Originally published June 29, 2023 2:00 pm PDT
The U.S. State Department stands accused of neglecting to monitor the carbon emissions associated with government travel, contravening Joe Biden’s 2021 presidential order, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO findings, released on Thursday, highlighted that the State Department had neither established a mechanism for emissions tracking nor calculated the carbon footprint of John Kerry’s recent visits to United Nations meetings.
Kerry was appointed as the first ‘United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate’ by Joe Biden in 2021.
In its response to the GAO, State Department representatives conceded their lack of an established process for gauging greenhouse gas emissions tied to official travel.
“State officials told us that they did not have a systematic way to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. delegation travel to COP26, COP27, or any past meetings of the Conference of the Parties,” the report states. “They said that State is developing methods to estimate future travel emissions.”
“State officials told us that the State Department does not have the data to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from the full delegation travel to Conference of the Parties meetings because each participant makes their own travel arrangements using the travel management systems of their agency,” it went on to say. “Further, they said that the White House has information about which officials traveled on Air Force One, but State does not have access to that information.”
This admission, the GAO underscored, places them in violation of Biden’s own 2021 executive order.
As per federal regulations, all agencies are mandated to keep tabs on and reduce their aviation travel-related greenhouse gas emissions.
The GAO investigation was particularly focused on assessing the carbon footprint of the U.S. delegation’s travel to the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP26 and COP27) in Scotland and Egypt respectively, held in 2021 and 2022.
The official list from the State Department revealed that the U.S. delegation, including Biden himself, had 191 members in Scotland and 259 in Egypt.
This inquiry was initiated by Republican senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) who were interested in knowing the total carbon footprint of the November trip to Egypt for COP27.
Biden’s 2021 executive order titled “Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs through Federal Sustainability” demands all federal agencies monitor and curb greenhouse gas emissions with an aim to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Sen. Ernst, who spearheaded the call for an investigation, expressed her view to Fox News, saying Biden is providing “lip service to greenies.”
In a Thursday Twitter post, the Iowa senator wrote, “The gas is always greener when you’re burning fossil fuels in the name of saving the planet. The Biden admin’s double standard is clear, and Americans have had enough of this hot air.”
Breitbart has compiled a list of 50 claims made by climate alarmists over five decades that have been proven wrong:
- 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
- 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
- 1970: Ice Age By 2000
- 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
- 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
- 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
- 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
- 1974: Another Ice Age?
- 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life
- 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
- 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes
- 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend
- 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
- 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
- 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
- 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
- 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
- 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
- 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
- 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
- 2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
- 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
- 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World
- 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’
- 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
- 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015
- 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’
- 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
- 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources
- 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
- 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
- 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 90s
- 1980: Peak Oil In 2000
- 1996: Peak Oil in 2020
- 2002: Peak Oil in 2010
- 2006: Super Hurricanes!
- 2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015
- 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
- 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
- 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish
- 1970s: Killer Bees!
- 1975: The Cooling World and a Drastic Decline in Food Production
- 1969: Worldwide Plague, Overwhelming Pollution, Ecological Catastrophe, Virtual Collapse of UK by End of 20th Century
- 1972: Pending Depletion and Shortages of Gold, Tin, Oil, Natural Gas, Copper, Aluminum
- 1970: Oceans Dead in a Decade, US Water Rationing by 1974, Food Rationing by 1980
- 1988: World’s Leading Climate Expert Predicts Lower Manhattan Underwater by 2018
- 2005: Fifty Million Climate Refugees by the Year 2020
- 2000: Snowfalls Are Now a Thing of the Past
49. - 1989: UN Warns That Entire Nations Wiped Off the Face of the Earth by 2000 From Global Warming
- 2011: Washington Post Predicted Cherry Blossoms Blooming in Winter
Read the GAO’s full report below:
