Biden's top climate advisor Gina McCarthy will step down
Source: CNN Politics
(CNN) President Joe Biden will announce Friday that White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy is leaving her post, an administration official familiar with the plans told CNN. McCarthy -- one of two top climate officials appointed by Biden at the start of his administration -- had long been expected to stay in her position for about a year, but continued for months beyond to help see through Democrats' historic climate legislation, which Biden signed in August.
She will be succeeded by Ali Zaidi, the official said, who had been McCarthy's deputy since the start of the Biden administration. Biden's other top climate official, US Climate Envoy John Kerry, is expected to stay in his post through the UN climate summit this fall. McCarthy was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency under former President Barack Obama and was a key architect of that administration's Clean Power Plan. In the Biden administration, McCarthy was tasked with setting up a first-of-its-kind White House office to coordinate climate action across agencies.
"Her legacy is going to be that she set up the president and the fed government for the most aggressive climate action in the history of the US," said Christy Goldfuss, senior vice president for energy and environment policy at the Center for American Progress. "All of that will be what she's most proud of and most remembered for. Those positions will stick around, and the structure she helped drive will be needed long into the future."
As much as McCarthy greased the wheels for climate action across agencies, the White House's most significant win on climate came through Congress last month in the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains $370 billion in new clean energy tax credits and climate provisions -- a historic amount of climate spending and the most significant environmental legislation since the landmark Clean Air Act.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/politics/gina-mccarthy-steps-down-biden-climate-advisor/index.html
She was apparently behind the many of the climate/environment-focused E.O.'s that were issued. Wish her well!
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and knowledge she displayed during an interview early in President Biden's 1st term 
For people at the GS-1000 level, it's not easy and you do have some who are "born and bred public service" types but others really aren't and were there for patronage or had full time jobs at policy institutes and/or colleges and were brought in to "contribute" their knowledge and experience for a fixed time (perhaps setting up certain programs) and then planned to move on.
for that explanation and maybe it is a "normal" thing for honest people to do, not like the corrupt revolving door that exists in so many federal agencies.
But climate change is/will affect so many things the federal gov will have to deal with I just assumed it would be a serious job for a serious person. Not a temp assignment.
and there are several agencies that deal with "climate" and the environment - notably NOAA (but also USGS and EPA, and even NASA, which has been involved with launches and monitoring of satellites that are measuring climatological phenomena over the oceans and poles), so there are plenty of scientists and other policy voices who are working behind the scenes.
The "Climate Advisor" is simply someone who would advise the President on the issues and help translate the President's vision for those agencies that are directly involved in the subject.
Remember the appointees are there "at the pleasure of the President" so those positions are always "temporary", but it's really the civil service workers who are actually doing the grunt work to carry out the mission and helping to bring policies to fruition.
from the federal government. And it's not like I don't agree with you but what is probably needed for "Climate" is someone like a Fauci, who is a civil servant and who is able to articulate and participate in the public discussions and policy making. Otherwise anyone who is an "appointee" is still going to be there "at the pleasure of the President".
And a President can't "force" an appointee to stay. Sometimes they try to get the best minds in to get something off the ground and give it a good foundation, knowing that they won't be able to stay (similar to how Elizabeth Warren had been brought in to help create the CFPB as an "Advisor", but was viciously attacked by the RW loons and was never able to be confirmed as the first director).
Unfortunately it is the way it is. 
I know it looks dire, but I would say too that sometimes mother nature has a way of "balancing out" things and doing "self-healing" in ways we have yet to discover. It's a matter of helping that process along while not creating new catastrophes due to competing scientific interests, which are a real problem. And a single person is not going to be able to carry that load. It has to be a collaboration of people and a lot of education of the populace.
