Convo: Gina McCarthy on Climate Leadership
In this episode of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Gina McCarthy, the first-ever White House National Climate Advisor under President Biden and former U.S. EPA Administrator under President Obama.
Gina McCarthy is one of the nation’s most respected voices on climate change, the environment, and public health. As head of the Climate Policy Office under President Biden, McCarthy’s leadership led to the most aggressive action on climate in U.S. history, creating new jobs and unprecedented clean energy innovation and investments across the country. Her commitment to bold action across the Biden administration, supported by the climate and clean energy provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, restored U.S. climate leadership on a global stage and put a new U.S. national target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 within reach.
Throughout her years of public service in both Republican and Democratic administrations, McCarthy is credited for her common-sense strategies and ability to work across the aisle, with states, communities, business leaders, and the labor community, to tackle our nation’s toughest environmental challenges in ways that spur economic growth, and improve public health for workers and families, especially those living in environmental justice communities.
Prior to her appointment as White House National Climate Advisor, McCarthy was president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. She served as professor of the practice of public health in the department of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she served as the director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment. McCarthy was also a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she engaged students, faculty, professionals, and climate leaders on actions to promote sustainability and justice. She also served as Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and an advisor to five Massachusetts governors.
Gina and Ted discuss her background, growing up in Boston, and spending her formative years playing outside in natural resource areas within the boundaries of the City. She shares that nature was in her blood and that being outside was all she cared about, so it was inevitable that the challenges that we are seeing with climate change is something that attracted her attention. She landed in the climate arena as a career when she was working as the Board of Health Agent in the town of Canton, intrigued with the intersection between environment and health, and the challenges that can be tackled to make people’s lives better by remaining positive and showing them the future that can be delivered.
