GINA MCCARTHY:

Well, I think he has to look at the history of the coal mining industry, and not try to produce rhetoric that gives them comfort.

What they really need is support in the transition that's already happening, with or without the Clean Power Plan. We know that the industry has been struggling for awhile. The simple fact is that it's not competitive now. That's why it's not successful in the market.

That's why you see companies, mining companies going out of business. So, it's time to get real with those people and offer them support they need, but not simply say that climate change isn't happening or that EPA is taking away those jobs.

I mean, let's look at the popularity of this proposal when it goes out. I know that 70 percent of the people in this country understand that the climate has changed, and they are looking forward to us regulating utilities to make sure they're not polluting.

And that is certainly a significant number. In fact, it's twice the popularity of this president. And so let's look at how people react to it.

I think people know that it's all about the future, not about looking at the past, where we have to go with jobs. And none us want to leave any community behind. But you're not going to do it by sending signals that are simply a signature on a page.

There's a huge amount of work between what we did to build our clean energy future and what it's going to take to actually meet the promises of this executive order. It's lots of hard work, many years. It's denying the science. It's developing facts that don't exist.

And so I'm pretty confident that, despite this signature, the Obama legacy on clean energy will be strong at the end this and any administration, because that's where the world is going. That's where U.S. strengths should be. That's where we should be investing and innovating.