White House Climate Advisor on extreme weather events

In an interview with Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita, White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy addresses the climate change conversation in light of extreme weather events.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: One week out from what some have said is the most consequential UN climate change conference. But I wonder if we can start with a bit of reflection because you have been at the forefront of climate action for many decades. Prior to your current role, you were also the head of the EPA. Looking back, how do you think the climate conversation has evolved, particularly in a year where you have seen-- or so many communities have experienced extreme weather events?

GINA MCCARTHY: Akiko, thank you, first of all, for inviting me to spend a little time with you. Let me give you my sense, as I can remember when I was EPA commissioner and I-- administrator, I should say, under President Obama. And a lot of the time and attention was paid on dealing with the climate deniers. That's not the case anymore. You know, I think people can see the wildfires and the droughts and feel the heat stress that we're all experiencing, the floods and hurricanes.

People want answers to this. They want to face it. And if you looked at the last IPCC report, it told us that we had to act with a sense of urgency. So President Biden is going to be moving and going to the COP to express this sense of urgency and to ensure that we capture this moment. He does not want to go there without absolutely showing the leadership of the United States is back.

We are going to talk about the commitments that President Biden made on day one, not just to rejoin the Paris Accord, but to actually move forward with really stringent goals that we're going to achieve. He wanted to make sure that we had those actions lined up. He went in with a whole of government attitude that everybody has to work together and make this work. That's what my job is about.

So we're taking strong domestic action, but we're also going in, knowing that we have allies like the EU that recognize the urgency of the moment. So we have to be all about acting, all about accelerating the deployment of already existing clean energy technologies. We have to invest in the future.

And the most exciting thing for me, Akiko, is that he's not talking about this as sacrifice or about the planet. He's talking about this as a people problem, a recognition about our health and our economy, and how can we make choices to clean energy that's going to grow jobs, strengthen our economy, and win the 21st century. That is the framing that the president is going to go in with and hopes that everyone can leave with a sense of urgency and opportunity.