(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s shocking admission that his administration has already declared a national climate emergency fueled concerns that a COVID-style lockdown loomed on the horizon.
When Biden was asked during a Wednesday interview with The Weather Channel whether he was prepared to declare a national climate emergency, the president claimed “We’ve already done that,” mumbling through boasts of his land conservation efforts, rejoining the globalist Paris Climate Accord and blowing nearly $370 billion on the left’s radical Green New Deal.
“We’re moving. It is the existential threat to humanity,” Biden said of climate change in the interview overlooking the Grand Canyon in Arizona, part of a Western tour to peddle his climate alarmist agenda.
When asked again if he had already declared a national climate emergency, Biden affirmed, “Practically speaking, yes.”
While Biden’s proclamation technically missed the mark – no official declaration has actually been declared – Biden’s comment was interpreted by many to be a classic example of saying the quiet part out loud.
The White House further enflamed concerns when spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre ducked a chance to moderate her boss’s national emergency declaration, Politico reported.
“This is a president that has taken really an ambitious approach to climate change,” Jean-Pierre said during an interview with CNN when asked about the president’s comments, before parroting the regime’s green accomplishments.
Biden veered close to officially declaring a national climate emergency last year, when he was poised to use it as a political weapon to jolt passage of the administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and its multi-billion-dollar green spending spree.
“Climate change is an emergency, and in the coming weeks I’m going to use the power I have as president to turn these words into formal, official, government actions through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders and regulatory power that a president possesses,” Biden said at the time.
Biden’s latest public take on enacting his emergency powers sparked criticisms that it could pave the way for the return of tyrannical mandates, restricting public movement and censoring free speech to coincide with next year’s presidential tilt.
“The media and the left want Biden to declare a ‘climate emergency’ so they can lock you in your home, close your Church, censor your content, deplatform you for the wrong opinions, and then push mail-in ballots to secure the 2024 election,” wrote Daniel Turner, executive director of Power The Future.
Biden last month unveiled the White House’s permanent Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, which is “charged with leading, coordinating, and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health-related disruptions in the United States.” Biden has repeatedly made comments that make clear climate change is a “significant public health-related disruption.”
Countering Biden’s push toward again embracing pandemic-like powers, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and other Republicans proposed legislation that would prevent Biden from using the statutory authorities available to declare a national emergency solely on the basis of climate change.
“The Biden administration has repeatedly governed by executive overreach when it comes to energy and environmental regulations, ignoring the law and doing so without congressional approval,” Capito said. The bill received two readings and was referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Noting that while most COVID-era mandates have run their course, Gateway Pundit’s Leo Hohmann reminded that “all of the unconstitutional laws, rules, logistical practices and executive orders remain in place and at the ready to once again ramp up the heat on Americans to comply with whatever ‘new normal’ the globalists desire to impose next. And Biden is getting ready for it by creating this [permanent Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy].”
For good measure, the White House last month also implemented a new policy regarding press passes that targeted non-compliant reporters. The White House warned that it was cracking down “on access to areas of the White House or credentialed events” and was demanding that all reporters renew their passes.
Biden reportedly floated a trial balloon for his climate emergency potential when he directed the Labor Department last month to issue the first-ever hazard alert for heat and told the agency to take other measures in connection with heat-related safety.
The edict proclaimed that “Millions of Americans are currently experiencing the effects of extreme heat, which is growing in intensity, frequency, and duration due to the climate crisis.”
With that as a background, energy industry leaders and analysts have sounded alarms that Biden is preparing to fold under mounting pressure to appease his leftist base with a Pandemic 2.0 power grab.
That radical base pounced on Biden’s Grand Canyon comment and used it to turn up the heat, as it were, for Biden to officially declare a national climate emergency.
“It’s a no-brainer to declare a climate emergency – and if President Biden said we already have, then why not do it now?” demanded one activist leader of the Sunrise Movement.
“Now that President Biden says he’s ‘practically’ declared a climate emergency, it’s time to do it for real,” People vs. Fossil Fuels, a coalition of over 1,200 groups, said in their statement.
“They’re leaning to that direction,” U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart said of Biden’s emergency powers intent.
“If you grant the president’s emergency powers to declare a climate emergency, it’s just like COVID,” Stewart told Just the News, adding that such a directive would give the Democrat regime “vast and unchecked authority to shut down everything from communications to infrastructure,” which in that scenario could include water, electricity and even freezing financial assets.
…"sacrifices" for the "climate crisis"….
who is gonna made the sacrifices, joe?
not the politicians. not the wealthy, not the elite.
normal people must bring those "sacrifices". no are gonna be forced to do as they're told. a climate lockdown "sacrifice" you must do. pic.twitter.com/kXsjoGk4le
— Jack (@jackassquaes) August 9, 2023
