The Environmental Protection Agency may be a controversial spot right now as they’ve bungled into polluting a river and are waging a war on coal. But in The Washington Post Magazine on Sunday, EPA boss Gina McCarthy was awarded a syrupy Q&A from reporter Joe Heim titled “Creating the environment for change.”
First softball: “Okay, please finish this sentence: Anyone who doesn’t believe climate change is caused by human activity is …”
McCarthy replied: "Not looking at the science."
This odd question might be a belated reference to McCarthy's underreported slam from a few weeks ago that climate change skeptics are not "normal people." (See our Tom Blumer.) This question would have been more fun: “Should the EPA administrator be a scientist? Because you’re not.” The Post has recently dismissed this line of questioning as "groan-worthy."
The softballs continued:
JOE HEIM: When you look at climate change, how do you remain optimistic?
McCARTHY: I think for a long time climate change was presented as a doomsday situation, and there’s no question that the climate has changed, and it will present challenges. But I’m focused on it now because I don’t think it is a doomsday scenario. I actually think we have the solutions now, which is why I think we have a better chance than ever to make that big leap forward. That’s why I spend all of my time on it.
The toughest question came third:
HEIM: What’s the most environmentally unfriendly thing you do?
McCARTHY: Probably the fact that I fly a lot. People have asked me whether I buy carbon credits, and I have to pretty readily admit that I don’t do that. I fly back and forth a lot to visit my family in Boston because, for the most part, they don’t get to Washington.
There was no follow-up: “You can’t take Amtrak?” Or questioning how much flying the president’s family does? Or questioning the massive "carbon footprint" global confabs on climate change cause? No, this is a fluff feature, as can be seen from the rest of the one-page interview:
Recycling has become second nature for everyone. Will we all be composting in 10 years?
The packaging on everything seems to be a little bit out of control. Is that a focus at all for EPA?
Is “administrator” a good enough sounding title for what you do?
If you could pick your own title, what would you choose?
She said “Grand Poobah.”
The Post Magazine is surely created a week or two in advance of the Sunday paper, so maybe you could excuse the lack of a question on the Animas River fiasco. But the Post might have considered there’s a better question than “Climate deniers are freaks, right?”
Maybe the green leftists were still mad the word “denier” wasn’t in the question.
