 Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming out on this increasingly cold night. I'm Catherine Corson. I'm the director of the Miller-Worley Center for the Environment. And I want to welcome you to the first of our fall series on environment, health, and justice. So our lecture tonight is co-sponsored by the Miller-Worley Center for the Environment and the Wiseman Center for Leadership, as well as the Science Center, the Departments of Environmental Studies, Politics, Biology, and Geology and Geography. And funding for the series is established through the Miller-Worley Fund, the Nordhoff Environmental Literacy Fund, and the Florence Purington Fund. So first of all, I'd like to extend and a special thanks to Jenny Bergeron, who is somewhere out over there. Excellent. Who did a stellar job of organizing this event. We're really grateful. So thank you, Jenny. Also to Janet Landsbury from the Wiseman Center, who helped organize the event earlier today with students. Gina had a fantastic conversation with students earlier today. And I want to extend a special welcome to Melissa Olson from Senator Markey's office, who's here with us today. And to Janet Collette, who is an alum from Mount Holyoke class of 1959, an associate at Harvard University. So this is an exciting time at the college. As many of you know, last year, the Board of Trustees endorsed the goal of becoming a carbon neutral campus. By 2037, it's bicentennial. And promoting environmental sustainability is a top priority for the college. With particular emphasis on renewable energy and energy efficiency, food justice and sustainability, and the campus living laboratory. So today we're just delighted to host Gina McCarthy, who has dedicated her 35 years in public service to protecting public health and the environment. She has been a key player in advancing clean air, water and energy, building a sustainable economy in New England and across the United States. From 2013 to 2017, she served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration. There, among many other things, she finalized the Clean Power Plan, which set the first national standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuel power plants and standards for cars and trucks. Prior to that, she was the assistant administrator in EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, the commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, where she helped design and implement the Nine-State Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation's first cap-and-trade program. And for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, she held several senior positions, including the deputy secretary of the Office of Commonwealth Development, the undersecretary for policy in the executive office of environmental affairs. Since leaving the Obama administration, Gina has been a fellow for Harvard's Kennedy School of Politics of Government in the Institute of Politics and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she directs the newly created Center for Climate Health in the global environment, C Change, great name, focused on using science to drive actions in climate change and improve public health. So with that, let me offer a huge welcome to Gina McCarthy to talk about the future of the planet, climate change, health equity, and environmental justice. Hello everybody. Say hello or I'm not talking anymore. Maybe that's a good thing, actually. Yeah, but this is going to be fun. I'm going to talk for probably about 35 minutes or so, and then we'll have some time for questions, which I always find much more interesting than listening to myself. But first of all, Katherine, thank you for inviting me here, and for your welcome. I want to thank the President, and I want to thank Jenny for finding me wandering around the campus and pointing me in the right direction. So it is great to be here, and thank you for coming out on a little brisk fall evening. First of all, I want to just note one thing, because I can't be at a women's college without asking whether any of you watched the election results this week. Did any of you notice that there are 117 women that won office during that election? All right, that only represents 23% of the House, but we'll get there to that 50% come hella high water. That is our goal. So I actually thought it was so cool. Did you not? I mean, maybe you don't generally follow these things, but I hardly ever see so many women's faces up there going, one, little check mark, little check mark. It was really great, and I'm really hoping that many of you really decide that you could be one of those check marks someday. You can change the world. If not that, maybe you'll sort of hang out with other policy people like me and figure out how you can shape the world in a way that I think makes some sense of the world. You know, I do find women that are able to both pat their heads and rub their stomachs at the same time are the best way to address systemic problems that we're facing today instead of all these little incremental improvements that people make because we really have some challenges today. We need people that think systemically. We need people that think multi-dimensionally. We need people who actually get what they're talking about and willing to put themselves and have the courage to put themselves on the line. And that is what it takes for leadership, frankly, in this government today, and it always has. And there have been many wonderful leaders, but I think all of them came from an education like yours. You know, one that brought you together in a team spirit that helped you think together, that challenged you to wonder about what was going on in the real world and putting you this so you could see it and feel it and taste it yourself. A diverse student body that actually allowed you to understand and experience how other