Author Max Holland takes an advance peek at a new, not-yet-published book about the 9/11 Commission.
“In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, [New York Times reporter] Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in ‘surreptitious’ communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission’s 20-month investigation into the 9/11 attacks,” Mr. Holland writes. See “Commission Confidential,” January 30.
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.