An environmental group composed of public employees is criticizing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy's weeklong tour of the Eastern United States during "Earth Week."
Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility [PEER],
has called the tour "clueless."
"Frenetically jetting around the country appears to undercut EPA's message to ordinary Americans that they should conserve, consume less and reduce transportation pollution,"
The Daily Caller reported Ruch as saying.
"We thought it was hypocritical and ineffective and misdirected," Ruch said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's
"Your World with Neil Cavuto."
The point of the tour was to urge Americans to conserve and reduce carbon pollution in their daily lives, Ruch said. But his group calls it hypocritical because it's like "enlisting Donald Trump to preach frugality." It's ineffective, he added, because the EPA has no track record in effecting public behavior.
It is misdirected, he said, because the EPA can do two things: regulate and enforce. It is doing neither, he argued, and is a decade behind the curve on combating climate change.
"The Obama administration has treated climate like the weather: It's talked a lot about it, but, frankly, it just hasn't done much," Ruch told Fox News.
"When EPA is doing this, who are they asking to conserve what?" he said. "And we thought they might want to start with themselves. … We asked whether or not they've heard of Skype."
McCarthy started her tour, presumably by airplane, on Monday with an appearance on "The Daily Show" in New York. Tuesday, she was scheduled to throw out the first pitch at the Red Sox-Yankees game in Boston. Then it is off to Cleveland on Wednesday, Atlanta on Thursday and Memphis on Friday.
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