Executive actions taken under the Obama administration to address climate change are unlikely to be undone by future presidents, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said Thursday. “Those leaps forward will not be undone by a new president coming in because they are not just promises or policies, they’re going to be the law,” McCarthy said during a speech at the University of Ottawa
The Obama administration has had to rely heavily on executive action to implement its climate agenda as getting policies through Congress stands a “slim-to-none” chance at this point, McCarthy said. This reliance on executive action has been criticized by the administration’s critics.
“[The president’s] first term was really focused trying to get action out of Congress, but Congress didn’t take action on much of anything during that period of time, certainly not on climate. So he turned to his executive authorities. But, frankly, for me, that’s a solid place for us to be right now, given where Congress is because it allows us to make some significant leaps forward,” McCarthy said.
Among the actions taken under executive authority is the Clean Power Plan, the agency’s carbon standards for existing coal-fired power plants. The rule, finalized in August 2015, requires states to develop action plans to meet federally set emissions reduction goals.
However, the rule is not currently in force. The Supreme Court, in an unprecedented act, halted implementation of the rule until the matter has been through judicial review. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is currently dealing with a massive lawsuit filed by more than half of the nation’s states and numerous other parties demanding the rule be overturned.
Regardless, McCarthy didn’t seem worried about the rule’s legal future, saying she thinks the Clean Power Plant would be one of the biggest contributions to limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
“In three years we’ll be right into implementing the Clean Power Plan,” she said, later explaining that “in order to change [the president’s climate actions] you’re going to have to convince a court of law that you found some great record that says climate change isn’t happening, that it’s not endangering anything, and that the rules that we’ve done and [that] will go through the courts, are somehow unreasonable.”
“I’m pretty confident that no matter who wins the presidency that they’re going to have a heck of a time trying to figure out how to undo actions under the Clean Air Act because they’re pretty solid,” McCarthy concluded.
