MA Climate Official Says 60% of State Emissions Come from Average People: ‘We Have to Break Your Will’

David Ismay, the undersecretary for climate change under Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s (R) administration, explained during a Vermont Climate Council meeting last month the majority of the Bay State’s emissions come from average people and there is “no bad guy left … to point the finger at, to turn the screws on, and you know, to break their will.” Rather, he told his fellow climate advocates, “We have to break your will,” a remark he admitted would not bode well publicly.

“You know one thing we found through our analysis is that 60 percent of our emissions come from, as I have been starting to say, you and me — except you guys are in Vermont,” he told the climate advocates at the January 25 meeting.

“60 percent of our emissions come from residential heating and passenger vehicles,” he said, repeating the percentage and emphasizing the majority of emissions that need to be reduced come from average people.

“So let me say that again, 60 percent of our emissions that need to be reduced come from you, the person across the street, the senior on fixed income, right?” he said, acknowledging there is “no bad guy left, at least in Massachusetts, to point the finger at, to turn the screws on, and you know, break their will, so they stop emitting.”

“That’s you,” he declared. “We have to break your will. Right? I can’t even say that publicly,” he said as the clip ended. It remains unclear if he added further context to his remarks on the purported need to break the will of average Americans to reach his lofty climate goals.

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The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance released a statement responding to Ismay’s remarks, calling them “reprehensible.”

“He describes his target as ordinary people in Massachusetts like the elderly on fixed incomes and the person across the street. They’re his target simply because they cannot change their lifestyles enough to be acceptable to his climate agenda,” Paul Diego Craney, a spokesperson for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said.

“The weapon he intends to use to ‘turn the screws’ on them is the new climate legislation and administrative tax increases like the Transportation and Climate Initiative, which seek to drive up costs in order to ‘break their will’ and force decreases in consumption,” he continued, calling Ismay’s mentality “frightening” and demanding he be dismissed as he “does not have the best interests of the residents of Massachusetts at heart.”

The clip coincides with the Biden administration’s broader agenda, putting climate change at the forefront. One of President Biden’s first actions involved rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement while further outlining his pursuit of “environmental justice.” He also signed executive orders halting new oil and gas leases on federal land.

“We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to act,” Biden said at the time.

Biden climate envoy John Kerry, who flew to Iceland on a private jet to receive a climate award in 2019, recently suggested that people have nine years to “try to do what science is telling us we need to do” and save the world from so-called manmade climate change.

The climate hawk has continued to defend his private jet usage, describing the mode of transportation as “the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.”