Carol Martha Browner (born December 16, 1955) is an American lawyer, environmentalist, and businesswoman who served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. Browner previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. She currently works as a Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm.
Browner grew up in Florida and graduated from the University of Florida and the University of Florida College of Law. After working for the Florida House of Representatives, she was employed by Citizen Action in Washington, D.C. She became a legislative assistant for Senators Lawton Chiles and Al Gore. Browner then headed the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation from 1991 to 1993, where she turned it into one of the most active departments in the state government.
She was the longest-serving administrator in the history of the EPA, staying through both terms of the Clinton presidency. During her tenure, she reorganized the agency's enforcement structure and oversaw two new programs designed to create flexible partnerships with industry as an alternative to traditional regulation. She started a successful program to deal with contaminated lands in urban areas. She took the lead within the administration in defending existing environmental laws and budgets and was the driving force behind a stringent tightening of air quality standards that led to a prolonged political and legal battle.
Afterward, Browner became a founding member of the Albright Group and Albright Capital Management in 2001. She also served on a number of boards of directors and committees dealing with environmental issues. Her director role in the Obama administration was sometimes informally referred to as the "Energy Czar" or "Climate Czar". Her efforts towards getting comprehensive climate and energy legislation passed in Congress came to no avail, but she assumed a prominent role in the federal government's response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill during 2010. She left her position in 2011 and the job itself was abolished shortly thereafter. Following that she rejoined the merged Albright Stonebridge Group, continued being active in several boards of environmental organizations, joined the boards of some energy- and agriculture-related companies, and became an advocate for nuclear energy in response to the dangers of global warming.
Early life and education Born in Miami, Florida, on December 16, 1955, Browner is the daughter of Isabella Harty-Hugues and Michael Browner, both of whom were professors at Miami Dade Community College, in social science and English respectively. She has two younger sisters. Browner grew up in South Miami, and her hikes in the nearby Everglades – only a bicycle ride away from her house – gave her a close connection to the natural world: "I was very shaped by growing up in that kind of environment where nature was right there."
Browner received her B.A. degree from the University of Florida in 1977, majoring in English. She then graduated from the University of Florida College of Law with a J.D. degree in 1979.
Early career During 1980 and 1981, Browner worked as General Counsel for the Florida House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations. There she helped revise Florida's Conservation and Recreational Lands Program. In 1983, she moved to Washington, D.C. and worked as associate director for the national Citizen Action group, a grassroots lobbying organization that was active in environmental issues.Current Biography Yearbook 1994, p. 76.
Browner met Michael Podhorzer, a specialist in health-care issues at Citizen Action, in 1983. They married in 1987 and lived in Takoma Park, Maryland. They have a son, Zachary, born in 1987.
Between 1986 and 1988, Browner served as chief legislative assistant to Democratic U.S. Senator Lawton Chiles from Florida. In that role, she worked on a complex negotiation to expand Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve as well as on a ban on offshore drilling nearby the Florida Keys.Current Biography Yearbook 1994, p. 77. During 1989, she served as a legal counsel for the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. She was not averse to in-field investigation, and once dived in coastal waters to do research while pregnant.
From 1988 to 1991, Browner worked as legislative director for Senator Al Gore, and became known as a Gore protégé. She helped prepare amendments to the Clean Air Act and managed Gore's legislative staff.
Secretary of Environmental Regulation for Florida As Secretary of Environmental Regulation, Browner headed the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation from 1991 to 1993, while living in Tallahassee. It was the nation's third-largest such state agency, with 1,500 employees and a budget of some $650 million. There she believed that economic development and environmental protection did not have to be in conflict with each other. She revitalized the demoralized department and turned it into one of the most active in the Florida state government. She shortened the amount of time it took the department to review development permits for wetlands-affected areas and for manufacturing plants; in doing so, she annoyed some environmentalists who thought that the streamlined procedures diminished public review.
