McCarthy, who currently serves as the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will head the newly created Biden National Climate Policy Office, a source said. McCarthy served as EPA administrator from 2013 to 2017 under the presidency of President Barack Obama.
The source added that Ali Zaidi, currently New York’s deputy secretary of energy and environment, will serve as deputy climate coordinator in the White House. Zaidi held various climate-focused roles in the Office of Management and Budgets and the White House Home Policy Council during the Obama administration.
The move is the latest example of Biden’s prioritization in the climate crisis. McCarthy joins former Secretary of State John Kerry, whom the president-elect appointed as his presidential special envoy for climate change, while top Biden officials were tasked with addressing the issue. Kerry will be a cabinet-level official in the Biden administration and will serve on the National Security Council. Kerry is expected to focus on foreign policy and international aspects of the climate crisis, while McCarthy will focus on national issues.
It is also another symbolic rebuke of President Donald Trump and his policies. Months after being ousted, Trump announced that the U.S. would abandon the Paris Climate Agreement and then repealed a key regulation that underpinned the U.S. promise of the 2015 international agreement. That regulation, the Clean Power Plan, was written by McCarthy when she served as EPA administrator, along with others in the Obama administration. It established the first federal regulations to limit carbon dioxide from power plants.
Trump has repeatedly denied the scientific reality of the climate crisis, and throughout his four-year tenure, his administration has systematically reversed environmental policies.
CNN previously reported that Biden was expected to have a White House climate director working on national issues and would be on an equal footing with Kerry, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Kerry and McCarthy were part of the working group on the climate-focused Biden-Sanders unit.
McCarthy was originally appointed by Obama in 2009 as deputy administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Prior to serving in the Obama administration, McCarthy was the commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. He has a professional career spanning decades at the state and local level working on environmental issues.
Since January, McCarthy has been president and CEO of the NRDC, an international nonprofit environmental advocacy group. In this role, McCarthy has led more than 700 lawyers, scientists, policy experts and advocates, according to the organization.
Biden has proposed an ambitious plan to invest $ 2 trillion in four years in clean energy projects and end carbon emissions from power plants by 2035. But the president-elect’s climate legislative agenda will depend on much of whether Democrats gain control of the U.S. Senate, which will be decided in two general elections in Georgia on January 5th. Regardless of which party the Senate controls, Biden pledged on the first day to sign a series of climate executive orders, which will not require congressional approval. Biden has also pledged to rejoin the Paris climate deal on his first day in office.
This story has been updated with additional information about McCarthy and Biden’s climate plan.