Final Arguments: People vs. Planet a George M Ewing Canandaigua Forum

FINAL ARGUMENTS IN PEOPLE VS. PLANET

FEATURING GINA MCCARTHY

SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 2019 – 4:00PM  |  FINGER LAKES COMMUNITY COLLEGE

The GME Canandaigua Forum calls a key witness in the federal case of People vs. Planet.

The five warmest years in the global temperature record have all come since 2010. The ten warmest since 1998. The twenty warmest since 1995. Yet the political global climate change argument rages on. The eye of this storm is a bloodshot, defiant gaze.

As the 13th Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013-2017, Gina McCarthy was at the center of the swirl. After barely surviving a bruising confirmation battle – including a 136 day (longest ever for the agency) vote delay in the Senate – Ms. McCarthy went on to become a strongly proactive EPA leader. She sought to redefine the “waters of the United States” in the Clean Water Act in order to try to prohibit pollution in upland U.S. watersheds, finalized the politically controversial Clean Power Plan seeking to reduce the use of coal in alignment with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, and vigorously defended the EPA in the early stages of the Flint, Michigan municipal water crisis. Her successor, Scott Pruitt, made it his priority to challenge and overturn most of her initiatives.

Currently Director of Harvard University’s C-Change – the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment, part of the Harvard School of Public Health — Ms. McCarthy remains an outspoken critic of climate change deniers. She is dedicated to the proposition that people and planet must work in concert to promote environmental health and clean air quality throughout the world, and develop workable solutions to mitigate the existential crisis of this and subsequent generations: climate change and its effects on humans and other species.

WXXI radio host Evan Dawson, who frequently focuses on the Rochester region’s environmental issues on his Connections show, returns as our program moderator.