cultures think about things and do things so it never can be a one-size-fits-all. So I'm pretty excited that I'll come back here with my crutches in 20 years in my wheelchair and bob down here and half of you will be introducing me as the last person who actually told you that you should go run for office before you did. So if you don't run for office, that's fine, but think about public service. I have done public service for the last 40 years. I am not rich. I never will be, and I don't give a damn because I had a rich life, so go for it. So let's talk about the things that are happening today. And one of the things I like to do is talk to college students because it's really important because you think you're old, but you're really not. You've seen just a slice of the world and you think I'm old and I really am. I've seen a much bigger slice of the world and I want to share it with you because I don't want you to get overly anxious about today. I want you to put today in a larger context. I want you to see that the world changes. I want to see that it can change in the right direction. I want you to understand that this is your generation, this is your world coming up, that people like me are not leaving you to it. We're going to keep working forward. But I want you to understand that you control what happens in your world from this point forward. You are it. You have a wonderful opportunity. And let me start by expressing to you sort of the changes that I have seen in the world so you can get a sense of where today fits in it and what tomorrow might bring. You know, in 1946 where I was not alive then, so stop it. There was a headline called the smog that shrouded Los Angeles a dirty gray blanket flung across the city. Another called it a dense, eye-stinging layer of smoke that dimmed the sun. Schools were canceled for smog days. Orange County, I think, got its name by the color of the sky, not the kind of fruit that it actually produced. And I want you to understand that that was Los Angeles, but it was also Pittsburgh. It was Cleveland. It was virtually every major city in the United States of America looked like what we make fun of in other countries today and asked them why can't they get their act together. It was just like we're seeing in Beijing. It was just like we're seeing in New Delhi. You don't see it anymore, but when that happened, it was the spark that set off all kinds of things happening in the United States. So as the pollution built, what you saw was pressure from millions of people that were calling for change, which is exactly what is happening in Beijing and New Delhi today. You saw that the Earth Day started then. You saw that the Clean Air Act was started then. You saw that the EPA was started then by perhaps the greatest president ever known to men, Richard M. Nixon. That was a joke, just in case anyone plans to quote me. It was the only thing he did right. No, perhaps. But honestly, all kinds of things changed as a result of the visible pollution that you didn't need to explain to people. You didn't need to document it. You didn't even need to do the science around it. Everybody knew it was horrible and knew it was time to take care of it. But today we are really challenged because that visibility is gone. Everything looks like it's hunky-dory, out of sight, out of mind. And it is normal people behavior to only worry about what's right in front of them and hitting them in the face. And so what you're seeing today at the national level is basically an EPA that's in an administration that instead of wanting to move forward, they want to move backwards as if going backwards gets them to the future. Today we are seeing the rules of the road at EPA that have guided EPA's actions, which I mean the bedrock science that supports and has supported strong and sensible actions moving forward. The science that virtually has empowered life-saving progress, laws like the Clean Air Act, it is all under attack. In fact, all the rules that I helped to design, that I helped to pass, and others in this room helped to design, all of those rules when I was at EPA, they're all basically rules focused on reducing even traditional air pollution, protecting drinking water, eliminating risks from toxic exposures, issues related to contaminated land, all of those rules that actually brought us safe places for our kids to live and to work and to play. They're right now all up for grabs. And I know that all the progress we made to reduce carbon pollution is on the front line of that challenge because carbon pollution is what fuels climate change, which is the greatest public health, the greatest economic national security threat of our time. It is a risk that should be unacceptable to everyone and we need to wake up to that risk. But honestly, I am here not to frighten you or to depress you. I am here to tell you that I am not nor will I ever be a dead woman walking. Now, I look like one at times when I get up in the morning as my husband so clearly tells me, but I am happy. I am healthy. And I am more motivated than ever to be part of the solution. And you have to take the same approach. When somebody holds you down, you stand up. When somebody is doing something contrary to your life and your family, you don't have to kowtow to that. You have to figure out how you become part of the solution. How can your voice mix with others and stand up and continue the progress moving forward? Now, every morning I get up to my husband watching MSNBC, which he is addicted to, and all he does is scream and yell about the latest tweet storm. Now, when I get up, I lovingly walk over to him and say as kindly as I can, shut up! Turn the TV off. Let's have a cup of coffee. Let's think about all of the good things in our lives and not simply get captured by the news of the day which is many times factually irrelevant and disconnected