On Wednesday, President Joe Biden spoke in Massachusetts regarding the possibility that he might utilize executive action in order to further the Democratic Party’s Green Agenda. Biden’s remarks took place at a non-functioning power plant in Somerset.
Democrats, particularly progressives, have been urging President Biden to use executive action to get some of their climate change initiatives going. This movement is the result of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) announcing last week that he could not vote to pass legislation “that add fuel to the inflation fire.” Manchin’s representatives pointed out that the Senator believes that massive government spending would only make inflation surge further than it currently grows.
Manchin’s spokesperson made the announcement late last Wednesday after the Labor Department released its monthly CPI and inflation report. Economists had expected inflation to be 8.8 percent, but the report revealed actual inflation to be at 9.1 percent, yet another four-decade historic high.
According to Biden’s remarks, the first executive orders the president will sign have to do with $2.3 billion in funding for “the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program”. This is intended to provide resilience in the face of disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, flooding, and drought during the 2022 calendar year.
The White House is set to “issue guidance” regarding “lowering cooling costs for communities” that have seen record-setting heat during this season. The executive order will assist tribal communities, states and territories by the way of funding community cooling centers as well as assisting people in getting access to cooling equipment. The president did not disclose exactly what that equipment would be, nor how the would be providing such equipment.
Biden will sign yet another executive order that is a directive for the Secretary of the Interior; this instruction will order that organization to “advance c lean energy development” particularly in coastal Florida, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Biden claimed that the development will promote American jobs in the green sector, particularly in offshore wind development.
The White House is also considering starting wind power projects along the coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Specifically, two projects are slated to be located in Galveston, Texas and in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Traditionally, these areas have been a boon for offshore drilling companies. According to estimates provided by the Biden Administration, the wind power projects in those two areas of the Gulf have the potential to power as man as three million American homes.
While Biden had previously said he would not declare a state of emergency where climate change is concerned, he did use the term during his remarks Wednesday afternoon.
Climate change is one of the foremost progressive Democratic Party agendas, and Joe Manchin’s refusal to go along with the proposed revamped version of Build Back Better (the slimmed-down version would have cost about $1 trillion – about half of the BBB legislation’s original cost). A White House official said last week that the “climate crisis” is “urgent,” even though Climate Czar John Kerry’s jet has unleashed at least 300 metric tons of carbon since Joe Biden took office in 2021.
The senior official remarked that “what has already been unleashed” into the environment up until this moment in history is “devastating.”
Joe Biden himself referred to the climate agenda as an “emergency” – “This is an emergency – an emergency – and I will look at it that way.” He then announced that he would use executive orders regarding furthering the Green Energy agenda, specifically if Congress could not get any legislation through both chambers with success.
These orders come at a time when gas prices are still hovering around $4 per gallon. A Real Clear Politics poll published Wednesday had the president’s approval rating at 37 percent.
While many Democrats have publicly denounced Manchin’s decision not to support green energy initiatives legislation, the president did not mention the West Virginia Senator’s name.
