Massachusetts Climate Official On People Producing Emissions: ‘We Have To Break Your Will’

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.

Ismay went on to say that ““We can’t have no offshore wind, no transmission, no solar, and have clean energy,” adding, “Something has to give. There has to be some mechanism we trust to find a place to site a transmission line.”

Ismay admits at the end of the clip, “I can’t even say that publicly.”

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 clip was posted by the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, who cut the video clip mid-sentence when Ismay says he can’t publicly say what he had just said. MFA issued its own criticism of Ismay’s comments.

“It’s frightening to think an official so high up in the Baker administration is bragging to an out-of-state group about the economic pain he wants to inflict on the very people who he’s supposed to work for,” Paul Craney, a spokesman MFA, told Commonwealth Magazine. “Remarks like this have no place in state government. Ismay should be dismissed from his position in state government, as he’s clearly demonstrated he does not have the best interests of the residents of Massachusetts at heart.”

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