Former EPA chief Gina McCarthy, U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee for National Climate Adviser, speaks after Biden announced her nomination among another round of nominees and appointees for his administration in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., December 19, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
MANILA, Philippines — Creating green jobs is key to climate action, said the US national climate advisor, as the Biden administration aims to employ a “whole-of-government approach” to tackling the climate crisis.
Gina McCarthy, the first to hold the key post in the White House, said the current US administration is working to provide incentives and send signals to the private sector to invest in opportunities that would create jobs aimed to preserve and protect the environment.
“It is not good enough to rebuild the jobs of the past,” McCarthy told foreign journalists in a briefing organized by the Foreign Press Centers.
“We have to look at where the economies of the future are heading and how we position ourselves to win that future. And green jobs [are] a significant part of that future,” she added.
As the United States begins to slowly reopen its economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, McCarthy said it is essential to grow jobs that would respond to the needs of the country at the present, while also working towards a secure future for all.
In March, US President Joe Biden introduced a $2-trillion American Jobs Plan to overhaul and improve the country’s infrastructure, while creating millions of jobs and responding to the urgency of the climate crisis.
McCarthy, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under former US President Barack Obama, said clean energy is the foundation of this plan.
“That’s going to invest not just in infrastructure, but in building more resilient and adaptive infrastructure,” she said, adding the same infrastructure will be aimed towards environmental preservation and restoration, such as advancing clean air, managing droughts and implementing better forest management.
McCarthy said the Biden government is “working directly” with the labor community to ensure good-paying union jobs.
“We’re not shying away from the challenges of growing jobs. We’re actually embracing that challenge and working with our labor community,” she said.
“We’re going to do that by building in worker standards, building in Buy America standards in many sectors,” she said, “so that we can make sure that we’re building our manufacturing sector and we’re keeping our workers both paid well and with an opportunity to access unions.”