from our lives. We have to stop being anxious. We have to stop being worried because anxious and worried people just cower in a corner and we can't allow that to be the case. It is a charge to us now to actually move forward and to actually take destiny into our own hands. Now, I am not naive. I have been a person who has worked in government for almost 40 years. I have worked for six governors. Five of them were Republicans. Let me repeat that. Five of them were Republicans. We did really, really good things. This is not a partisan issue. I am not talking to you about politics. I am simply talking to you about fact. I know that in each and every time, including working with Mitt Romney, I got out a climate action plan because it was true. It made sense. It happened. We worked through the issues. We understood how to define a path forward. When I took the work on with President Obama, he took over what is now dubbed the Great Recession. We figured out as an administration how we could continue to make progress on the environment while we continue to rebound the economy. There is absolutely nothing that prevents you from doing both rather than having somebody say they can't rub their tummy and pat their head at the same time. If you know you can do that, then we can continue to work wonders. I was around in those early days, not 46, but not too long after that. I can remember why I got into the Environmental Protection Agency. I can remember why these things mattered to me because when I lived right in the outskirts of the city of Boston, and my summer vacation was to go for a swim in Boston Harbor. Now, you might go... Anybody been to the city of Boston? You've been down to the seaport really nice, right? It wasn't then. It stunk, literally. So when we went swimming, we used to come out and pick the taballs off our legs because it was nothing but really the sewer that was emptying from the city of Boston and went into the harbor itself. Now, most people attribute many of my inadequacies to those swims, and I don't blame them, but the other thing that we used to do was when we were kids, we used to drive up through the areas of Lawrence and Lowell, and that's where all the textile mills were, and we used to guess as kids what color the rivers were going to be when we went through because they were either yellow, orange, red, or green, or blue, and we'd guess the color in whoever one got to have a lollipop. That's how sad it was because they were the brightest colors because there was no actual regulation about any of these things, and while you might think it was a long time ago, it wasn't. We actually brought together our ability to work as a country to address what we knew were problems, each and every one of us. We could feel them, we could taste them, and we could see them, and we got together, whether you were Democrats or Republicans, and said, we have to take care of this problem, and we made so much progress, progress that now you don't even think we ever used to look like that, but we did. We looked just like that, and what you see now is that you have a Boston harbor that's second to none, and you have a city of Boston that is thriving because it's on a harbor that is clean and vibrant. People are swimming there and they're supposed to swim here instead of where, when we used to go there. And so I'm incredibly proud of our successes, and I will tell you unequivocally that people in the United States will not allow us to go back to those days. So I don't care about all the announcements that you're hearing about rolling back rules and undoing protections. We live in the United States of America. We take these things for granted, but if somebody wants to take it away, we are going to make sure that we hold dearly to the protections that we ourselves came from a really big Irish family. I grew up in the city of Boston. We actually have a creed in Boston that's rooted in the resilience of the human spirit. It's called Boston Strong and we do not give up. We do not lie down. I am not going to go quietly into the night. We are going to work together and hold on to those protections and also make great progress on the things that are the systemic challenges that are holding all of us back. Now I realize that many, if not most of you, think that we're living in quite uncertain times and I would agree with you. I'm worried about what's going on at EPA and the folks that have been left behind. But look, I do know one thing and that is that when I was there and I was in the House and I was in the House and I was in Congress under President Obama that we did actually, we did rules right. We followed the science. We followed the law. We worked for years doing outreach to make sure that we understood the complexities of the issue. That we didn't leave any constituency out. That we learned the work of remarkable clean energy revolution in the United States. So I am not worried about all of what you're reading with rollbacks. I will tell you that rose garden announcements do not equal anything other than a rose garden announcement. We are still in the Paris agreement. We are still seeing EPA wanting to roll things back and we are still seeing highly unsuccessful in doing so. So I am walking around with a smile on my face most days. I am hopeful. Now I may spend five minutes yelling at my husband every morning, but that's his fault, not mine. So we have to stop being angry. We have to stop being anxious because we have an incredible opportunity to do so. So I am going to stop talking about the EPA on January 20th, 2017. Thank you. 17 at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, not that I am keeping track. I had the privilege of spending some time at Harvard University with young people just like you. Really smart, really passionate, really exciting. And one thing I realized and I spend a lot of time is that these