Interview: Obama’s Science Adviser Urges U.S. Leadership on Climate

Six weeks after he was elected, President Obama nominated John Holdren to be chief science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Many scientists hailed the timing of the nomination — George W. Bush waited almost a year before naming Holdren’s predecessor — and the choice of Holdren, too, was seen as encouraging: He was trained in plasma physics, is a professor of environmental policy at Harvard, and is a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Holdren is now one of several high-ranking Obama administration officials moving aggressively to combat global warming and to wean the country off fossil fuels. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, conducted by New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert, Holdren talks about the cap-and-trade bill that recently passed the House, the crucial role the U.S. and China will play in the upcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen, and how the administration plans to convert the U.S. “from the laggard that it has been in this domain” into “the leader that the world needs” on global warming.

Read the full interview.