Why Obama should appoint Bill McKibben as EPA Administrator

President Barack Obama should appoint Bill McKibben to replace Lisa Jackson as EPA Administrator, who announced her resignation on December 27, 2012, and here's the White House petition I started to make that happen:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/appoint-bill-mckibben-administrator-environmental-protection-agency-epa/hW5vp0p2

There are lots of reasons McKibben should be appointed, some are below. But let me be clear about something. Obama CANNOT appoint a green-washing industry shill to this position.

While EPA Administrator, Jackson blocked those Kentucky coal permits which caused Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to embarrass himself and the Democratic Party with he 2011 inaugural address where he told the EPA "to get off our backs."  (Beshear vs. Planet Earth)

Those blocked permits where not mountaintop removal permits (MTR), Obama's come up short there. What those permits pertained to were coal extraction that would pollute drinking water. Obama, through Jackson, was on the right side of fucking history there, and Kentucky Democrats who believe otherwise will someday omit what they did when they tell stories to their grandchildren. (More on Kentucky vs EPA) 

We simply must have an EPA Administrator that is not beholden to industry.

Back to Bill: (continued after the jump)

Bill McKibben and me, reclaiming belongings after our release from jail.

In 2011, McKibben organized two weeks of sit-ins in front of Obama's house where 1253 activists fighting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline were arrested, including himself. (Incidentally, I was his cellmate that weekend, although we haven't talked since a tweet exchange in the spring.)

McKibben is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. The Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was 'probably the country's most important environmentalist."
 
McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, including The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the book that brought climate change to the awareness of the general population. I wasn't exposed to the book until 2011 when my friend and fellow arrestee Tyler Hess loaned it to me. Ironically, I just returned it to him last night.

Hess and I had collaborated after the Tar Sands Action on an OP-ED we co-authored that was published in the Courier-Journal in September, 2011:Curtis Morrison and Tyler Hess | The monster below. (Grr. page 2 is gone. Complete text here.)  -->

Resources:
350.org
Bill McKibben's website 
Washington Post Op-ed: Bill McKibben | A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!