young people are inspirational. You guys kind of know what you want to do. You understand the world better than certainly we ever did. But what most fascinates me is your inherent sense of equity and social justice. I have never seen anything match that. And I think that is what's going to be the turnaround. Because having worked in pollution I know that I have been working with the World Health Organization of late to try to figure out how we address the issues of pollution globally. And I know that more than 9 million people every year lose their lives because of exposure to pollution. But more importantly I know 93% of those are people living in poverty. Are people who are minorities that disenfranchise. Our kids and our women. Pollution is not an equal opportunity killer. So if you want equity in the world then you need to address the pollution that is holding communities back. Because when you cannot grow an economy if you cannot go to work if your children are sick if you cannot get to school because you are so busy with food and conflict areas in order to put food on your table. We have to understand that these issues can be tackled together. That the issue of pollution is a systemic problem that we can fix and it can be a trigger not to take down an economy but to grow an economy. And you have a sense that you can tackle it all and I want you to do that. I don't want you to separate these issues. I want you to think of them all the same and I want you to think about how to make progress moving forward on issues of climate by looking at issues of health because climate change is not about birds and bunnies or polar bears. I love birds I love bunnies I love polar bears do not send me an email. I get it. They're very cute. Polar bears not so much maybe from far away. But really, climate change is about you and me. It's about your kids. It's about my kids. It's about my new grandson. It's about their life. It's about their future. Climate change is a systemic problem that needs to be tackled. Not something given momentary discussion or small steps that will eventually get us there. If anybody read the IPCC report recently, you will know that time is running out and we need to move quickly. But the most important thing we need to do is to follow the science and to understand where that is taking us and what solutions we have moving forward. Look, none of these challenges are easy. They never have been and certainly the challenges of building a clean, sustainable future in the face of climate change is really an unprecedented existential challenge. But we have science. We have knowledge. We have understanding. We even have the technology and we even have the economic opportunity to be able to make this happen. What we are lacking is political will. If you come in, that is where I come in, we need to demand change that's necessary to protect our health today and our future moving forward. And we have to make sure that the science that we have relied on all of our lives, the science that has made progress in this country moving forward, we have to make sure that that is not attacked and that our scientists who are attacked, they need to be protected. Because what we see happening today is that the science around climate change is very certain. It is very real. And if anybody comes up to you and tells you that's not true, you need to just tell them three things. And I am going to have you repeat it after me. Are you ready? You need to tell them number one, climate change is real. Man-made emissions have caused it. Which is why women need to rule the world. The first audience that didn't just laugh and actually repeated the third one. I'm so proud of you guys. What we really just have to do is to just get the politicization out of the issue of climate change. Why did that become anything other than science? Why is that just not science fact? And why aren't we all working together to figure out how to make the gains to make to design a sustainable future? For more than four years we have armed ourselves with science just like this that has really led to significant reductions in health risk. Millions of lives saved. A quality of life that science has allowed us to enjoy moving forward. We have to stand up and understand and say over and over that climate change isn't just real science matters. We can't let it be attacked because what's happening in this administration is that they're trying to roll back a lot of rules but the problem they have is that we did the rules right so instead of attacking the rules they're going after the science. They're going after the EPA scientists. They're getting everybody off our science advisory boards because they don't want to have them there anymore. They're taking our climate information off the webpage which is shocking to anybody from the 60's because we used to chant information as power and guess what it still is and so we cannot allow information that people need to make decisions in their lives to be taking off of our web pages. They're actually challenging our cost benefit rules. Cost benefit rules are really incredibly important because they tell us about what the intended and unintended consequences of any action are and so for example we have a mercury and air toxics rule that we did that was usually beneficial because when you put on equipment to get rid of mercury you pull down all other kinds of toxic and air pollutants and when you do that it saves millions of lives and when you do the clean power plan it saves millions of lives not because it just reduces greenhouse gases but it reduces traditional pollutants and instead they're proposing changes apparently to both those rules but we've already seen the clean power plan being challenged and how are they challenging it? They're challenging it by diminishing the social cost of carbon emissions. They're also asking