by Brian Anderson
Washington Examiner
Congratulations are in order for former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy. As of this week, she has been tasked with running an environmental group that, for many years, appeared to be running her federal agency.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, a behemoth among environmental nonprofit organizations, has named McCarthy its new president and chief executive officer, effective Jan. 6.
To call NRDC a “behemoth,” though, is an understatement — and to refer to its hiring operation as part of a “revolving door” implies that there is any friction at all between this group and the federal regulatory bodies that it works to influence…
[McCarthy] was further questioned in July 2015 about emails in which EPA’s policy director asked NRDC to write “a report or two” that would “provide cover for a draft EPA rule on new fossil power plants.” It wasn’t until December that emails obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute revealed the same director had been keeping NRDC and other allies “apprised of internal EPA deliberations,” the Wall Street Journal reported, through the use of a private Yahoo account — a sure sign that the agency’s subordination to this group was even deeper than disclosed.
While this close relationship might have looked like a ‘brag sheet’ to NRDC’s donors, the resulting policies felt more like a nightmare to American families and workers.
