Radio Actuality
Interior Launches Climate Change Response Strategy
09/14/2009
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar launched the Department of the Interior’s first-ever coordinated strategy to address current and future impacts of climate change on America’s land, water, ocean, fish, wildlife, and cultural resources. Secretary Salazar signed a secretarial order establishing a framework through which Interior bureaus will coordinate climate change and resource management strategies.
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Topic: Secretary Salazar says all departments will be connected in an across the board approach, working together and sharing information.
Transcript:
“The time where this department operated under silos is a time that’s over. What we do now within our National Park Service needs to be connected up to what we’re doing with water and science and USGS and Bureau of Reclamation and what we’re doing with the wildlife refuges of the nation. So the creation of this council will insure that we have the across-the-board approach to dealing with the challenges of climate change and new energy for our country.”
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Topic: Secretary Salazar says renewable energy is a primary focus of the climate change strategy.
Transcript:
“We need to have a comprehensive energy program that does everything we can with respect to renewable energy because renewable energy in fact is very good for our economy, because it’s going to create jobs here at home. We’re going to stop exporting the $500 billion a year that go overseas when we can become more energy independent on our own resources. So jobs and energy independence are very important but in addition to that, when we protect our children from the dangers of pollution, including global warming, one of the mitigation strategies to do that is renewable energy.”
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Topic: Secretary Salazar will chair the Climate Change Response Council and Deputy Secretary David Hayes will be the Vice Chair. Hayes says decisions will be driven by science.
Transcript:
“What the secretary is doing with this secretarial order and one of the most important management related activities that comes out of this order is that he is helping all of the bureaus coordinate their activities so that we’re all heading in the same direction. We are applying our science across all of our bureaus, we’re taking full advantage of the land base and resource responsibilities of all of our bureaus and leavening in science throughout.”
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