Speaking on National Public Radio during the Republican National Convention last week, the former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator from early in the George W. Bush administration, Christine Todd Whitman, said she would like to see the EPA become its own department within the U.S. government (along with all of the rights and privileges bestowed upon them).

The idea of edifying the EPA into a department that has a seat in the President’s cabinet may not sit well with some of her Republican colleagues who fear that such a move would only increase the size of the government. However, the EPA has hardly been the model of efficiency and effectiveness since its inception in the early 1970s. A restructuring of the EPA that created a cabinet seat might offer the type of coordinating capacity that our federal government currently lacks, in terms of creating coherent environmental policy set in the context of climate change.

We’ve got a Department of Interior, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and so on. Why we have yet to bestow department status to such an important function of the federal government is confounding. And I’m glad I’m not the only one.

Whitman also said this week that there is clearly a direct correlation between hurricanes and global warming. And that she’s not as comfortable as she’d like to be with some of the decisions made by current EPA administrator Stephen Johnson.

Whitman is a bit of a loose green cannon for the Republicans. It is no wonder why she resigned from her EPA back in 2003 – she did it out of frustration because she couldn’t perform her job without political interference from her superiors.

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