During a visit to Hartford Friday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy praised the 195-nation climate agreement reached last weekend in Paris and expressed confidence about President Barack Obama’s authority to take action on global warming without the approval of Congress.
McCarthy, who Obama tapped for the role in 2013, previously led the predecessor agency to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) during former Gov. Jodi Rell’s administration.
Flanked by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, DEEP Commissioner Rob Klee and Connecticut Green Bank CEO Bryan Garcia, McCarthy said Friday at a press conference near the state Capitol that she thinks the Paris deal created “quite a bit of momentum” around slowing the warming of the earth’s climate.
“When I first started talking about greenhouse gases and climate change, there were no solutions on the table — they were only modeling projections of what it might look like,” McCarthy said. “Now we’re in the world that we once modeled, and the impacts are worse than we ever anticipated. But we’re also in a world with solutions.”
Some of those solutions, she said, are happening right here in Connecticut, including investment in renewable energy and the state’s participation in a cap-and-trade system for power plant emissions, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Connecticut also offers a $3,000 rebate for the purchase of electric vehicles. A handful of those vehicles were on display Friday, provided by Gengras Motor Cars.
Malloy and McCarthy took a moment during the press conference to plug one of the vehicles into a charging station beside DEEP’s Elm Street headquarters.
Earlier this month, Malloy signed Connecticut onto a compact known as Under 2 MOU, which involves a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
A 2008 state law already required Connecticut to reduce its emissions by at least 80 percent below 2001 levels by 2050.
The Paris agreement reached this month calls for the countries, including the United States, China and India, to peak carbon emissions as soon as possible, with all emissions after 2050 to be balanced off with “sinks” such as forest restoration and other methods that remove carbon from the atmosphere. The goal is “net-zero” emissions by “mid-century.”
The deal also aims to slow the increase in the average global temperature over pre-industrial levels to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with an ideal, but difficult, target of 1.5 degrees. Climate scientists said last month that the planet has already warmed by about 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Obama’s top science adviser said recently that 1.5 degrees is likely unattainable, The Atlantic reported.
Countries will also be required to review their greenhouse gas emissions plans every five years, starting no later than 2024. The hope is that governments will produce more ambitious carbon reduction goals in that process.
Part of Obama’s carbon reduction strategy is his clean power plan, which aims to cut power plant emissions. The EPA gave final approval to the plan, which is opposed by coal-producing states, in August.
McCarthy acknowledged Friday that a climate agreement is unlikely to get through Congress, but she said there is much the Obama administration can do through executive authority.
“Right now we don’t feel we need Congress to take action moving forward,” she said. “You would be amazed at just how much we have been able to get done and will be able to get done.”
