The Biden Administration, failing to get its legislative agenda passed through a deeply-divided Congress, has resorted to using a regulatory “backdoor” route to implement many so-called “green energy” policies and restrictions.
According to the Daily Caller, this backdoor method involves using currently-existing environmental laws to implement further restrictions and regulations by using the ambiguous wording of the laws to draw broader interpretations in favor of their actions. To this end, regulations have since been implemented on many aspects of everyday life, including home appliances, building standards, the fuel economy, and infrastructure projects.
“They’re basically using environmental laws to create backdoor subsidies,” said Brent Bennett, an energy expert at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “The problem is that our laws are so broadly interpreted and defined that it makes this possible. It allows for this kind of abuse. So, that’s really the root of the problem. Congress didn’t pass good laws and now those laws are being abused.”
The Left’s increasing push towards such “green” sources of energy began with far-left Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who introduced the highly sensationalized “Green New Deal.” The bill, which has failed to pass through Congress, would cost the United States over $93 trillion over a ten-year period, which would see each American family burdened with a cost of up to $65,300 per year to pay for the provisions of the bill.
Among other radical proposals, the Green New Deal would demand that the country produce 100 percent of its power using only zero-emission sources, as well as investing in electric vehicles, and upgrading infrastructure in order to achieve “maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.”
Since taking office, Biden has worked to implement many of the Green New Deal’s demands mostly through executive orders. On his first day, Biden signed one such order ordering “major revisions” to appliance energy efficiency regulations, which directly led to the Department of Energy (DOE) unveiling a massive list of new regulatory rules covering a wide variety of household appliances, including washers and dryers, showers, lamps, cooking products, and water heaters.
The Biden Administration has also rolled out new regulations on proposed construction projects, ordering federal agencies to investigate potential “environmental impacts” of new projects before approving them. These regulations have been implemented through reinterpretation of a previously-passed federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), first passed in 1969.
But Congressman Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) pointed out how detrimental to American society such regulations are, as these new rules cover just about every kind of construction project imaginable.
“I don’t care if you’re building a new school, I don’t care if you’re building a high-rise building or trying to put in affordable housing, much less a pipeline or a road or replace bridges,” Mullin told the Caller. “You have to go through the NEPA process and, underneath this new rule, it will take that project years — if it’ll ever even be permitted and most of the time it won’t…be permitted.”