Barack Obama has nominated Gina McCarthy to be his Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency – which is, at once, bad news and good news for those who would like at least a modicum of sanity returned to the “global warming” debate.
The bad news is that Ms. McCarthy is a “global warming” zealot, the facts of the matter notwithstanding. And far be it from her to give a tinker’s dam whether you happen to agree with her, or not. As she recently told her fellow hotearthers, “We’re going to drive the nation into doing what it has to do about climate change” – trivialities like individual freedom notwithstanding.
Nor will federal standards get in the way of the diligent Ms. McCarthy. “The federal standards are simply not good enough,” she has burbled. “If we can’t get the federal government to act, than we will have to take action any way we can.”
Sounds good. How about a global warming “Enabling Act” – kind of like the “Law Concerning the Solving of the Emergency of the People and the Reich” (changing the last word, of course, for the sake of the oversensitive). Or better yet, what about a papal-like encyclical from the Obamassiah, himself?
Let’s face it: the woman is a kook.
Which may explain why she has been enthusiastically endorsed by no less an authority on the pseudo-science of “global warming” than Gary Yohe, the Wesleyan University economist who shared the 2007 Nobel Prize with Al Gore for effectively propagating the bogus dogma’s chicken-little effluvia.
“Gina is full of energy and excitement for the global warming issue,” said a wide-eyed Mr. Yohe, “and I am excited for her and the Obama administration.” As well as for his own fame and fortune, no doubt, should Ms. McCarthy succeed in her campaign to convince the world that we are all about to be reduced to a steaming pile of global gloop.
The good news about Gina McCarthy is that, like most of Mr. Obama’s appointments, she is such a world-class bumbling idiot that even if she does undertake her global gloop campaign, she will likely fail at that as miserably as she has all of her other wasteful (and, occasionally even worthy) endeavors. Let’s put it this way: were the Three Stooges embodied as one, you could Google the entity under “Gina McCarthy.”
A trifle harsh, you say. An understatement, I contend. Let’s look at the record …
From 1994 until 1999, Ms. McCarthy was the highly exulted Executive Director of the Administrative Council of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. From 1999 to 2002, she was the Assistant Secretary of Massachusetts Pollution Prevention, Environmental Business, and Technology. And, in 2003, she ascended to Undersecretary of Policy for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.
In short, if it had to do with the environment, you had to deal with Ms. McCarthy. And, here is just a sampling of her Massachusetts’s track record:
• According to ALG News research maven Don Todd, in 2001, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, was notified that its vehicle emissions tests were fatally flawed. Cars that should have failed were passed; cars that should have passed were failed. Sierra Research, hired by the state to review the testing programs, wrote that the failure rate was “the highest by far ever seen by Sierra.” Ms. McCarthy and her colleagues responded by, first, trying to manipulate the figures. That failing, they simply continued administering the faulty test.
• According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), under Ms. McCarthy’s watchful eye, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts horribly neglected its waterways. The fact is, only 9% of Massachusetts rivers fully supported their designated uses, 3.5% partially supported such uses, 10% did not support, and a staggering 78% were not even assessed. Of the 22.5% of rivers that were assessed, none supported fish consumption, only 27% supported primary contact, and 55% did not support any aquatic life at all.
In 2004, Ms. McCarthy moved her Stooge-like Kook’s Tour to Connecticut (currently leaving only 48 states in jeopardy). Perhaps the highlight of her Nutmeg State sojourn has been her malfeasance in overseeing the Newhall Remediation Project, the largest such project in Connecticut history.
The project, to put it bluntly, was an unnecessary boondoggle, costing the state countless millions of dollars and padding the pockets of Ms. McCarthy’s political cronies. In short, Ms. McCarthy oversaw a project that required digging up all of the soil (to a depth of four feet) around hundreds of acres of Newhall land containing 240 homes, two parks, and a school to remove, specifically, “lead, arsenic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH’s).”
There was only one problem: according to Meg Harvey, a top epidemiologist with the Connecticut Department of Public Health, “Sample results [from Newhall] from 2001 and 2002 show no public health threat from lead, arsenic, or PAH’s.” Not so coincidentally, much of the $80 million tab for “Gina’s Big Dig” is going into the pockets of the political benefactors of her boss, Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
Now, Gina McCarthy is on the way to Washington, there to bring her deft – no, make that daft – touch to “global warming.” And all that is missing from the routine are “The Boys’” nose pulls, eye gouges, and hammer hits to the head. But then again, for a woman who has threatened to “drive the nation to do what it has to do,” perhaps not.
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News Bureau.
