The Future of Climate Action: A Conversation with Gina McCarthy

On Wednesday, April 19, 2023, Gina McCarthy delivered the Warren and Anita Manshel Lecture in American Foreign Policy at the Smith Campus Center at Harvard University titled "The Future of Climate Action: A Conversation with Gina McCarthy.” McCarthy, the first-ever White House national climate advisor and former US EPA administrator, spoke with Jim Stock, the vice provost for climate and sustainability at Harvard University, before opening it up to questions from the audience. 

Excerpted below are Gina McCarthy’s opening remarks, lightly edited for clarity and length. The full lecture is available on the Weatherhead Center’s YouTube channel.

Melani, thanks for inviting me to speak today. And Jim, thank you for all the work that you've been doing. It's terrific to be back at Harvard. Just the energy in these buildings is enough to give everybody hope that there's an opportunity for the future. And Harvard never fails to deliver those young, bright minds that actually can make things happen. So I'm excited to be here.

Let me begin just by assuring you of something that everybody asks me at the end of my speech. So I'll hit this issue at the beginning. All of the work that I'm going to be talking about, all the work that we got done in the first couple of years of the Biden administration—the executive actions, the investments, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act and all those, they're on very solid ground in both blue and red states.

It is remarkable the changes that we're seeing on the ground, both in terms of people's hopefulness for the future, the investments, the changes that are happening in communities, and that we anticipate to happen.

I would argue that the clean energy transition is soon going to be on steroids. Now, that mostly means that all of our roads and things are going to be dug up. So you're going to have to be patient about never being able to get anywhere. Buildings are going to be built. Good things are going to happen. So be patient. It's exciting.

This is a time for us, I think, to be confident that the United States is where it should have been a long time ago. But we are where we have to be right now. And I am so excited about the progress that's made and the opportunities that we have moving forward.

And as Melani made clear, and many of you know, I've been in government for decades…and decades…and decades. In fact, I've worked for six governors, five of whom were Republicans. I wrote Governor Romney's climate plan when he was governor in Massachusetts way back when. And I was instrumental in getting the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative implemented when I worked for Governor Rell in Connecticut—both Republicans. Really good stuff happened.

And I have also worked for two presidents. And guess what? Neither of them were Republican. But they have both remained incredibly vocal, and visible, and strong in their commitment to address climate change.

And so I'm really proud of that work—that we got Republicans and Democrats together. Yes, it may be New England, but I don't care. They were red. They were blue. We can be purple together. That's the way it works.

In fact, I joined President Biden's team as the country's first national climate advisor because of the commitment of President Biden, and because of one really interesting thing: he knew something about climate change that we don't talk about—and, in fact, I never fully appreciated he knew—that climate change was not going to drag down his administration, nor was it going to delay his efforts to restart the post-COVID economic recovery. In fact, he argued just the opposite.

He knew that climate change could be the driver of our country's recovery. That's how he viewed it. For once, US climate advocates weren't hiding in the closet, waiting to sneak out. We came there front and center because this president understood that if we just break out of that mold—that climate is a disaster—and look at it as the biggest opportunity of our life right now, that we could grab it and make change happen.
Now, I'm not saying that we should stop reminding people that climate change is the biggest existential challenge of our time. It is. And we should keep reminding them of that.

I've been very focused, as many of you know, on talking about the health benefits that come with clean energy, so that people can get excited about the changes that we really need. But climate action is really more than that. And President Biden got it.

Climate action is about building the economy of the future, where [green energy] no longer has to cower in the face of fossil fuels. Instead, they win the battle for the hearts, and minds, and pocketbooks of the American public. That's what we can do with climate action today. And it's a future that will push all of those skeptics aside and put the US in a leadership position on climate change.

So after twenty years of local and state efforts that I have participated in to try new ideas, new policies, think about strategies, Joe Biden knew that the solutions that we needed—to make progress on climate fast—were already there for us to grab, finally. So we made climate change one of his strongest and most compelling commitments. And he was simply fearless in making his position clear and driving that change at every opportunity that he had available.

And while some question, as they always do, why the administration should focus on climate change given the huge challenges facing our nation back when President Biden came into office? And it's understandable. But it's true that people were really struggling under the weight of the pandemic. We knew that. They were struggling from the isolation and from the uncertainty.

But the president also knew that if you want to shift that around, you have to get on a path of hope and certainty. That's what you need to do. And it's a future that he was thinking about, that would grow jobs for millions of people who had already lost theirs and needed an opportunity once again. To give families a break, so they could save money in their energy bills and at the pump, and make sure that communities that have been sidelined for far too long would get their fair share of investments.

These were the pillars that President Biden put before us, that we had to deliver in terms of a strategy to make this change happen. So he was determined to invest in innovation again, to jumpstart domestic manufacturing, to rebuild those communities that were left behind, not just for climate, but to get our country moving forward again in ways that could lift people out of poverty, and once again begin to expand on the middle class.

Now, I know that sounds like big deal stuff. It is. But he knew that climate could help drive that agenda forward, if we were focused and careful about what we asked for and what we invested in.

It was the job of my little climate office to find ways to do this. That's why I went back to DC. I didn't go back there because the pay was great. In fact, NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] had great pay. And I took an 80 percent pay cut in order to work at the White House.

