Gina McCarthy
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Gina McCarthy | The Institute of Politics at Harvard
2021-01-20 Gina McCarthy outlines Biden’s first climate actions Joe Biden will spend his first hours as president trying to obliterate much of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda, restore public land protections and reestablish the United States as a global leader on climate change policy.
Biden will sit in the Oval Office later today and sign a sweeping executive order to rejoin the Paris Agreement and undo President Trump’s rollback of greenhouse gas policies, said Gina McCarthy, Biden’s national climate adviser. “We know rejoining [Paris] won’t be enough, but along with strong domestic action, which this executive order kicks off, it is going to be an important step for the United States to regain and strengthen its leadership opportunities,” McCarthy told reporters late yesterday.
The process of rejoining the Paris Agreement will begin today with a letter to the United Nations requesting U.S. membership. It will take 30 days for the U.S. to formally reenter the nonbinding global agreement to reduce emissions. The administration will also rescind the permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, McCarthy said. The line transports crude from the western Canadian province of Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas and to other oil facilities in Oklahoma.
2021-01-17 Flint Activists Remember How Gina McCarthy, Biden’s Pick for Climate Policy, Failed Their City On Thursday, nine people, including former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, were charged over the crisis. Nick Lyon, Snyder’s health director, and Dr. Eden Wells, Snyder’s chief medical executive, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Snyder was charged with two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty. But the failure to help the people of Flint reached from the city level all the way to the top of the federal government. In 2014, the city switched water sources to the Flint River to save costs. The water was not treated to reduce corrosion, causing the water to be contaminated with lead. At the same time, bacteria in the water was blamed for an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.
McCarthy is preparing to lead a new office of domestic climate policy at the White House, a position that does not require approval from Congress. She wrote in a blog post that she thinks the U.S. should aim for 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.
20120-12-16 Former mayor says Biden appointee Gina McCarthy failed Flint during water crisis Former Mayor Karen Weaver, who dealt directly with Gina McCarthy during the Flint water crisis, says she is disappointed that the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been tapped to lead President-elect Joe Biden’s massive, coordinated domestic campaign to slow climate change.
During congressional testimony in March 2017, McCarthy said that the EPA waited too long to make its voice heard as levels of lead, bacteria and chlorination byproducts rose in Flint water in 2014 and 2015. “In hindsight, we should not have been so trusting of the state for so long,” she said at the time. “We missed the opportunity to quickly get EPA’s concerns on the radar screen. That, I regret.”
While the former Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has taken the brunt of criticism for its oversight of Flint water, McCarthy’s EPA was also under fire for the agency’s passive role as it unfolded, and former Region 5 Director Susan Hedman resigned amidst mounting outrage over the crisis.
2020-12-15 Biden to name Gina McCarthy to top domestic climate job President-elect Joe Biden will name Gina McCarthy as his White House climate czar, a source familiar with the decision tells CNN, making the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency his top domestic climate coordinator.McCarthy, who currently serves as the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will lead Biden’s newly formed Office of Domestic Climate Policy, a source said. McCarthy served as the administrator of the EPA from 2013 to 2017 under President Barack Obama.The source added that Ali Zaidi, currently New York’s deputy secretary of energy and environment, will serve as White House deputy climate coordinator. Zaidi served in different climate-focused roles in the Office of Management and Budget and on the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Obama administration.The move is the latest example of Biden’s prioritization of the climate crisis.
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