I wonder what Gina McCarthy is doing now.
Just before she left the administration she was calling for the censorship and deplatforming of not just those who disagreed on the dimensions of the climate problem but also shutting down people who disagreed with the administration's policy prescriptions. She was really, really pushing that, loud and proud and with the apparent whole-hearted support of President Biden, his handlers, the Cabinet, everybody in the power structure.
And now she's gone and no one is saying why she left or what she is going to do next.
And make no mistake, she is going to do something, the woman is formidable.
From Bloomberg Law, October 17:
President Joe Biden’s new national climate adviser may not have the high profile of his predecessor, but observers say Ali Zaidi’s mix of policy and economic chops are just what the administration needs to execute its agenda.
The former White House adviser, Gina McCarthy, had a charismatic style and name-brand recognition—as a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator—needed to build political support for the infrastructure bill and climate-and-tax law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, observers said. With both bills shifting into the implementation stage, Zaidi’s technocratic skills are now critical.
“It was really important to have a very high-profile figure like Gina McCarthy for the first two years” of the Biden administration, said Christy Goldfuss, the former head of the Council on Environmental Quality who worked with Zaidi when both served under President Barack Obama. “But Ali has the right skill set to deliver. He’s a really unique mix—he gets the big picture, but he can also go super deep into the weeds on how things work.”
Alex Flint, executive director of Alliance for Market Solutions, a conservative group pushing for a carbon tax, agreed that Zaidi is the right person for the moment. The infrastructure and climate bills “are now past the founder phase, and it’s time for implementation,” Flint said.
Zaidi has acknowledged that timing is critical, as a failure to get projects built quickly could weaken Democrats politically.
“If we don’t build, if people don’t see us put the steel in the ground and harness the resources that we have, I think that they will have very good reason to be cynical about the goals and commitments we’ve made,” he said during an Atlantic Festival event last month.
Three Core PiecesZaidi—who took over for McCarthy in September after serving as her deputy—is a veteran of the Energy Department, White House Domestic Policy Council, and Office of Management and Budget. He also served as New York’s deputy secretary for energy and environment and as an adjunct professor at Stanford University.Zaidi didn’t respond to interview requests. But at the Atlantic Festival, he described his agenda as encompassing three core pieces....
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