But it was a gift for me, that I just couldn't say no to, because I knew that it would provide an opportunity for us to actually elevate this issue in a way that would immediately get our country excited again—especially the young people that have been fighting so hard to try to find a path forward, to a future that they could find themselves in, a future that their families would be growing in. That's what we wanted to do. And under Biden's leadership, and with the support of his cabinet, which was frankly amazing, and the White House, we worked to open up these economic opportunities through clean energy investments, both public and private. We knew they could deliver.

And with leadership at the federal level, we began to unlock resources that our country really needed to deploy at scale; to move products and technologies into the market today that were available to us and would allow us to outcompete when it comes to fossil fuels. We started the ball rolling with this big event in the White House lawn about electric vehicles.

Now, you may think that's a weird place to start. But guess what? It was an agreement we reached with the United Auto Workers before we approached the companies themselves, because United Auto Workers agreed that if they wanted a future, they had to build the technology of the future today. That while there may be fewer people in every plant, because they're not as complicated to build, that it would advance investments across the world, that would come to the United States. And on the whole, they would hugely benefit with new job openings. And we convinced them to play.

And then we convinced GM, and we convinced Ford, then we convinced Chrysler. And we went down, and down, to Stellantis. All those companies began to join in. So when we had the White House event, every major car company was supportive of moving on electric vehicles at a pace that they had never thought to commit before.

So in the end, it stresses me to say that James Carville might be right: Climate change is about the economy, stupid. Winning the future is about recognizing how you take the problems of the past and you turn the opportunities of today, to actually build the path—that we can move forward together.

So we stepped it up. We started rallying the whole of government after the EV event. We opened up opportunities for carbon reduction in every single sector. We energized a coalition of young people, the labor community, the health advocates, environmental justice leaders, innovators, business leaders. We were bringing everybody together in a room to talk about what could be done—and how we could get it done.

And we implemented and designed policies and investment strategies that could take a bite out of climate change, while providing fundamental benefits to families and communities. That's the secret sauce. That is how you make change happen.

And to meet these goals, we had to work hard in every key sector of the economy. That's what produced a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was hugely important to go first, because it impacts investments in every single community that will make lives better, and also build the kind of infrastructure we need for clean energy moving forward.

And we move forward with the Inflation Reduction Act. Because the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was great, but it wasn't going to be enough. It didn't accelerate in a way that we needed it. And we needed to accelerate the momentum throughout our manufacturing sector, throughout the products that we would produce, to talk about how we would jump start our economy and drive groundbreaking reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. And collectively, the actions in these laws, in addition to the CHIPS and Science Act, gave the biggest boost that any country had ever given or thought about that would move us forward on climate change.

And so I'm really proud of the work that got done. We have a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That's $1.2 trillion. We have the Inflation Reduction Act. That's $370 billion for climate. We have the CHIPS and Science Act. That's $50 plus billion. We are not talking about chump change here, folks. We're talking about the kind of change that changes everything. And frankly, that's exactly where we needed to be.

And that is what is going to actually drive us toward a cleaner and healthier future for American workers and for their families. I will tell you that the momentum continues in the White House.

I think we've all learned a lesson. There are wonderful ways in which we can set bold goals and ways in which we can drive innovation, to move those goals forward and to meet them.

We set up very difficult targets. And each and every time we met those targets, because we didn't sit alone. We realized that in order to get this done, it wasn't just about what the government wanted—or wanted to do. It was getting people to understand that an economy needs to grow and needs to grow now, and there were businesses all across the United States that saw this as their best opportunity for not just public, but private sector investment.

We are talking right now of exceeding $600 billion in investments. And we have now an EPA that is underpinning all of this change with regulations like the most recent proposed one, that is going to get us to half of our cars being sold in the United States by 2030 to be electric vehicles.

This is how change happens. It's exciting. It can be frustrating. But honestly, there's just nothing like it. So I'm sorry, NRDC. I'm glad I left. Please hire me again for as much money—no, I'm only kidding.

So it's great to be here, and we'll chat. And thank you for all of your patience and listening. But honestly, it is a moment of hope and certainty. But it still requires that we fight like hell every single day to say, this is good. But what's next?

This is good. But we need to do more. This is good. But our future is still at stake, and we have to work every single day to take our learning here and work with countries all across the world, so that everybody can feel that there is an opportunity for them.

And frankly, even if Congress can't come up with money to pay for loss and damages in other countries, which they should do, we will find a way to drive private investment so that we don't lose precious years across our world in fighting or feuding.

We must stand together. Because after all, climate change is a global problem. Thank you very much.

Captions

1. Gina McCarthy delivers the Warren and Anita Manshel Lecture in American Foreign Policy at Harvard’s Smith Campus Center on April 19, 2023. Credit: Bethany Versoy
2. Center Director Melani Cammett, David Manshel, and Alexander Manshel chat before the lecture begins. Credit: Bethany Versoy
3. Gina McCarthy in conversation with Jim Stock. Credit: Bethany Versoy
4. An attendee asks a question to Gina McCarthy during the Q&A portion of the event. Credit: Bethany Versoy

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