Today’s the day Barack Obama will announce that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, is his pick to head up the Department of Health and Human Services.

During a noon news conference today (which we’re sure will be overshadowed by the Rod Blagojevich scandal - read the latest here), Obama will outline why he thinks Daschle is the best man to lead on the massive effort to revamp the American health-care system.

But we’re also learning that the president-elect will choose a Novel laureate, Steve Chu, to head up the Department of Energy, next week. He will also pick several women to head up the Environmental Protection Agency and several other enviro-posts.

Chu is the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The San Francisco Chronicle says that Chu “has led efforts to use solar energy in cars and to work with oil companies on biofuels, would signal a bold new direction in the United States’s response to climate change, critics of the Bush administration said Wednesday."

"The Chu pick is exciting because (he) will bring scientific rigor to the new administration’s energy policy," Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, told the Chronicle. "After the anti-science Bush administration, this is like going to a Mensa meeting after eight years of being trapped in the Flat Earth Society."

Obama’s environmental team will also include Lisa Jackson as head of the EPA. She’s the former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and current chief of staff to New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Los Angeles energy official Nancy Sutley will be picked to head up the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Obama is expected to tap Carol Browner to be his new “climate czar” – a new position in which she will coordinate policy on energy, the environment and climate change. Browner was EPA administrator under former President Bill Clinton and is an adviser on Obama’s transition team. But The New York Times says although Obama favors Browner for that job, there are still issues to be resolved before the appointment is formalized.

From The Washington Post:

Browner, a lawyer and native of Florida, was legislative director for then-Sen. Al Gore (D-TN) and later head of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under then-Gov. Lawton Chiles (D). As the top administrator at the EPA under Clinton, she pushed for tough air-pollution standards that the agency defended against industry lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court, where the EPA prevailed. In her new role, Browner will need her legislative and administrative experience in a job that will cover everything from climate change to energy policy.

Jackson, who is black, grew up in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Her family fled the 2005 storm. A few months later, in her swearing-in speech as New Jersey’s environmental chief, Jackson said that Katrina’s wrath helped shed new light on her work.

More from the Post:

"The shameful failures of government that the world witnessed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have given me a special appreciation for the importance of public service," Jackson added. "Those failures have galvanized my commitment to working tirelessly to protect the health and safety of the people of New Jersey and to enhancing our quality of life."

These women will help the administration tackle cap-and-trade legislation that would lower greenhouse-gas emissions, offshore drilling restrictions, coal-plant construction and expansion, tax breaks for renewable energy and other tough topics.

But they already have some critics.

The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has issues with Jackson, who worked with Browner at the EPA.

And Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is critical of the idea of humans contributing to global warming, had some choice words about Browner: “She is a proud liberal who has long advocated an environmentalist agenda that would drive up energy costs on families and put thousands of Americans out of jobs,” said Inhofe, R-OK.

But Browner does have the backing of powerful women like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Those are formidable women in the Senate whose voices won’t go unheard.