Interviewed by celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, US EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy speaks of how she and her family would throw trash ‘right out the window.’
EPA ADMINISTRATOR GINA MCCARTHY: “We used to, you know, if you had trash and you would, you know, eaten McDonald’s in your car, you’d throw it right out the window. This wasn’t just, I don’t think it was just my family. I’m certainly hoping it’s not.”
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: [laughing]
MCCARTHY: “It was just, it was so–”
TYSON: “But, everybody did it. I remember it.”
MCCARTHY: “everything–”
StarTalk
January, 2016
33 Responses
I am not going to hold this against her because I remember back in the 50s and early 60s, this was a common thing. At the end of the day, the parking lot would be full of trash and someone would sweep it up, to be ready for the next day. Most times there would not even be a trash can to put stuff in – it was just accepted. Highway litter was rampant – the closer to town the worse it got – there was no Interstate Highway system, just two lane roads. At least the rats and raccoons ate well.
I would absolutely hold it against her. My parents would have disciplined me in ways that are probably not politically correct today if I gave even so much as a thought to throwing trash out the window. Even if there weren’t trash cans available, two wrongs don’t make a right, and our family knew full well that our trash would have taken to a proper trash can at home when we got there. Fast-forward that mentality to EPA’s failure to acknowledge the release of that Colorado Gold King mine wastewater as 3+ million gallons of “trash” they just threw out the window. Then combine that with the enviro-activists who want to shift the blame to 1950s-era and earlier mining activity. If these people don’t have it in their minds what the right thing to do on trash is from the start, it is fair game to question their ‘environmentalism’.
You can second-guess societal norms in the 50s all you want but that doesn’t change reality. The concept of keeping things clean didn’t catch hold until the mid 60s. Prior to that, other things were more important in the minds of most people.
Maybe in your low life family.
Do not conflate what was, with what I think was right. Our family lived in a very clean house. My dad was a mechanical engineer, my mother an ex-school teacher. Just because things were different then from now, is simply stating a fact.
Bullhocky. I grew up in the 60’s and no way would that have been acceptable for us to do. Yeah, there were some yahoos, like there are some today, who will dump ashtrays or their fast food trash out their car door onto the parking lot, but it was no more acceptable back then as it is now.
Says a lot about where you lived and how you were raised.
It is rather amazing and somewhat comical how interpretations are derived. By my simply reporting what I saw, is being interpreted to me saying what I did (which I didn’t)…they are completely different. I sense knee-jerk defensiveness in the replies.
Are you from Louisiana? Because up here in Missouri, that was never acceptable – there have been signs here warning of fines for littering since I can remember and I’m 62 years old.
Not at all, I lived in Kansas and traveled a lot to Texas, Colorado and New Mexico. I am a few months from 70. Don’t misunderstand me, I do not condone what it was like, I am merely saying what was the norm when I was a kid in the 50s.
what shit hole did you grow up in? I grew up in the 50 and 60’s as well, and never saw that.
wish it was the mcdonalds throwing the epa trash out the window.
Just another freakshow.
Hint for McCarthy: It was just your family and a few other douche bags. I was born in 1958 and if I wanted a knot on my head or wanted to spend the day picking-up trash —- all I had to do was throw a McDonald’s bag out the window.
I grew up in the 60’s and we did not do that. My parents had little plastic bags that attached to the window crank handles. Our garbage went there. Not saying never, but 99%, no way.
These people are trailer trash.
No wonder she has to clean up after her family. No one in my family has ever thrown trash outside a car window EVER.
Unfortunately she projects her family’s horrible habits on the rest of society…… so typical with the liberal douche bags in our Gov.
Talk about reformed sinner !!
She grew up, and still is, completely ill-mannered, white trash. McCarthy is just another government appointed, PC affirmative action dope. She barely got through college studying anthropology and never had to take a rigorous mathematics or science class. Don’t let the joke of an M.S. degree from Tufts fool anyone. She has no reasoning or logical ability and her tenure at the EPA shows she is dangerous, useful idiot for the enviro-nazis.
