position.

Lisa leaves giant shoes to fill. And her successor will inherit an unfinished agenda that begins with the issuance of new health protections against carbon pollution from existing power plants—the largest remaining driver of climate change that needs to be controlled.

       – Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke

 

Congressional Republicans, however, won't be sad to see her go. Nor will the lobbyists who thought she was a "job killer." Caught between their hostility toward regulation and the Obama administration's lack of emphasis on climate change, Jackson was unable to nix the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a planned route for bringing tar sand oil from Canada down to Texas. When confronted on the issue, Jackson simply said that holding conversations about the project is "awesome." She also wasn't able to get the EPA to take meaningful action on hydraulic fracturing, even after the agency found evidence that the practice contributes to groundwater pollution.

- The Atlantic Wire 

 

One of her biggest achievements is that she succeeded in brokering a deal with automakers to double fuel efficiency standards by 2025. That's going to save consumers $100 billion a year at the pump, it's going to cut our carbon emissions from automobiles in half, and it's going to save us 3 million barrels of oil every day.

 

– Natural Resources Defense Council Assoc Dir Bob Deans

...She was the first administrator in decades to champion wholesale reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act. As that effort stalled in Congress, she redoubled the agency's commitment to review and regulate toxic chemicals through aggressive use of existing law. She stood up to polluters time and again—whether they were fouling America's air with smog or our drinking water hexavalent chromium—and simply because she was doing her job she became a target of anti-environmental ideologues. But to the people and communities she protected across the country, Administrator Jackson was a hero..

- Environmental Working Group's Ken Cook

EPA's vehicle greenhouse gas rules, will save consumers $1.7 trillion at the pump by 2025, and eliminate six billion metric tons of GHG pollution.

- EPA

A hero to the environmental movement and a constant thorn in the sides of Republicans and the energy sector, outgoing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson presided over one of the most controversial and dramatic periods in the agency’s history.

She made her mark by helping craft new automobile fuel standards, imposing a ban on new coal-fired power plants, and being among the loudest in calling for action to combat climate change.

But Ms. Jackson, who announced her resignation Thursday after four years at the helm of the EPA, also sustained several legal defeats and embarrassments during her tenure. Among Republicans and many in the fossil-fuels industry, she has dragged the agency’s scientific credibility to an all-time low after failed attempts to tie hydraulic fracturing to water contamination in Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania.

She also is departing as the EPA and two House committees investigate her use of secret email accounts.

Less than a year ago, one of Ms. Jackson’s top deputies, Al Armendariz, was forced to resign after promising to “crucify” oil and gas companies in order to set an example for the rest of the industry.

But those setbacks, as far as Ms. Jackson and President Obama are concerned, pale in comparison with the accomplishments of the past four years.

– Washington Times

 

Read more on: NPR, Mother Jones, Huffington Post Green, Fox News