Browner pushed for the halting of construction of new hazardous waste plants and municipal waste incinerators, on the grounds that health and environmental consequences were insufficiently known. She brokered a deal with Walt Disney World that would allow it to build on wetlands it owned, in exchange for $40 million of work by Disney to restore endangered wetlands nearby. She pleased environmentalists by persuading Chiles, who had become governor, to negotiate a settlement to a federal lawsuit regarding damage to Everglades National Park and forcing the Florida sugar industry to bear much of the $1 billion cost. The head of Florida's largest business trade association described dealing with Browner: "She kicks the door open, throws in a hand grenade, and then walks in to shoot who's left. She really doesn't like to compromise. [But she] has done a pretty good job down here. People have more complaints with the way she does it than what she does."
EPA Administrator Nomination and confirmation After the 1992 presidential election, Browner served as transition director for Vice President-elect Gore. President-elect Bill Clinton announced her as his choice for Environmental Protection Agency head on December 11, 1992. While both Clinton and Gore had criticized the George H. W. Bush administration's commitment to environmental protection during the campaign,Mintz, Enforcement at the EPA, p. 132. the selection of Browner – who was described by The Washington Post as having "the mind and training of an attorney-legislator but the soul of an activist" – was seen as an indication that Gore's ardent environmentalism had won out over Clinton's more pro-business mindset. Clinton later wrote that he had not known her, but that Chiles had recommended her highly and Gore had requested she be named.Clinton, My Life, p. 454. The pick, along with several others of Gore protégés that Clinton made, helped solidify the vice president's position within the administration.Turque, Inventing Al Gore, p. 267. At her confirmation hearings before the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Browner came across as pragmatic and allayed fears that she would be excessively influenced by or tied to Gore.Current Biography Yearbook 1994, p. 78. She was confirmed by the unanimous consent of the United States Senate on January 21, 1993. Thomas Search, Presidential Nominations: PN76-16-103 January 21, 1993 – Confirmed by the Senate by Unanimous Consent.
She and Podhorzer returned to Takoma Park, Maryland, and he continued to work at Citizen Action.Current Biography Yearbook 1994, p. 79. Her long-term goal was "to leave the world a slightly better place", and she practiced various environmentally beneficial practices at home. She avoided the Nannygate problems of some of Clinton's other early female nominees by having never used a nanny. She continued to lead an active outdoor life via bicycling, skiing, and jogging.
First four years
At the EPA, Browner supervised some 17,000 employees and a $7 billion budget. Early in her administration, she angered some EPA employees by publicly stating that the organization lacked management accountability and discipline and was wasting taxpayer money. Soon after taking office, Browner and her top aides, including assistant administrator for enforcement Steven Herman, reorganized several awkward and inefficient agency enforcement structures into a single Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. The EPA's regional offices were permitted flexibility in reworking their own enforcement structures, however, which led to some bureaucratic conflicts.Mintz, Enforcement at the EPA, p. 133.
Browner found criticism from both sides of environmental issues and battled many environmentalists, who objected to her support for repeal of the 1958 Delaney clause regarding permissible levels of carcinogens in foods. Her announcement in May 1993 that the EPA would impose a moratorium on new incinerator and industrial furnace licensing drew support from environmentalists, however. A move by Clinton to elevate the EPA and Browner to Cabinet-level status failed in late 1993 to gain sufficient Congressional support. Many of her legislative desires had to take a back seat to the higher-priority 1993 Clinton health care plan.
When the Republican Party took control of Congress after the 1994 U.S. elections, Browner took the lead for the Clinton administration in successfully fighting efforts by the Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, to amend the Clean Water Act and to roll back other environmental regulations.Turque, Inventing Al Gore, p. 334. She was able to work in a bipartisan manner, though, with Republicans in helping craft amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act and passage of the Food Quality Protection Act. During the budget-cutting negotiations surrounding the federal government shutdown in 1995, Browner successfully protected the EPA's review and enforcement powers and managed to gain over $750 million in increased spending for the agency. Her bureaucratic effectiveness illustrated what one of her top aides characterized as her talent: "an extreme focus on a single issue where she is completely certain that she is right".