Companies have to take the lead on environmental regulation now that it's clear the federal government won't do it, former EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said.
The idea of companies regulating themselves is anathema to people who've been environmentalists for a long time, Jackson conceded, but who else is going to do it?
"I used to be a regulator. When I left EPA I made a joke: I’m going from the regulator to the regulated. Now there’s no regulator again. I really think companies have to be the regulator," Jackson said at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
A chemical engineer by training, Jackson lead the Environmental Protection Agency from 2009 to 2013. In 2009, she made the endangerment finding that recognized carbon dioxide as a pollutant subject to regulation. She's now Apple's vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives.
The EPA was created because companies couldn't be trusted to regulate themselves, she said.
"We need this arbiter. We need the environmental cop on the beat. But instead of crying because it’s not here, I think companies, leadership companies—and I think Apple has a unique role to play here—have to show that we're not going to do it the easiest way; we’re going to do it the right way."
Jackson's comments came onJune 29, one week before the scandal-plagued EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned. Pruitt's acting successor, Andrew Wheeler, is not expected to depart from Pruitt's policy agenda.
Watch Jackson in conversation with New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman:
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