"Daniel Reifsnyder, a 25-year State Department veteran, knew even before President Obama was elected that U.S. environmental policy was going to change.
So in early November, he called a couple of his Environmental Protection Agency counterparts about drafting documents to lay the groundwork for endorsing a treaty to curb global emissions of toxic mercury.
The Bush administration had resisted proposals for a United Nations-sponsored mercury treaty since at least 2005 on the grounds that voluntary measures were sufficient, but Reifsnyder told his fellow career officials that they had an opportunity to quickly formulate a new U.S. position in time for an upcoming meeting in Nairobi. They knew that as a senator, Obama had sponsored legislation banning the export of mercury overseas and that he was likely to be sympathetic to the treaty proposal.
The rapid policy reversal is just one of more than a dozen environmental initiatives the new administration has undertaken in its first two months. In nearly every case,
the decisions were based on extensive analysis and documentation that rank-and-file employees had prepared over the past couple of years, often in the face of
contrary-minded Bush administration officials."