international benefits, hello is climate just limited to us? I thought there was something hokey about that as a decision but they're also saying you can't count anything other than the greenhouse gas emission reductions. Now that's ridiculous. It's in fact insane and even the rule that is currently is more expensive and saves fewer lives than the clean power plan that was passed. But listen, these things are not going to come to fruition. They can't figure it out. I'm sure you've heard about the clean car rules. Have you heard about those? Where all the auto manufacturers decided they didn't want to make those really fuel efficient and clean vehicles until they figured out that they didn't want to make those? Because every other country in the world is demanding them. They have to make them anyways and they might lose their ability to have control of a national program in a way they don't like. Well, these rules are really quite interesting and we could go into them a lot but the long and short of it is that the industry itself doesn't want them to go away. The industry itself realizes that by making energy efficient vehicles they actually had people who wanted to buy them. Because when President Obama came in they were going bankrupt and when he negotiated with them to get them out of bankruptcy he also told them, you know, you might want to buy cars people want to buy and then you wouldn't go bankrupt again and they're looking at these rules and realizing that they made a serious error because they have made so many errors in developing their cost-benefit analysis like forgetting to divide by four numbers that needed to be divided by four, it's laughable what they have done. So the good news is that we will keep those rules. We will be back. We will be able to look at these issues and we will protect the science and scientists. And the most exciting thing about today that I want you all to understand is that we are seeing really fun things happening because I know everybody can dwell on the rollbacks but let me tell you something there is a clean energy revolution in this country that's not slowing down no matter what this administration does it is going gangbusters. We continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You know why? Because we sent a signal to our scientists to our technology innovators. We sent a signal to the private sector that we wanted new technologies they delivered them and now we have a clean energy revolution that is spurred not by regulation but by the market itself. That's when you know it's going to last it's going to continue. So do not get depressed when you talk about the clean power plan it was a tool to be used but the gold standard is that the economy itself drives these markets moving forward and it is going to continue. You are now seeing people standing up for science. There was this really bad rule that's being proposed called the science transparency rule or something which is really all about saying you can't use the best science to make decisions at EPA anymore because we want to be able to give everybody the raw data of everybody that ever participated in a study which is against federal law, other federal laws and the great part about that is this wonky science rule attracted 600,000 commenters. Can you imagine 600,000 scientists sitting around writing a comment letter to EPA? That is to me hysterical. First of all they hate talking to anybody other than themselves but they got up and they did this and there is no way that that should happen because they're awake now. We have science marches. Can you imagine all those little science geeks marching holding their really cool signs? I was there, I saw them it is really cool. What was my favorite was things must be desperate when geeks have to march. I thought that was pretty funny. And we have women's marches and we have the Me Too movement and we have the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm breaking out my tie dyed shirts and my bell-bomb pants. We are taking to the streets. You have no idea how long it's been since I marched for anything. You have cities and towns now standing up in universities like this one that said we're still in so that the international world would know that we're not all nuts. That we are going to keep working in the international community to make a difference in our world. That we're not just interested in what goes on in the United States of America but that we understand that our country has always been about providing international leadership, caring about one another, recognizing that pollution knows no boundaries and our climate is something that each and every country including the United States of America must do its part. I'm proud of the university for being all in. I'm proud of the sustainability work that you're doing and I'm proud of the mayors and the governors who are out there doing the right thing. If you paid any attention to this election you will see that the environment played a part, not to bring it down but to get the right people into office and the right programs in place. So I am seeing a democracy that is waking and is stop being complacent about what goes on at the federal level as if that's the only place that anything good happens. I will tell you, I have worked at the federal government for eight years and I will tell you unequivocally that nothing innovative happens at the federal level. You might think it is but the innovation started 20 years ago at the grassroots level where everything good starts. That's where pollution hits first. That's where people take a risk. That's where people demand action and as soon as the grassroots levels takes off then states start to act because they're afraid that cities and towns are doing things crazy. So they start thinking about it. States starts to act. Regions start to act and when all hell breaks