The U.S. government needs BP's deepwater technology to try to shut off the oil well, said Carol Browner, President Barack Obama's adviser on energy and climate change.
"Obviously, we need the BP technology, but we are not relying on them ... we have our own minds in there," she told CNN, referring to the team of government scientists working with BP to battle the disaster.
Carol Browner - American lawyer, environmentalist
Browner worked as legislative director for Senator Al Gore, and became known as a Gore protegé. She helped prepare amendments to the Clean Air Act
Her long-term goal was "to leave the world a slightly better place"
During her tenure, Browner also began efforts to deal with global warming, giving the EPA authority to regulate carbon emissions causing climate change, although the EPA under the following George W. Bush administration chose not to use that authority. Several other policies of hers were reversed in the Bush administration as well.
In the final days of the Clinton administration, D.C. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve under the Freedom of Information Act all documents possibly relevant to last-minute EPA regulation issuances. In 2003, Lamberth found the EPA in contempt for not having preserved Browner's files.
Browner is now married to former Congressman Thomas Downey. The marriage, his second, her third. In 2006, she and Downey collaborated on behalf of Dubai Ports World.
She was also on the boards of the Center for American Progress (John Podesta/George Soros), the Alliance for Climate Protection, and the League of Conservation Voters.
Until summer 2008 she was a member of Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society
In late May 2010 she assessed the spill as "probably the biggest environmental disaster we have ever faced in this country" and said that the administration was "prepared for the worst".
