climate czar

The state's climate czar, to the extent that it has one, is a thin, soft spoken man named Larry Hartig. He's the head of the Department of Environmental Conservation and a former Anchorage attorney who worked for oil companies on lease and permitting issues.
Gov. Sarah Palin, who's four months into her first term, is putting together a sub-cabinet on climate change, which Hartig will lead. When he announced the sub-cabinet at a hearing Thursday, he said he was a little surprised when he started his new job in January to learn that the state lacked a strategy for addressing climate change.
The only state entity really dealing with climate change is the Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission, which was formed last year by the Legislature to tally the impacts of warming and recommend ways to deal with them -- the chair made it clear early on that the commission wasn't going to address what was causing the climate change or how to slow it down.
The governor's group will consider ways to reduce emissions, although Hartig told me Wednesday that Alaska's contribution to fighting climate change might be different than that of other states. That is, imposing fuel economy standards in a state with 600,000 people wouldn't pack the same punch as doing it in California.
On a side note, people joke about the lack of attention the department got under the last governor, Frank Murkowski. A recent assessment of the DEC by a team of volunteers helping Palin take over claimed the department lacked funding and staff to the point that it struggled to carry out its duties.