What Chu Means as Energy Secretary

Original: What Chu Means as Energy Secretary

By appointing Steven Chu as energy secretary, President-elect Barack Obama appears to be making concrete his campaign pledge to focus on alternative energy. Obama also is continuing his streak of favoring serious personalities with star power in the cabinet.

Chu is the first Nobel laureate to serve on a presidential cabinet. (He won the prize for physics in 1997.) As the current director of the Lawren years down the road. But given the magnitude of the problem, it's okay to have some of our best and brightest working on it. In the end, the quality of the solution will depend on the quality of the people working on it.