As if doing away with incandescent bulbs back in the early aughts wasn’t enough, now our government minders are going after gas stoves and washing machines.
Biden’s Energy Department last month proposed new efficiency standards for washing machines that would require new appliances to use considerably less water, all in an effort to “confront the global climate crisis.” Those mandates would force manufacturers to reduce cleaning performance to ensure their machines comply, leading industry giants such as Whirlpool said in public comments on the rule. They’ll also make the appliances more expensive and laundry day a headache—each cycle will take longer, the detergent will cost more, and in the end, the clothes will be less clean, the manufacturers say.
The article goes on.
The proposed washing machine rule marks the latest example of the administration turning to consumer regulations to advance its climate change goals. Last month, the Energy Department published an analysis of its proposed cooking appliance efficiency regulations, which it found would effectively ban half of all gas stoves on the U.S. market from being sold. The department has also proposed new efficiency standards for refrigerators, which could come into effect in 2027. “Collectively these energy efficiency actions … support President Biden’s ambitious clean energy agenda to combat the climate crisis,” the Energy Department said in February.
Notice who is proposing these regulations — “Biden’s Energy Department.” The Energy Department, like all federal agencies, was created by an act of Congress in the form of “The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977.” This “department” of the federal government is made up of unelected bureaucrats who use their delegated power to interfere with and to impose their vision of appropriate energy consumption and conservation, even if it is based on something as provably false as so-called “climate change.”
Hence rules about what light bulbs are allowed.
Do you really think the founders had in mind that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT would be involved in making rules about the minutia of everyday life? Do we think this is a good use of our taxpayer dollars — to fund a government organization that has no basis in the U.S. Constitution yet carries the gravitas of a law-making body?
The representatives and senators who created such agencies delegated their power to them which is unconstitutional. Only Congress has the legal authority to make law — but they created a legal method by which they outsourced such rule-making to unelected partisans who increasingly exert more control over our lives and choices.
Instead of letting the market economy do its work, the federal government is picking winners and losers.
The attack on the incandescent bulb is just one item in a laundry list of government regulations and mandates attempting to promote conservation. Energy efficiency standards already exist for vehicles, appliances, and buildings, and recently introduced legislation calls on the Secretary of Energy to identify additional appliances and equipment that “have significant national energy savings potential” to be included for future performance standard mandates.
All of these mandates have unintended consequences that their advocates fail to foresee, including increased energy use. If consumers want a product, the market is capable of providing it.
When the government picks winners and losers, it reduces the incentive for companies to innovate and increases the incentive for companies to lobby the government for special handouts and protections. When the government creates specific mandates and regulations, it purposely narrows the path businesses can take. These policies distort normal market forces and encourage government dependence.
It’s not hard to surmise what motivates these regulatory decisions. In this case, it’s worshiping a false god called “Climate.” Or as Buck Throckmorton calls it, “The Sustainable Organic Church of the Carbon Apocalypse.”
That clause in our Declaration of Independence — “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” — has never looked more appealing since it was first written.
