Sacrificing Energy Security on the Altar of Sustainability

Going green through executive order by weaponizing the administrative state

View of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Aug. 1, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have been weaponizing the federal government against their political adversaries since January 2021. Perhaps they seek to turn the U.S. federal bureaucracy into the mirror image of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing that controls every aspect of Chinese society—and one that brooks no political dissent from the Democratic Party line just as the CCP tolerates no dissent.

Consider the following actions by the Biden administration since January 2021:

• The continuing J6 star chamber that provides the political cover for the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to hold Jan. 6 protesters in solitary confinement for months while awaiting their trials (never mind the failure of the FBI and DOJ to prosecute violent Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters throughout 2020).
• The military standdown imposed in February 2021 by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to supposedly root out “extremism in the ranks” (a statistically irrelevant problem exploited for expressly political purposes).
• In June 2021, Biden signed an executive order “to advance Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) in the Federal workforce” (never mind that DEIA is really just a euphemism for the divisive Marxist critical race theory that targets white Americans).
• In April 2022, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of a “Disinformation Governance Board” to supposedly counteract “disinformation aimed at the US population and infrastructure” (never mind the First Amendment that protects political speech).
• The June 2022 executive order directed “federal health and education agencies to expand access to gender-affirming care and advance LGBTQ-inclusive learning environments at American schools” (never mind that the U.S. Constitution is silent on such matters, the responsibility for which is delegated by the 10^th Amendment to the states).
• The signing in August of the grossly misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” which includes around $46 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and provisions to hire 87,000 new IRS agents (since there aren’t that many billionaires, whom will those agents be targeting?).
• The unprecedented FBI raid of the home of former President Donald Trump on Aug. 8 and subsequent raids and subpoenas on dozens of Trump’s former staff and advisers (a continuation of five-plus years of political hit-jobs by Democrats to “get Trump”).

An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 15, 2022. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

The latest example of Biden’s weaponization of federal agencies involves the issuance on Aug. 31 of “Implementing Instructions for Executive Order 14057, Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability.” EO 14057 is about forcing unsustainable green energy technologies into the federal government and subsequently throughout the U.S. economy to displace all of America’s hydrocarbon energy sources under Biden’s “Federal Sustainability Plan.”

The whole notion of “sustainability” is a Marxist euphemism used by enviro-socialists that purports to examine federal and state policies that are balanced across concerns for the environment, equity, and the economy. In short, they seek to control the U.S. economy through prioritizations associated with arbitrary environmental and equity considerations.

The word “equity” is the kicker. Cultural Marxists and left-wing political activists are using “equity” as a wedge to disrupt and replace American cultural traditions of merit and self-worth with identity politics as the top priority for hiring, firing, and organizing America’s institutions, industries, and governments at all levels. Science and merit be damned; it all becomes a numbers game based on the demographic makeup of society, including the new categories of the “disenfranchised” comprising the LGBTQI diaspora. Everyone gets their piece of the pie regardless of merit or whether or not earned.

But perhaps equally important is the “environment” factor defined by green Democrats. Biden’s Federal Sustainability Plan has three main goals for all of the federal agencies: 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030 (with 50 percent available 24/7), 100 percent zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035 (including 100 percent light-duty acquisitions by 2027), and net-zero emissions buildings by 2045 (including a 50 percent reduction by 2032).

These requirements are being pushed out to the private sector via the politicized Securities and Exchange Commission by implementing disclosure requirements associated with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and climate-related risks for publicly traded companies. Essentially, companies are being forced to conform to left-wing environmental requirements for “climate risk management plans,” and noncompliance could result in fines and penalties in the future. The authoritarians’ gameplan: when not economically viable, use the force of government to achieve politico-economic goals.

Never mind that “carbon pollution” is an oxymoron, as carbon dioxide is plant food and the stuff of life. Or that so-called “zero emissions” policies were not implemented through legislative action but rather by bureaucrats unaccountable to the public. And that the climate catastrophes that form the impetus and rationale for such policies have never materialized as predicted over the past 50 years by climate alarmists.

The Democrat Party is pushing its green agenda via authoritarian diktats from a weaponized federal bureaucracy. Never mind the energy disaster unfolding before our eyes in Europe, where—due to a misguided over-reliance on green energy production—countries are facing enormous spikes in energy costs and shortages due to green policies enacted by their left-wing governments over the years.

A man walks by power lines as California’s grid operator urged the state’s 40 million people to ratchet down the use of electricity in homes and businesses as a heat wave settled over much of the state, in Mountain View, Calif., on Aug. 17, 2022. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Or, a little closer to home, how is energy security going in the great state of California? Not very well these days, given the rolling brownouts—thanks to a Democrat governor’s similar head-long rush down the path of green energy suicide. While California currently requires 33 percent of its energy to be produced from green sources, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an “emergency proclamation” in July 2021 “to scale up and speed up our transition to a 100 percent clean electricity system.”

Yeah, that bit of Democrat authoritarianism will indeed work based on the recent bad experiences of Sri Lanka, Ghana, Germany, and other green energy meccas, right? Like the refrain that communists use about past failures of communist systems, the greenies assure themselves that they, too, “will get [sustainability/communism] right the next time we try it.”

Who decides what is important regarding “sustainability” policies and their impact on career advancement within the federal bureaucracy? In the Democrats’ minds, that would be nameless, faceless bureaucrats, all of whom were handpicked and promoted because of their left-wing beliefs in “sustainability” doctrine—a self-priming pump for Democrat Party apparatchiks. This is eerily similar to how the CCP controls the Chinese regime bureaucracy; unless one is a CCP member-in-good-standing and subscribes to CCP policies and ideology, a person has no viable opportunity or career in politics.

For this is the result of the weaponization of U.S. federal agencies: an undermining of the Constitution through the rise of the administrative state, the politicization of that administrative state in service of the party of government (Democrats), and the quashing of the personal and economic freedoms of political dissenters. In this case, the vehicle to help achieve these results is the sacrifice of America’s energy security on the altar of the false promise of green energy sustainability.

Are you ready for Democrat-induced brownouts in your state?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.