loose the federal government says I have something really new and interesting that I'm going to do and they do a rule that is on the basis of everything that was discussed 20 years earlier at the grassroots level. That's how it works. So don't you get discouraged if the federal government isn't moving in the direction you want because there are many other players in this country who can pick up the slack and who are now. You should be proud of this country. You should be happy to live here. You should be happy that you can stand up and march and protest when you don't like something and you should participate in your government and you should do your responsibility as a citizen and vote. If you do not don't come and complain to me about anything going on because that is your responsibility. You know a democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires everybody to participate. So at times I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning because I worry about everything that I did and then I realize that what I did was the best I could. What I did was a respect for the Democratic process. We reached out to more people than we could to understand how to make progress moving forward. I understood that environmental justice was real. It was happening in the United States of America and every time we designed a rule we worried about who it would benefit. We worried about who to get access to the solutions to and how he would design programs and policies to lift those most vulnerable and to recognize that that was the best we could do not just to grow the economy but to make everybody part of a growing economy. That's how you do policy. That's why women need to be in politics. We don't divide our lives. We think systemically. We move forward. We don't take hostages and we just make progress happen. We have to be engaged. Be part of the democracy. Be bold. Be excited. And for crying out loud be hopeful. This is a time for great hope and great action. Thank you very much. Fabulous. I'm sure there's lots of questions. So we have about 30 minutes for questions if folks have them. The first question is always the hard one. All right. I'll ask the question you can answer. Yeah. Hi. So since you said that your focus was on pollution I figured I'd ask you this question. I live on Long Island where we get most of our drinking water from groundwater. That in and of itself is not really much of a problem but the big problem that we have is that there were a lot of munitions plants on Long Island like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that apparently were not the most responsible in getting rid of a lot of their wastes. So long story short now you can't drink unfiltered tap water without maybe getting cancer at some point in your life. So I was wondering if the EPA at least when you were there had any solutions for groundwater pollution issues? Why don't you say Long Island? I don't get it. Are you really from Long Island? Well, I mean I lived in Queens until I was four. All right. That must be it. That explains it. EPA, one of our obligations is to implement the clean water rules, Safe Drinking Water Act. I'm going to be very honest with you is the water laws in the United States give primacy to all these issues to state levels which often relies on local level for implementation. And it is more difficult than EPA having the direct authority to regulate which makes it very complicated to do but yes we have responsibilities yes the military has in many instances been absent from those regulations they haven't been watched but the military is not unusual a lot of industries as well you're talking about perfluorinated chemicals PFCs which are really ubiquitous now almost in groundwater in so many places they come from things like Teflon manufacturers and stuff it is a chemical that's been widely used and it gets into the groundwater and it stays there and it's very dangerous even at local levels now I will tell you that it's so difficult Congress has made it so difficult for EPA to act under those laws that we have not even added a new contaminant to our drinking water regulations since 1997 because Congress passed a rule a law in that year that made the science process so onerous in such a multi-year process that we never got anything over the finish line so the best we can do is give a health advisory tell everybody what the levels are that they should be achieving and then try to work with states to make sure that you get proper access to water that you need but there are many folks in communities that are living off of bottled water as a result you know I have to tell everybody that water is one of the most difficult challenges that we are going to face today that we are facing today and that we will face in a changing climate people don't talk about it much but it's a big deal we now know that there needs to be something in the order of $60 billion over the next few years just to try to deal with some of the aging infrastructure so this is a big deal and it's not resourced well enough and it's not regulated to the extent that other issues are well thank you very much you're welcome thank you for coming I really appreciated you being here and enjoyed listening to you talk I'm wondering what your thoughts are on capitalism as a system in relation to climate change and environmental issues because there are a lot of people who see it as capitalism as sort of a large reason, a driver of climate change in the way that the exploitation of nature and resources are just the way that it happens and my family owns and runs a small corporation that specializes in the production of electric vehicles so I've seen both sides of how that can be a good thing but also I've seen some not great sides of that so can you get us all deals in an electric car they're mostly offered vehicles so golf cards and construction