- (585) 313-8443
- ewingforum@gmail.com
Director, Harvard Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment
The five warmest years in the global temperature record have all occurred since 2010; the ten warmest years since 1998; the twenty warmest years since 1995. Yet, the highly politicized argument about global climate change rages on. And for several, critical years of action, Gina McCarthy led the Environmental Protection Agency and set U.S. national policy that took action to lead in global efforts to adapt to our rapidly changing global climate.
In a lively discussion about the causes, impacts and likely effect global climate change will have on all of us, Ms McCarthy advocated for citizen awareness and involvement in promoting environmental health, collective global action to promote clean air and water, and efforts to develop workable solutions to mitigate the existential crisis looming for our’s and our children’s generations.
The five warmest years in the global temperature record have all occurred since 2010; the ten warmest years since 1998; the twenty warmest years since 1995. Yet, the highly politicized argument about global climate change rages on. And for several, critical years of action, Gina McCarthy led the Environmental Protection Agency and set U.S. national policy that took action to lead in global efforts to adapt to our rapidly changing global climate.
In a lively discussion about the causes, impacts and likely effect global climate change will have on all of us, Ms McCarthy advocated for citizen awareness and involvement in promoting environmental health, collective global action to promote clean air and water, and efforts to develop workable solutions to mitigate the existential crisis looming for our’s and our children’s generations.
President Barack Obama nominated Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency in March 2013. After a record 136-day Senate confirmation battle, she was confirmed on July 18, 2013 and became the face of Obama?s global warming and climate change initiative until January 2017.
While at the EPA?s helm, Ms. McCarthy sought to redefine the ?waters of the United States? in the Clean Air Act in an effort to prohibit pollution in upland U.S. watersheds. She finalized the controversial Clean Power Plan seeking the reduction of the use of coal in alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement, and she defended the EPA in the early stages of the Flint, Michigan? water crisis.
Before serving in the Obama Administration, Ms. McCarthy served as Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, Deputy Secretary of the Massachusetts Office of Commonwealth Development, and Undersecretary of Policy for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. In Connecticut, she was instrumental in developing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multi-state effort to reduce emissions contributing to global warming, which has spurred economic growth, improved public health, decreased energy demand and helped mitigate electricity price increases across the region. In Massachusetts,? Ms. McCarthy advised five governors on environmental affairs, worked at the state and local levels on critical environmental issues, and coordinated policies on economic growth, energy, transportation, and the environment.
Ms. McCarthy holds a master?s degree in environmental health engineering and planning and policy from Tufts University and a bachelor?s in social anthropology from University of Massachusetts at Boston.
