President Barack Obama’s appointee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Jane Lubchenco, met with the media on Oct. 26 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography to discuss her leadership of NOAA. Lubchenco said the president is “serious about climate change,” and that the public is demanding to know more information about how effects of climate change, such as heightened droughts and floods, will affect their community and economy. Lubchenco spoke about the White House’s unveiling of the science report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” in June as an example of the president’s dedication to tackling climate change. “[The president] believes that the science that has been made available to the world… on climate change is all compelling enough to take serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to create policies to adapt to climate change that we already know is underway,” she said. Obama has also established an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, led by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, to approach the ocean’s problems from a holistic view that pulls together the various stakeholders, rather than a piecemeal, issue-by-issue approach, Lubchenco said. Twenty federal departments and 140 federal laws are charged with regulating the ocean, which has created a “hodgepodge” approach, Lubchenco said. NOAA has also added four new members to its leadership team. Lubchenco said the executive branch of NOAA had not changed since 1970, despite the growth of the organization’s budget from $250 million to $4.5 billion. NOAA added a new assistant secretary for conservation and management, a new assistant secretary for observation and management, plus a new senior executive. NOAA also filled the position of the chief scientist, which had not been filled for the past eight years. Lubchenco was raised in Denver, Colorado. She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Colorado College, a master’s degree in zoology from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in ecology from Harvard University. She taught at Harvard from 1975 to ’77 and Oregon State University from 1977 to 2009.