equipment and wheelchairs stuff like that but if you need a wheelchair soon in your future take my name I'll let you know when I am when you come back here I get your question you know this is a question that comes up now all the time I find it really interesting and I'll give you my take on it but there certainly can be very different opinions about this you know I'm not thinking that it's the system as much as the political will in the system so I do not I grew up in a capitalist society a democracy is really made to go slowly not to make big leaps and bounds changes that's why bureaucracies act the way they do I've always been pretty comfortable with that but I recognize that we are facing challenges that need real change really quickly and it's ill-suited to making that happen and especially when it needs to be combined why with an international effort so it's very challenging but I still think it all boils down to the political will not the system so if you go check out socialistic countries today you will not find them any better off than where we are today but I certainly understand that the United States has an international obligation because much of what we have done is utilize natural resources in a way that has been irresponsible and shipped waste to other countries where we could get away with it and so we owe a tremendous amount of debt to other countries which is one of the reasons why I am embarrassed that there's any discussion of pulling out of the Paris agreement it's not just makes no sense but it is it is not it doesn't reflect the core values of our country Hi Thank you for speaking with us my name is Jaya and I just wanted to know your take on Dr. Etzels the head of the Office of Children's Health and Protection was put on leave and how children's health can be put onto the sideline yeah Ruth was I actually talked Ruth into the agency she did a terrific job children's this is about the children's health office that sits within the administrator's office suite of offices and it is really focused on making sure that the decisions we make are consistent with protecting the most vulnerable because as many of you know who study public health children are most susceptible to pollution because their bodies are not just little people they function differently and they get much more damaged by exposure to pollution as a result and so Ruth was brought in to manage a handful of folks she has a wonderful expertise in epidemiology in children's health she's written one of the best books about these issues so she was highly qualified that office doesn't just look at EPA rules and regulations and policies to ensure that we're considering those most vulnerable our kids and our decisions but it also runs an interagency working group for the White House that brings everybody together and one of their major focuses recently was on lead which is of significant concern because it robs our kids of IQ and it's it really holds back the next generation of kids I do not know anymore about what happened then you do I cannot have access to folks inside the agency so I do not know what reason they are articulating that precipitated that but I can tell you that she is a political appointee and we serve at will and so do I think it's right for people to be fired with no articulation of the reasons for it but I do not know whether she's more privy to it than I am so I'm sorry I can't answer the question but I do know she's lovely she worked hard she's well qualified and that it's an important position in the agency and as of right now I think it's not filled you guys keep up with things huh I love that I have a follow up question to the question about capitalism and your response so you mentioned that political will needs to be the driving factor so in today's political climate the market seems to drive a lot of political will and a lot of politicians seem to be paying attention more to their stakes in the market than to actual concerns of the people so how should change go about happening and being enacted in a very weird and interesting situation that we find ourselves in where the political will is driven by the market and not by the people well I guess the main thing I would say is that I do not know whether it's capitalism that has dictated those rules or whether it's politicians so the first responsibility you have is to make sure that you're active in the political process so that people do protect the people instead of their own position in power and I will grant you that money and it has been a big factor in those issues money is a big factor in misinformation that's gotten out there is no question that issues of climate change and protection of fossil fuels has been a campaign that's been well financed for decades by the fossil fuel industry just like the tobacco industry protected cigarettes for so long I don't question that but the system didn't use to work like this and there's two ways that you can think about it one is to take down the system and the other is to fix it and that's the choice you're going to have to make and it didn't use to be like this and when congress acted like congress is supposed to as a separate branch of government that needs to do its job for the people and when people voted people out by not for not doing that it worked pretty well but I don't disagree with you money is a part of this really I think we all knew when citizen united happened that decision came down that we would have trouble with what we're seeing right now thank you so much for being here my name is Jessica and I'm an alum from the class of 2015 but I'm a former climate change committee staffer from Massachusetts so I can share your sentiments on the great work that we've done in Massachusetts which leads me to this question so there's a recent report that came out that 100 businesses 100 companies make up around 