McCarthy, who has led the environmental group Pure Sources Protection Council since early this yr, will not face a protracted Senate affirmation c
McCarthy, who has led the environmental group Pure Sources Protection Council since early this yr, will not face a protracted Senate affirmation combat like she did in 2013, as a result of the place doesn’t want approval from Congress. However If Republicans hold management of the Senate after the runoff elections in Georgia subsequent month, McCarthy will discover a comparable dilemma to her years main EPA, when the Obama administration was compelled to depend on govt and company actions slightly than laws to enact its agenda.
That implies that, as McCarthy did beneath Obama, the Biden administration should discover methods to make use of current statutes to advance its local weather agenda. Because the White Home’s home local weather coverage chief, nevertheless, McCarthy could have a broader mandate to advance local weather motion throughout the federal government than simply through new interpretations of the Clear Air Act. That possible will embrace extra aggressive gasoline financial system guidelines on the Transportation Division, accelerated vitality effectivity evaluations on the Power Division, and addressing oil, gasoline and coal manufacturing on federal lands overseen by the Inside Division.
McCarthy argued in a weblog submit after Biden’s election that responding to the pandemic and addressing racial inequality and the financial system go hand-in-hand with tackling local weather change, a possible preview of the scope of her place on the White Home.
“As with the pandemic, we’d like a local weather response that’s grounded in sound science, places folks again to work, and expands protections and alternatives for low-income communities and folks of colour,” she wrote.
Biden’s number of his Democratic predecessor’s EPA chief for a key White Home position additionally echoes Barack Obama’s selection after his 2008 election to nominate Clinton-era EPA administrator Carol Browner to the White Home as an vitality and local weather “czar.”
Browner helped dealer historic auto emissions reductions and performed a key position through the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill response. However the Obama White Home usually prioritized well being care and financial points over local weather, and he or she in the end left the place after simply two years when cap-and-trade laws died in Congress.
McCarthy will function the home counterpart to John Kerry, who has been named to a local weather envoy place in an effort to reassure overseas leaders about Biden’s intent to reengage on local weather change internationally.
The duo are already a identified amount on the worldwide stage; in 2016, once they ran EPA and the State Division, McCarthy and Kerry helped negotiate a global deal for a worldwide phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, a household of potent greenhouse gases utilized in fridges and air conditioners.
The Trump administration prevented submitting that deal to the Senate for ratification, however Biden is anticipated to maneuver shortly on pressuring the Senate to ratify the so-called Kigali Modification. If profitable, that would show to be the largest congressional motion on local weather within the coming years.
The Senate — the place 13 Republicans in 2018 requested Trump to ship the Kigali Modification for ratification — not too long ago struck a bipartisan deal for a 15-year phase-down of HFCs, which might put the nation on monitor to satisfy its Kigali targets.
Eric Wolff contributed to this report.