What a long, strategic trip it has been—from local health agent, to state administrator in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and then to head of the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency. Along the way you developed policies on economic growth, energy, transportation, and the environment. You led efforts to restore Long Island Sound and protect Connecticut’s parks and forests. Under your leadership, EPA initiatives cut air pollution, protected water resources, reduced greenhouse gases, and strengthened chemical safety to better protect more Americans, especially the most vulnerable, from negative health impacts. You crafted the country’s first carbon regulations for power plants, and helped coordinate the nation’s first mandatory cap-and-trade program. These accomplishments and others are credited with drawing other nation’s into the Paris Climate Agreement. This is no arena for the faint-hearted. You have worked for both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. “If I’m in a room where everybody agrees,” you have said, “I start to nod off.” This grit, combined with your sharp mind and can-do attitude, have improved, and even saved, the lives of countless people in this country and abroad.
I hereby declare you recipient of the honorary degree Doctor of Laws, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 4, 2017
Megamenu Social