Nearly every state has joined a federal scheme pushed by the Biden administration that would help implement the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 in the name of stopping supposed “climate change.”
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is implementing its Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program, which was enacted under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden described as “one of the most significant laws in our history.”
Under this program, the EPA will distribute “$5 billion in grants to states, local governments, tribes, and territories to develop and implement ambitious plans for reducing greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions and other harmful air pollution.” Participants, including state governments, are required to create two “Climate Action Plans” that will “incorporate a variety of measures to reduce GHG emissions from across their economies in six key sectors (electricity generation, industry, transportation, buildings, agriculture/natural and working lands, and waste management).”
Nearly every state is participating in this program. Only five states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Wyoming — declined to participate. Meanwhile, dozens of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), tribal governments, and territories are also participating.
The EPA-led CPRG program is dangerous for multiple reasons. First, it is unconstitutional, since the federal government has no authority under the Constitution to regulate or spend money on environmental issues. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution expressly lists the topics Congress may legislate on, and environmental or “climate” policy is nowhere to be found.
The CPRG program also threatens state sovereignty. By participating in this program, the states act as water carriers for the federal government, helping the latter carry out its agenda. However, under the American form of government, the states are not tools or subdivisions of the central government. Rather, they created the federal government and are sovereign.
Furthermore, the CPRG program essentially requires the states to implement central planning on large sectors of their economies — affecting the lives of millions of their citizens, and potentially raising the cost of living and threatening states’ economies. In addition to blatantly violating free-market principles, this is a gross overreach of government power.
Finally, the CPRG program helps implement the UN’s Agenda 2030, specifically Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 (“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”) and Target 13.2 (“Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning”). Furthermore, aspects of the CPRG program help implement SDGs 7 and 9.
Agenda 2030 is the UN’s master plan for global central planning in the name of fighting “climate change.” Although this scheme is antithetical to the American form of government, the Biden administration has announced that it is “committed to the full implementation of 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, at home and abroad.”
Rather than blindly going along with an unconstitutional federal program that threatens state sovereignty and Americanist values, state governments must withdraw from the CPRG program and all other federal programs. Furthermore, they must take solid action to protect property rights and prevent the implementation of Agenda 2030.
Some states have already taken small steps in this direction. For example, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee enacted legislation this year pushing back against certain aspects of the United Nations. Meanwhile, Florida enacted legislation deleting statutory references to “climate change” and prohibiting the implementation of radical environmentalist energy policies, while Oklahoma and Tennessee have recently considered rejecting certain federal funding. Nonetheless, state governments must take further and bolder steps to protect state sovereignty and defend against federal encroachments.
Accordingly, state officials would be wise to withdraw from the federal CPRG program and — more broadly — reject unconstitutional federal usurpations of their states’ sovereignty.
To urge your state legislators to withdraw from the federal CPRG program, visit The John Birch Society’s legislative alert here.
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