EPA Chief: Arguing climate change is 'kind of nuts'

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Wednesday called on the science community to continue to explain the climate change.

McCarthy said that while the vast majority of scientists agree that the climate is changing, the scientific community doesn't always do a good enough job of explaining those changes and their impact to the public. She said it was important to make that point to the general public because the cost of inaction was great.

"Science is under attack like it has never been before," McCarthy said. "Now is not the time for us to hide or to begin to be more quiet. It's the time for us to embrace this challenge.

"That is what has made the United States strong. We have not shied away from difficult decisions. Each and every time we have been able to push the envelope and innovate our way forward."

McCarthy spoke at a town hall at the Phoenix Convention Center with members of the American Meteorological Society. The group, which includes meteorologists, hydrologists and other scientists, is holding its 95th annual conference in Phoenix this week.

The society's president, Bill Gail, moderated the discussion.

McCarthy said it would be best to treat the challenge of climate change as an economic opportunity. She said inaction has allowed China to take the lead in solar technology and put the United States in the position of having to catch up.

She said President Obama's Climate Action Plan and the EPA's recent steps to cut carbon pollution from power plants would help send the signal to the business community that it would pay to invest in innovation.

"What you see happening in China and in recent conversations in India are going to make people comfortable that if the largest greenhouse polluters say this is where they're going to be in 2030, you are then going to trigger a range of investments -- not costs, but investments," McCarthy said. "I think that will get us more in 2030 than we ever required and put us on a better trajectory moving forward."

"I'm very bullish that this country is going to embrace the science, people are going to want us to act and that we have the guts and ingenuity to make it work for us.

She said that it was possible in the early days of discussions about climate change people were asked to make too many sacrifices too quickly. That resulted in people reacting to change from a fearful place rather than facing the challenge.

"We need to move in a way that's not based on fear, but opportunity," McCarthy said. "That's the way you engage people when change is happening. Or else they'll hunker down and do what many are doing now, denying it."

But she emphasized that the time for arguing about climate change has passed.

"There is some advantage to being 60 and part of that is I can remember how the world was when I was a child," McCarthy said. "If you don't think it's changed you're kind of nuts."