EPA administrator answers questions on reddit, has a bad time

Washington Examiner ^ | June 6, 2014 | BY BLAKE SEITZ

[Oldeconomybuyer]

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy put herself at the mercy of the Internet on Wednesday by taking part in a question-and-answer session on the popular forum reddit.

"Ask Me Anything," McCarthy wrote. reddit's users obliged.

The account Gina_EPA, endorsed by McCarthy's Twitter account and the EPA website as authentic, answered 15 questions over the span of two hours.

Many users seemed underwhelmed by her responses.

[Ben Ficklin]

Your question: "the state has to comply with this nonsense decree?"

Actually the state has comply with the court decisions. SCOTUS 2007. SCOTUS 2011. DC Court of Appeals 2012. And to be accurate, SCOTUS has one more ruling to make which could alter the situation to a small degree. And this is not to preclude that more lawsuits might be filed in an attempt to alter the outcome or delay the implementation.

[texas booster]

I was highlighting:

“sets a standard that has absolutely no meaning in a state”

not that the EPA can't do whatever it wants due to court decrees.

Whether the EPA can set standards that become law is a question for Congress.

My questions regarded whether arbitrary standards should be issued when there is a serious question of cause and effect.

Acid rain is mostly cleaned up, but lead contamination along out oldest highways is ignored.

Who gets to decide whose ox is gored other than Congress?

[Lou L]

Some of these eviro-goons from the EPA won't be satisfied until we're all reduced to sitting around on a cold winter evening, huddled around the “warmth” emanating from a 40-watt LED bulb. They'll want to have us all plugged into “smart grids,” which is another way of saying, “your energy supply will vary (and may not exist at all if we dictate) based on the arbitrary whims of the EPA.”

[Georgia Girl 2]

Raise your hand if you expected her to answer the questions?

[Ben Ficklin]

You say: "My questions regarded whether arbitrary standards should be issued when there is serious question of cause and effect"

We use the Supreme Court as the final arbiter. The supreme court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant and told EPA to regulate CO2 using the clean air act.

[dynoman]

Yes, she could have said that, so you did need an /s tag. I love using people’s own words against them.

[dynoman]

If she had actually said that I definitely would have used her words against her.