The chief architect of President Barack Obama’s climate change policies has warned the incoming Trump administration that US law and the scientific evidence of global warming will constrain any attempt to overturn her work. With the outlook for global climate action uncertain after the US election, Gina McCarthy, the top US environmental regulator, told the Financial Times that climate change sceptics led by Donald Trump would have limited room for manoeuvre. “It’s going to be a very high burden of proof for them,” said Ms McCarthy, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, outlining why US law would ensure that Mr Trump could not easily abolish climate change regulations.
Mr Trump’s presidential victory delivered a shock to global efforts to tackle climate change. He vowed in his campaign to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate pact and to end US funding for UN climate programmes. The president-elect has embraced the Republican party’s doubts on global warming, tweeting in 2012 that it was a hoax invented by China. This month he said it was “a big scam for a lot of people to make a lot of money”, but on the scientific evidence declared: “I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows.” Ms McCarthy said: “I frankly am disappointed that we’re still talking about the science of climate, because that really has been long settled.”