Under questioning by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) during March 22 hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted the Obama administration’s climate efforts will do nothing to prevent climate change, acknowledging they are symbolic attempts to get other countries to make steep carbon dioxide emissions cuts.
McCarthy was unmoved when McKinley noted the negative impact regulations such as the Clean Power Plan have had on jobs and electricity prices.
Concerning the Clean Power Plan, McKinley asked, “If it doesn’t have an impact on climate change around the world, why are we subjecting our hard working taxpayers and men and women in the coal fields to something that has no benefit?”
Administration ‘Showing Leadership’
“We see it as having had enormous benefit in showing sort of domestic leadership, as well as garnering support around the country for the agreement we reached in Paris,” McCarthy responded.
Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says McCarthy has made similar statements on other occasions.
“Actually, McCarthy said nothing new here,” said Lewis. “Back in September 2013, she admitted to Rep. Mike Pompeo she could not ‘link’ the Clean Power Plan to ‘impacts’ on any of EPA’s 26 ‘climate indicators.’ Rather, McCarthy said, the CPP is ‘part of an overall strategy that is positioning the U.S. for leadership in an international discussion.'”
In July 2015, McCarthy testified the value of the Clean Power Plan “is not measured [by the amount of warming it prevents.] … I’m not disagreeing that this action in and of itself will not make all the difference we need to address climate action, but what I’m saying is that if we don’t take action domestically we will never get started.”
