Cabinet members make cap-and-trade media blitz

The White House has dispatched cabinet members to make the case for the controversial climate bill making its way through the Senate.

Today, four cabinet members penned op-eds for large, regional newspapers promoting the climate bill, which barely passed the House a few weeks back.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu published a column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch arguing that the government must incentivize new sources of energy.

With the right incentives, the private sector will first seek out the lowest-hanging fruit. The quickest and easiest way to reduce our carbon emissions is to make our appliances, cars, homes and other buildings more efficient. In fact, energy efficiency is not just low-hanging fruit; it is fruit that is lying on the ground. And energy efficiency means money back in your pocket because you pay less on your energy bills.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson took to the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, promoting the pollution-reduction benefits of the climate bill.

"Clean energy can also cut dangerous pollution in our communities. It can bring relief to the millions of American children with asthma and cut smog levels that double the risk of premature births," Jackson wrote. "It can reduce the prevalence of cancer and other diseases linked to pollution from burning fossil fuels. That will improve overall health and lower the amount we spend on health care each year - another goal we all can support.

Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, writing in his home-state's major paper, the Denver Post, talked up the threat of climate change to land owners:

We are also seeing the dangerous consequences of climate change: longer and hotter fire seasons, reduced snow packs, rising sea levels and declines of wildlife. Farmers, ranchers, municipalities, and other water users in Colorado and across the West are facing the possibility of a grim future in which there is less water to go around.

But with comprehensive clean energy legislation from Congress, sound policies and wise management of our nation's lands and oceans, we can change the equation.

Finally, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, writing in the Des Moines Register:

This issue is too important for agriculture and forestry to sit on the sidelines. The opportunities it offers farmers and ranchers through a carbon market and a new energy economy are too promising to delay. Because, when we address climate change, we will not only fend off a looming climate crisis, but we will revitalize rural America.

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