Welcome to Tennessee, You Are Now in California – States Sign on to Mandatory Green House Emissions Inventories

By Dan Titus, ACSC, 5-28-2024

People in States that have signed on to the EPA/ State Climate Action Plan program can no longer say, “it’s only happening in California” because California is the United Nations blueprint for the entire United States.

On September 20, 2023, the Biden administration met at the Sustainable Development Summit in New York with the goal of recommitting to the [United Nations] 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals—SDGs. A White House fact sheet stated, “The United States is committed to the full implementation of 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, at home and abroad.  At their core, the SDGs seek to:

• Expand economic opportunity – This means public-private partnerships, which is crony capitalism. In this scheme there are winners and losers, where profits are privatized and losses are socialized on the backs of middle-class Americans.
• Advance social justice – This means placating and advancing people based on their skin color. At its core it is discriminatory.
• Promote good governance – This skirts our elected form of government and injects unelected special interest initiatives into our lives, where no one gets to vote.
• Ensure no one is left behind – This means catering to protected classes and minorities in order to create “capacity building” for initiatives and redistributive wealth schemes. Under Diversity and Inclusion (DEI), these classes are awarded “equity” and “inclusion” based on their skin color.

The Biden administration hired people from California and put them into positions in all Federal agencies relating to Climate Change in order to fulfill his Green New Deal Plan. Therefore, the plan mirrors what California has done at the National level.

The EPA/ State Climate Action Plan program are through cooperative grants, (Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, CPRG) which have “take it or leave it” terms and conditions. These agreements bind States and local jurisdictions into creating GHG inventories to reduce GHG emissions, which eventually wind their way into administrative law, constraining property and individual rights. These grants force United Nations style Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCS) that addresses the U.N. 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which the Biden administration has committed to.

The EPA pitches climate action plans as voluntary. This is not true. Once a State agrees to take grant money, they sign on to mandatory elements in the grant terms and conditions contract — They are now in the United Nations/ California club.

The EPA/ State Climate Action Plan program is between the Federal EPA, a “Partner” and unelected State agencies, boards, bodies or commissions.  Therefore, the entire process is being implemented without the consent of citizens and oversight of State legislatures – no one gets to vote. In essence, most States, including so-called conservative states, are selling out for bribes, aka grant money.

According to the EPA, “States submitted Priority Climate Action Plans (PCAPs) under President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The EPA/ State Climate Action Plan  program was hurried into place because there was concern that there could be a Republican change in the November 2024 election, which could jeopardize the program; hence, the name “priority” climate action plan in the first phase of the plan.

In 2023, under the first phase of the $5 billion program, EPA made a total of $250 million in grants available to states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, 80 MSAs, four territories, and over 200 Tribes and Tribal consortia to develop ambitious climate action plans that address greenhouse gas emissions. 45 states are now covered by a climate action plan. 5 states: Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, South Dakota and Wyoming decided not to participate.”

The program is a two-phase federal grant program that allows the state to develop and implement ongoing community-driven projects that reduce ambient air pollution.

• Phase I provided $250 million for noncompetitive planning grants, of which states were eligible for $3 million each to support the development of a climate action plan.
• Phase II includes $4.6 billion in competitive implementation grants to execute the projects identified in the climate action plan.

The deadlines for submission of PCAPs are:

• Priority Climate Action Plan – Creates an inventory of the state’s primary GHG generators. Due March 1, 2024 (states and Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and due April 1, 2024 (tribes, tribal consortia, and territories)
• Comprehensive Climate Action Plan – A plan to cut that pollution statewide. Due two years after planning grant award, or approximately mid-2025 (states and MSAs) and due at the close of the grant period (tribes, tribal consortia, and territories)

The EPA/ State Climate Action Plan program seeks to create arbitrary greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions in order to install unconstitutional hidden fees and taxes on hard working Americans. This is accomplished by doing a greenhouse gas inventory for carbon (CO₂) and methane.

Once inventories for GHGs have been established, reduction goals can be set by States and local jurisdictions. Taxes and fees follow: GHG pricing mechanisms like cap and trade programs for energy producers; congestion pricing and vehicle mileage taxes for cars and trucks; mandatory retrofitting of commercial and existing residential homes to “green” building standards; zero emission vehicle requirements; increased gasoline, natural gas, and heating oil prices.  For example, page 12 lists categories for emission controls, in the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation’s PCAP:

• Transportation
• Electricity Generation
• Industry
• Agriculture
• Commercial and Residential Buildings
• Waste and Materials Management
• Wastewater
• Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry

The EPA provided States an outline template to follow in the development of their PCAPs called the, “Priority Climate Action Plan Guidance: An Outline for States and MSAs.” Therefore, the State PCAPs are very similar in their presentation. For example, Tennessee’s PCAP lists required elements established in the CPRG guidelines on page 9:

• GHG Emissions Inventory,
• Priority Measures and Reduction Estimates,
• Benefits Analysis,
• Low-Income and Disadvantaged Communities (LIDAC) Benefits Analysis,
• Review of Authority to Implement,
• Intersection with Other Funding Availability, and
• Coordination and Engagement.

State legislatures did not pass PCAPs. It all happened through interagency coordination: EPA and State agencies, which are under the control of Governors.

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) is the lead agency for climate action initiatives in Tennessee. Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc, and Ernst & Young served consultants on the PCAP. TDEC coordinated the obligatory public outreach required by grants, which included feedback from numerous special interest stakeholders who directly benefit from environmental initiatives, while hard working residents are relegated to answering simple questions on outcome-based online surveys.

Many States have already filed their PCAPs with the EPA, which is a requirement to get millions in more grant money to develop their Comprehensive Climate Action Plans.

People need to contact their state’s Governor and condemn them for signing on and creating commissions, task forces, utilizing faux stakeholder consensus for justify existing PCAPS and Comprehensive Climate Action Plans already in the works. They need to notify their state legislatures that this is happening and ask them if they know about this EPA program.

– ACTION ITEM –

CONTACT YOUR TENNESSEE REPRESENTATIVES HERE  – Note, high score denotes voting record that adheres to the Constitution.

• Click here to see if they are in session.

Also, people need to remind elected officials of their Constitutional oaths to protect individual property rights, as evidenced in a Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone” season one episode: Patriarch John Dutton is confronted by a group of Communist Chinese tourists who are trespassing on his land. He demands that the leave and when he explains that he owns the land one trespasser states, “It is wrong for one man to own all this.”  Dutton responds, “This is America, we don’t share land here!”

People in States that have signed on to the EPA/ State Climate Action Plan program can no longer say, “it’s only happening in California” because California is the United Nations blueprint for the entire United States.

Dan Titus is affiliated with the American Coalition for Sustainable Communities (ACSC). Their mission is sustaining representative government; not governance, by collectivist-oriented unelected agencies and commissions.