Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy weighs in on the fate of the Clean Power Plan, and the EPA itself, under current Administrator Scott Pruitt.
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These are challenging times at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In February of this year former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who had sued the EPA more than a dozen times to block environmental and health protections, became the agency’s Administrator. In the months since, he has called for cuts to EPA programs, sought to repeal the Clean Power Plan, and debunk science on climate change.

How far will EPA leadership may go in rolling back climate protections? And, more fundamentally, can the EPA operate as an objective steward of the environment and public health in an era when politics, rather than science, increasingly appear to set its agenda?

In this episode of Energy Policy Now the Honorable Gina McCarthy, Administrator of the EPA during President Barack Obama’s second term, weighs in on the EPA’s current policy direction, the Trump administration’s attack on climate science, and the practical impact of a Clean Power Plan rollback on carbon reduction.

Gina McCarthy served as EPA Administrator from 2013 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. She recorded this podcast during her visit to the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, to receive the Center’s annual Carnot Prize in celebration of her contributions to environmental policy and to securing a sustainable energy future during her tenure with the EPA. She is currently Menschel Senior Fellow at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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