Gina McCarthy, an environmental health and air quality expert and current administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), defended the agency's proposal to reduce carbon emissions, accusing critics of "crying wolf," and being more concerned with their individual agenda.
"Given the astronomical price we pay for climate inaction, the most costly thing we can do is to do nothing," McCarthy told the Los Angeles Times at EPA's headquarters in Washington.
McCarthy stated that there were some skeptics derailing the agency's initiatives to serve their own special interests. These people, she said, were willing to ignore the costs and continuously refused to help improve the condition of the environment.
The EPA reported that it had managed to curb air pollution by 70 percent, and helped the economy recuperate. The proposed plan to reduce carbon emission announced Monday, dubbed the Clean Power Plan, would require fossil-fuel burning plants to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent. These power plants constitute around 40 percent of carbon emissions in the United States.
The EPA's administrator's comments were aligned with President Barack Obama's views on climate change. Combatting climate change and its adverse effects were imperative to promote and preserve economic growth and public health, the agency stated.
McCarthy left a message to her critics during her speech. She compared them to the boy who "cried wolf to protect their own agenda. And time after time, we followed the science, protected the American people, and the doomsday predictions never came true. Now, climate change is calling our number. And right on cue, those same critics once again will flaunt manufactured facts and scare tactics."