71 to 72% of emissions which are predominantly coal companies which we see the Midwest in particular still very much in favor of so how do we get utility companies to also adopt these new models when they are regulated by government who is trying to make these changes go into effect it seems like utilities are kind of lagging behind you know honestly utilities you're right in the Midwest there's still a lot of big clunky utilities I saw that in this election that there was a bit of a shift which I was kind of excited about and I think you will see certainly changes in some of the governance positions changes in some of the AGs will actually provide us opportunity to get some of those things done but what's really driven the shift has been two things one is EPA is regulated pollution from those facilities which puts a cost on those emissions and it changes the way the energy market works and who's called upon to generate electricity that's a big deal and you are also seeing new technologies come into market like renewables and efficiency that are really much less expensive so I believe that the utility world is in much much better shape than the transportation world is right now and I think we need to continue to be diligent about that transition in the utility sector but we are seeing that coal is definitely not competitive anymore it is the market the challenge we're going to face is are we going to continue to build more pipelines for natural gas which is still competitive and if so how do we make that a time limited asset so that we're not having to utilize it for the next 20 years which we can't afford to do and so it's the issue is how long do we continue with natural gas and then the other real issue is to continue with advances in battery storage and other things that allow continued mix renewables into the system but it's happening and the utilities are not changing their investment portfolio because the clean power plan is in flux they are investing the exact same way they would and you are seeing companies that I never thought would be advancing renewables stepping aside to get more renewables into the market and it's just money so when capitalism works pretty well when it doesn't it doesn't but transportation is a big bugaboo right now it requires a lot more thought and a lot more interaction between public and private sector yes hi my name is Katie I just want to appreciate that you are here awesome presentation kind of piggybacking off of that question how do you propose that we get more accessibility to the issues facing the world in terms of climate change especially in more rural areas where you don't see as many cities with smog like Boston or Pittsburgh and that kind of thing and the Midwest and the South and Appalachia especially where coal was a big industry where they feel like they are being attacked by clean energy proposals how do you suggest that we go about bringing more national and international awareness to the issue at hand I've thought about this a lot and let me answer this a couple of ways is that what I came to realize while I was working in Washington was the fact that you know I think part of the drama that people have today is the world is changing a lot you may be used to that pace of change because you're young enough that everything changes a lot but most people are not and right now I think a lot of people feel like they've been left behind in that shift and I think coal is one of those it's been entirely out of the hands but that shift was starting back in the 80s and a lot of it was the automation in the industry and the industry is simply now bypassed in the market and it's not going to be able to come back and so one of the challenges we face is that the majority of the folks that represent those states, the coal states in Congress don't want to face their constituencies and tell them that you know we have to think about retooling and doing something else they would rather pretend that they're bringing it back so they keep getting elected when really they're just letting those communities stagnate I find that to be unconscionable frankly and so somebody needs to stand up and provide support but the United States does not do that I don't know of any sector as it's been transitioned that anybody has felt that there is a real obligation to go to the communities left behind in that transition and I think a lot of people are afraid today for the same thing they're afraid that industries are transitioning out they've increased AI that whatever you're going to school for now and a technical skill by the time you graduate it won't even be around anymore there are a lot of concerns in the United States about those shifts and jobs so while I'm comfortable in our economic analysis that we're growing jobs in the clean energy sector at a pace that's three or four times what you'll ever have in the all of the coal sector I mean that we shouldn't work with those communities left behind but I don't know any vehicle right now that is doing that and we propose some but nothing would happen because in order to approve that in Congress you'd have to admit that you needed it and a lot of folks wouldn't so I think that's the shift in some of these rural communities many people could have seen it coming but didn't want to work collaboratively with those communities to figure out how they retool and how they rethink and that's the challenge that we're facing today is the inequities and inequalities in the country right now are at an extreme and we're not I don't see anybody proposing anything that's going to address that but that's what's going to have to happen that was rather a depressing answer but sorry something will happen we'll see all right ladies thank you very much thank you for everything you're doing thank you for the school for being so proactive women go out there and kick some ass