Biden Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy: It's 'Ridiculous' to Ask Americans to 'Sacrifice' for the Climate Right Now
White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said it would be “ridiculous” to ask Americans to “sacrifice” for the climate right now, given the uphill battle many face due to the ramifications of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which battered the economy, leaving many jobless.
Speaking on Axios on HBO, McCarthy, who led the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former President Barack Obama, admitted it is not a good idea, at least right now, to ask Americans to make sacrifices for the climate.
“Isn’t the climate emergency immense enough that people should feel pain whereas you’re sort of saying, here’s money, here’s jobs, and we’ll save the planet too?” Axios’s Mike Allen asked.
“We’ve had 22 million jobs that have actually been empty because of this pandemic, and now is not the time to sit them down and say, ‘Let’s talk about climate. How can you sacrifice?’ It’s just it’s, it’s never going to be a winning strategy right now. It’s ridiculous,” McCarthy said.
“You know the president recognizes that climate change is a problem, and he also recognizes that getting there doesn’t mean you don’t think about growing jobs,” she added. “It means you do.”
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McCarthy, whose resume is peppered with controversies, including an impeachment probe and charges of social media propaganda, said earlier this year that a “commonality” exists between President Joe Biden’s climate executive orders and the radical left’s Green New Deal. Both, she said, share an “essential truth.”
“They both focus on the science,” she said during a January appearance on MSNBC’s The ReidOut. “They both look at the reality of the climate threat, and they both then turn and say, how do we turn this into an opportunity to build the kind of future we want to hand to our children?”
“So, there is definitely a commonality,” McCarthy added.
She and Climate Envoy John Kerry made waves earlier this year after telling reporters that oil and gas workers who will lose their jobs due to Biden’s climate policies will simply find “better” jobs in “green” industries, particularly.
