First Person Singular: EPA administrator Lisa Jackson

WashingtonPost.com: First Person Singular: EPA administrator Lisa Jackson
My godfather, Father Joseph Verrett, encouraged me [as] a very young girl when he realized that I was academically gifted to be a scientist. very influential in just making me believe that that was totally normal. My pediatrician was a woman, and it just never occurred to me that women weren’t doctors or scientists, ’cause in my family and in our culture there were no limits on what I could do. It wasn’t unusual at all to think about science.

The definition of an engineer is somebody who can formulate a problem and then solve it. And usually the language of science and engineering is mathematics, so it’s the ability to take our problems and challenges, whether it be in the chemical world or the electrical world, and then solve them through problem solving. Some of the science-focused careers have the reputation of being emotionless, and so, in order to be a good scientist, you have to divorce emotions from the equation, and I don’t think that’s true.

Part of my message to young women is that your natural human compassion is actually a strength in solving problems, because it means you see more than just the technical challenges — you see the human challenges. So, when the president talks about energy efficiency, I can explain many reasons why energy efficiency makes sense in terms of controlling pollution and making our country less dependent on foreign oil, but oftentimes it’s about the things that matter most to people, which is the pocketbook, the impact on the health of their children, the impact on air pollution and public health. The best scientists are very much compassionate; they’re very much humanists, and they understand that man and mankind, womankind, are part of the ecosystem, so we have to do our part and protect it.

The politics right now inside the Beltway are very tough. It’s probably as polarized a time as we’ve ever seen, and I work on an issue that I don’t believe is political. We rely very heavily on the science and following the law and being transparent. If you’re going to talk about people’s health, you need to be as transparent as possible. Communities that are overburdened with a lot of pollution — smokestacks or tailpipes; old, dirty diesel trucks — they are keenly aware of the connection between those sources and their health. Oftentimes, communities that are the poorest, that you might think would quote, unquote, worry about more important things, understand that it is absolutely fundamental to their health to have a strong EPA that enforces the Clean Water Act or enforces the Clean Air Act.

What’s amazing about this job is, it doesn’t matter if they voted for this president or not — they care deeply and believe overwhelmingly that clean air means health, and dirty air means sickness and death. And a community can’t thrive without clean water. It’s universal. It’s a very American belief.