Updated
Dec 16, 2020
Biden Names Obama-Era EPA Chief Gina McCarthy As Climate Czar
The role is seen as a domestic counterpart to John Kerry's job on the international front in the next administration.
President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Gina McCarthy as his domestic climate czar, tasking the Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency chief with overseeing the new administration’s sweeping plans to overhaul the nation’s energy, agriculture and transportation systems and prepare for the hotter world to come.
McCarthy, 66, served as a chief architect of the Obama administration’s climate regulations, overseeing the drafting and passage of landmark limits on planet-heating pollution from power plants, vehicles and fossil fuel producers. Following a stint as a professor at Harvard University, she became the president and chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a lion in the environmental advocacy sphere that has sued the Trump administration more than 100 times to block environmental rollbacks, in January.