EPA head brushes off ‘doomsday’ talk

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency dismissed what she characterized as “doomsday” predictions from opponents of her agency’s climate rule.

Gina McCarthy said industries affected by EPA rules have said for decades that they would wreck the economy and lead to massive job losses, but they have always been wrong.

{mosads}“There may be a lot of continued rhetoric that [this] is a doomsday scenario,” McCarthy told CBS News Friday.

“But we will just remind people that this a different decade, the same stuff,” she said. “They have been saying this every decade that EPA has been around, and we have not seen those doomsday scenarios come true.”

Her statements came in defense of the EPA proposal this summer to cut carbon dioxide pollution from power plants by 30 percent by 2030. It has received massive backlash from businesses, who say it’ll devastate fossil fuels and the economy as a whole.

She said that the same people and interests criticizing the rule are nonetheless preparing for its implementation.

“While you hear this swirling, people are still at the table, they are rolling up their sleeves,” she said.

“They are going to get this work done because they know we are very serious about getting a rule finalized as quickly as we can so we can take action on climate the way the president has promised and the way our laws require us to.”

McCarthy’s remarks were focused on the climate rule, but she also defended the EPA’s November proposal aimed at cutting the concentration of ground-level ozone, which can cause respiratory illnesses.