Meghan Blonder writes for the Washington Free Beacon about disturbing statements from a Biden administration official.
The climate official who spearheaded a Biden administration rule boosting electric vehicles at the expense of gas-powered cars wants you to live a “simpler life” to combat climate change, behavior she acknowledges “most people” will not engage in “unless forced.”
President Joe Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday unveiled new fuel efficiency standards, which acting administrator Ann Carlson said will “reduce harmful emissions.” Carlson has long stressed the need to force Americans to live climate-friendly lives. As an environmental academic at UCLA, for example, Carlson published a 2007 piece titled, “Only by Requiring Lifestyle Changes,” which argued that people would not reduce their energy consumption “voluntarily.” As a result, Carlson wrote, the U.S. government must “induce behavioral change” by implementing policies that “make the bad behavior more expensive.”
In a similar 2009 blog post titled, “Save Us From Ourselves,” Carlson called on Americans to “use less electricity, take more public transportation, consume less, live more simply and so on” to fight climate change. Carlson argued that most people “could benefit from a simpler life” but will not “engage in dramatic behavioral change unless forced,” highlighting the need for government intervention. “Governments and markets need to take steps to make us pay for the full costs of the behaviors in which we engage … they need to limit our infrastructure choices to energy efficient ones,” the Biden administration official wrote. “In other words, we need to be saved from ourselves.”
Biden’s decision to tap Carlson to lead its highway administration reflects the administration’s alignment with the environmental left’s most militant actors. While Carlson’s agency is traditionally concerned with traffic safety, Carlson privately told her UCLA colleagues that she would use her post to push climate policies. “I view my appointment (and a number of others) as evidence that the Biden administration is truly committed to a ‘whole of government’ approach to addressing climate change,” Carlson wrote.
