Outgoing EPA chief: Science is ‘fundamental to absolutely everything we do.’

Gina McCarthy - a central player in
fighting climate change with the
Obama Administration.

Gina McCarthy — Boston native, Irish Catholic, lover of Guinness beer and a good laugh — has been a central player in the Obama administration’s work to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and combat global warming at home and abroad. A career environmental bureaucrat and a veteran of Republican administrations in Massachusetts and Connecticut, McCarthy promised a “common sense” approach to fighting climate change during her 2013 confirmation hearing.

Although she contends that the Obama administration has pursued exactly that, the Environmental Protection Agency has run into stiff opposition from the oil, gas and coal industries in recent years. The administration’s central effort to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, for example, remains stalled in federal court. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to scrap that Clean Power Plan and other key environmental regulations from the Obama era, and his nominee to replace McCarthy, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, seems eager to give it his best shot.

Read The Washington Post story by Brady Dennis - “Outgoing EPA chief: Science is ‘fundamental to absolutely everything we do.’”