Climate change deniers are now relegated to “phone booths” and hard-to-find places, and don’t represent the vast majority of feeling on the issue, said the head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday.
“So, you may hear a lot of buzz and people in telephone booths talking about climate isn’t real, but don’t go into those telephone booths, and listen to real people,” aid EPA chief Gina McCarthy.
“People want climate action,” she added, “including in the states that are suing us on the Clean Power Plan,” the centerpiece of the president’s climate change agenda.
“So you can keep talking to the climate deniers if you can find them,” she said. “But most of the time we are talking to human beings.”
McCarthy made the comments during a question-and-answer session with Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” a popular television celebrity and engineer who has become a vocal proponent of taking action against climate change.
The session was used to close a two-day climate change summit in Washington on implementing last year’s United Nations climate deal agreed to by 196 countries in Paris.
She said the deniers are “a lot quieter” in debate than they used to be.
“I think we’re doing pretty well, and I think we are making the case with science,” McCarthy added. “The fight on the economics [of climate change] is not there any more.” She said there are innovations and solutions “that we didn’t have before” that make it easier to tackle the issue of global warming.
