The Patriot Post® · The Green New Deal Comes in Pieces

President Joe Biden has made some important moves recently to fulfill the climate agenda of his leftist overlords. Taken together, these executive orders and top-down calls for action that are clearly and deliberately outside the legislative process have the potential to put environmental fascists in complete control of the American economy.

We’ll start with the so-called green bank. This latest government gem of an idea is being lauded by the White House as an attempt to “mobilize private investment” in the “clean energy economy.” According to the plan, the Treasury Department will establish a permanent financing arm that will operate as a direct line of credit for entrepreneurs looking to establish clean energy projects.

We’ve seen this movie before, and it always has a sad ending. Disregard for a moment, if you can, the fact that government bureaucrats are almost universally undereducated about the industries and projects they’re called in to fund and oversee. You may even ignore, if you will, the fact that the government is always a poor business partner because it has no stake in the game and doesn’t care if it loses taxpayer money because there will always be more. The big reason why a government green bank will never work — well, at least as conservatives define “work” — is because it is driven entirely by political motivations. Of course, given that those are precisely the reasons leftists favor such things, they’ll think it works just fine.

Indeed, the political gamesmanship that has polluted environmental and climate science (pun intended) is so vicious and fraught with dishonesty that there is no reason to assume this green bank will make reasoned lending decisions. Instead, by leftist design, the green bank is sure to wind up as nothing more than a crony capitalist tool where those who toe the party line will be given a seat at the table, and those who don’t will wait out in the hall until they grow old. It’s easy to envision the green bank becoming nothing more than a trough where Democrat supporters will line up to receive practically blank checks to fund their scientifically questionable and economically disastrous green dreams. And taxpayers will be on the hook.

If that weren’t enough to demonstrate just how the ecofascists are putting their collectivist boot on the economic scale, multiple federal agencies and departments will soon have the power to kill any government-related investments that do not meet environmental standards. This comes in the form of an executive order calling for federal agencies to analyze and mitigate the supposed financial risks of climate change. Senior-level climate officials will perform a government-wide review of federal programs that contribute to climate change, reevaluate the efficacy of said programs, and if they see fit, kill said programs.

Wait, there are federal programs that could be eliminated?

Programs up for review could include housing projects, road projects, and of course anything related to fossil fuels. Also on the hook will be pension plans and their investments, labor initiatives, and much more. As with the green bank, this program is ripe for abuse. There is no hard standard that defines when or how a program “contributes to climate change.” We can only assume based on past evidence that the moving goal post will be liberally applied, with the guilty parties often being Republicans, conservatives, and anyone who does not bow to the eco-racial-social-enviro-justice cabal that now runs the White House and the president who resides there.

Why the rush to push these climate initiatives? It can’t be because of public concern over climate change. According to a recent survey conducted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 53% of voters said that climate change was not a factor in how they voted in the 2020 election. Only 6% said it was the top issue they considered when voting. Even more telling, when asked whether they would be willing to spend their own money to combat climate change, 35% said they would not spend one dollar. And 53% said they were somewhat or very unlikely to spend extra money to replace a gas-powered vehicle with an electric one.

The reality is that all of us are already paying a lot more than $1 for the Left’s climate fraud, and it will never be enough to satiate the Democrats’ desire for your money.

One could assume that the Biden administration misjudged the public’s concern, or lack thereof, about climate change. But that’s not it. Team Biden knows that it has a limited amount of time to act before the voting public realizes the mistake it made in November and begins a course correction starting with next year’s midterm elections. The other reason to create such a regime is to gain more power, which is what the Left has always been about, no matter the sea level or the global temperature.