A report in The Washington Post Tuesday said that President-elect Joe Biden will ask former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy to be his chief climate policy advisor.
McCarthy, 66, is now president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a professor at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. She served as EPA head between July 2013-Jan. 2017.
During her time at EPA McCarthy led the Obama administration’s efforts to further regulate greenhouse gas emissions from both mobile and stationary sources. In Aug. 2015 the agency finalized a rule aimed at reducing atmosphere-warming gases from electric power plants. Enforcement of the so-called Clean Power Plan was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Feb. 2016 and the regulation was then replaced by the Trump administration with a weaker version.
McCarthy also helped to negotiate both the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 2016 Kigali Agreement to phase out production and use of hydrofluorocarbons.
She will hold the the formal title of director of the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy. That role will compliment former U.S. Sen. and secretary of state John Kerry’s work as special presidential envoy for climate.
The Post story also said that Ali Zaidi, an aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo responsible for climate and energy policy and a former associate director for natural resources, energy and science at the White House Office of Management and Budget, will be McCarthy’s deputy.
NATURAL RESOURCES TODAY 