BOSTON — The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency told an audience at Harvard Law School on Tuesday that cutting carbon pollution will “feed the economic agenda of this country” and vowed to work with industry leaders on shaping policies aimed at curbing global warming.
“Climate change will not be resolved overnight,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told the 310-member audience. “But it will be engaged over the next three years. That I can promise you.”
McCarthy made a full-throated defense of her agency’s right to address greenhouse-gas emissions and other pollutants, saying that air-quality regulations and environmental cleanup efforts have already produced economic benefits in the United States.
“Can we stop talking about environmental regulations killing jobs, please?” she asked, prompting loud applause. “We need to embrace cutting-edge technology as a way to spark business innovation.”
She also made a joke of her strong Boston accent by repeating, “And I said, ‘spaahrk.’ ” McCarthy also joked about the challenge she faced in getting her post, calling her confirmation “the honor of a lifetime.”
“That’s a very good thing, because I swear it took two lifetimes to get confirmed,” she said.
The speech represented a homecoming for McCarthy, a Boston area native, who was introduced by her 27-year-old daughter, Maggie McCarey, a program coordinator at the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.
McCarthy, a veteran of Republican administrations in Massachusetts and Connecticut, has spent much of the past four years at the EPA shepherding through air regulations, which have come under attack from business groups for helping shut down power plants. Her nomination to succeed former EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson dragged on for more than four months as several GOP senators used the pick as a way to highlight their problems with President Obama’s environmental agenda.
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