A climate alarmist with a government position lets the cat out of the bag

 "Break your will."

As if human beings are wild mustangs being herded into corrals. 

Government officials higher up than him in Massachusetts - including the governor - immediately went into damage control mode, but that phrase is going to outlive this incident. I'm sure I will have occasion to trot it out in this age of rejuvenated climate alarmism.

By the way, this is what Massachusetts gets for having a position called Undersecretary for Climate Change in the first place. You're just just asking for the person filling it to let his power go to his head.

Here's what he said:

A Massachusetts climate official made startling remarks regarding people who heat their homes and drive cars, suggesting their “will” needed to be broken in order to reduce carbon emissions.

David Ismay, Massachusetts Undersecretary for Climate Change, made the remarks last month during a meeting with the Vermont Climate Council. Ismay said during the meeting that the Bay State had no more “bad guys” left, apparently referring to corporations and that the majority of the emissions that still had to be reduced, in his eyes, were from regular people.

“I know one thing that we found in our analysis is that 60% of our emissions come from – as I have it started to say you and me, except you guys are in Vermont – 60% of our emissions come from residential heating and passenger vehicles. Let me say that again: 60% of our emissions that need to be reduced come from you, the person on your street, the senior on fixed-income. Right now there is no bad guy left, at least in Massachusetts, to point the finger at and turn the screws on and now break their will so they stop emitting. That’s you. We have to break your will,” Ismay said, according to a clip posted by the Boston Herald.

"Turn the screws on" is a nice touch as well. Where did they get this guy?

Governor Baker got on the case right away:

Gov. Charlie Baker (R-MA), criticized Ismay’s statements, saying it was something “no one who works in our administration should ever say or think,” according to Mass Live.

“First of all, no one who works in our administration should ever say or think anything like that,” Baker said. “Secondly, Secretary Theoharides is going to have a conversation with him about that. And third, one of the main reasons we didn’t sign the climate bill when it got to our desk was because we were specifically concerned about the impact it was going to have on people’s ability to pay for many of the pieces that were in it, which means it also doesn’t represent administration policy or position.”

The whole leftie framing of those who understand that the global climate is not in any kind of dire trouble requiring government to break anybody's will is, of course, "science denier," and the Left has taken full advantage over the last year of the opportunity to lump bonehead anti-mask and anti-hunker-down militants during the COVID pandemic in with those who bristle at climate alarmism. 

A few things about that:

• It's an apples-to-oranges framing. Nobody can escape the hard data and the personal experience of the COVID spikes we've gone through since last March. There is no such combination of data and real-time phenomena for a climate crisis. What the alarmists do, though, is drag you down a rabbit hole, ensnare you in pissing matches about peer-reviewed studies and citing of forest fires and hurricanes when we can all look around us and see that there is no crisis requiring a drastic reversal of human advancement. And there's also the abundant shortcomings of the alarmists' climate models. 
• Pretty much all state and local governments that established lockdowns of whatever degree, and mandated social distancing and mask-wearing did so with an eye toward lifting them at the first moment it's been prudent to do so. Nobody wants to hobble the economy or the education of our youth (well, except perhaps teachers' unions) one second longer than necessary. Hell, the anti-mask boneheads protest Republican governments as vociferously as they do Democrat ones. Nothing but the kind of mistake Sweden made last spring is going to satisfy that crowd. Wearing a damn mask and social distancing for a short time is not the kind of curb on freedom that government telling car and engine companies how to make their products, or citizens in the privacy of their homes where to set their thermostats is. 
• And that's the core issue. Freedom is being palpably eroded. James Madison is surely rolling in his grave.

Perhaps wide dissemination of this Ismay character's blurtings can have an effect. But let's be damn careful not to let the boneheads co-opt the countervailing message. 

Sheesh, its hard for basic common sense and prioritizing of freedom to get an airing in 2021 post-America.