Back in February, Joe Biden nominated Ann Carlson to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. He did this despite the fact that Carlson had no experience in the field and had previously only worked as a professor of environmental law at UCLA. After fierce opposition from the GOP over her lack of qualifications, Biden was forced to withdraw her nomination at the end of May. But Carlson remained as the acting head of the NHTSA and has done so to this day. Now she has released a new set of fuel efficiency standards that will prioritize electric vehicles and force many gas-powered vehicles out of the market if manufacturers can’t meet the steeply increased emissions requirements. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Free Beacon did some digging and found that Carlson has a well-documented history of wanting to force people to “live more climate-friendly lives.” And she stresses the word “force,” arguing that only the muscle of the government will be able to change people’s energy consumption habits and save the world or whatever. So you will need to be forced to “live a simpler life.”

The climate official who spearheaded a Biden administration rule boosting electric vehicles at the expense of gas-powered cars wants you to live a “simpler life” to combat climate change, behavior she acknowledges “most people” will not engage in “unless forced.”

President Joe Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday unveiled new fuel efficiency standards, which acting administrator Ann Carlson said will “reduce harmful emissions.” Carlson has long stressed the need to force Americans to live climate-friendly lives. As an environmental academic at UCLA, for example, Carlson published a 2007 piece titled, “Only by Requiring Lifestyle Changes,” which argued that people would not reduce their energy consumption “voluntarily.” As a result, Carlson wrote, the U.S. government must “induce behavioral change” by implementing policies that “make the bad behavior more expensive.”

Carlson’s history is simply creepy and the House GOP made the right call in rejecting her for the NHTSA position. Sadly, they were unable to fully eject her from the post, but the reality is that Biden probably would have simply replaced her with someone bringing the same big-government, dictatorial attitude to the position.

We shouldn’t lose track of what Carlson was talking about when she wrote of using the power of the government to literally force people to “live a simpler life.” That means you’ll need to stay in your pod and eat your bugs while you figure out how to pay for a solar-powered fan because your air conditioner will have to go. These are what she refers to as “lifestyle changes.” A more rational person would see it as serfdom in the name of the climate god.

The Free Beacon unearthed a blog post that Carlson published all the way back in 2009. It was titled, “Save Us From Ourselves.” In it, she wasn’t simply asking Americans to do things like give up their cars and take public transportation, use less electricity, and so on. She was asking the government to step in and “force” people to live “simpler lives.” Why? Because she admitted that people will not “engage in dramatic behavioral change unless forced.”

In 2014 she called air conditioning “a huge problem.” In one of her most insane claims in 2011, she linked climate change to an increase in the number of batters being hit by pitches in Major League Baseball. This is the level of insanity that we’re dealing with here.

And the proposed vehicle standards that were just released are unachievable in the near future anyway. Even the United Auto Workers union agrees with that assessment. But Carlson already knows that and she doesn’t care. This isn’t about having more efficient cars. It’s about doing away with gas-powered cars entirely so those who can’t afford more expensive electric vehicles or don’t live in an area with enough charging stations can take the bus and “lead a simpler life.”

These are the sort of people that Joe Biden is populating the federal government with. And if we don’t replace him with someone who is ready to start cleaning house, he’s just going to keep bringing in more until he finally collapses. And then Kamala Harris will do more of the same. If that future sounds dystopian to you, you’re not alone. And something has to be done to prevent it or else you’re going to need to start shopping around for a nice pod to live in, because that’s the “simpler life” they have in mind for you.