I was born into poverty the year before the Great Depression began. At an early age I was assigned the job of managing the garbage and the ashes (from a coal-fired furnace).
I do not remember ever throwing trash out a window. I wonder if that would account for my being an environmentalist from my early teens and why I never became a fanatic like the EPA Administrator who at some point seems to have adopted environmentalism as a religion.
There is no fanatic like the true-believer who has been converted from disbelief. The EPA is on course to set environmental standards higher than what has ever existed in pristine nature. This is irrational and dangerous to the economic well-being of the American middle class and if promoted for the whole world this philosophy or (pagan) religion will suppress the attempt by the world’s poor to rise out of poverty.
Reminds me of the HUGE crowds of conservatives attending rallies in WA DC… and the grounds were all picked up and clean when the event was over…. then pics comparing all the trash, signs etc on the ground, after liberal left places where their rallies were held. tsk tsk tsk Left their trash for OTHERS to pic up and clean up.
What a “trashy” woman. And this cretin is the EPA chief? Only in the Obama Admin would a person like this have a high position. .
Are you claiming she is still a kid and hasn’t aged or changed? Weird.
Best,
D
I never agree with you Dano2, but this time you are right.
The nightmare that never ends.
I grew up in the 1940’s and 50’s. Nope, we didn’t throw trash out the window of the car. My parents were heavy smokers, but never threw a butt out the window or on the ground. My dad would open the paper and let the tobacco spread on the ground and then roll the paper up and put it in his pocket. My mother had a small box in her purse where she put her butts until she got home.
We weren’t environmentalist, we were just a decent family who didn’t trash up the place.
If you watch movies from that time, you will never see what you are describing. People threw butts out the window all the time…some still do today here in Seattle. If they are spotted by the police they will get a ticket but that rarely happens. How else do you still get beer bottles and other debris along the roads? We still have state road crews periodically do a litter pickup along I-5 and I-90 and other state highways. Open your collective eyes and look! People still litter, just less than in the past. My wife and I do not.
My family never did it, in fact we rarely ate in the car at all. Sounds like a white trash hillbilly.
Not everyone threw trash from their cars. I’m from a very large family that had relatives in New York State, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Not a one of the family would ever tolerate littering. Tossing something out the car window would have been an invitation to a good whuppin’; North, or South, of the Mason Dixon. McCarthy is from one of those “enlightened” families who felt that fowling public property kept the proletariat employed.
This is quite amazing to me. I grew up in the 1960s and although there were people who littered and threw trash out the window this was not socially accepted… we called them the same thing then that we do now… liberals.
I know that we did not do it. My mother made sure of that way back in the 40s and 50s. A&W Root beer stands were all the rage then. “Two dogs and a burger” for under a buck. But the trash went into a trash can. We were part of “everybody” and we didn’t do it. So there. Now you know!
Speak for yourself, lowlife. I’m in my 50s and my family and I NEVER threw trash out the window of our “cah”. Never.
We definitely did NOT do this!
In fact, my dad and I would walk around our block each night in good weather with a trash bag and a poker for picking up trash. But, my dad was a conservative, so he just quietly went about improving what he could improve, rather than loudly telling other people what to do.
I agree with nothing she says or stands for. And I am her contemporary. And I can tell you that was never acceptable behavior by conscientious people, even back in the day. She was ill-raised.
My parents were heavy smokers back in the day, but they wouldn’t even flip a butt out the window. My dad said “That’s what ashtrays are for.” when I pointed out others who did, then he added, “Basing what you do on what others do is being a lemming.” (Talking about a program we saw on TV back then, I know it turned out to be staged.)
Maybe my folks were ahead of the curve, but it bothers me when I hear something equivalent to “Well everybody else does it.”