Pete Buttigieg continues to refer to everything as “infrastructure.” The transportation secretary, who has already redefined the word to include “broadband,” “eldercare,” “childcare,” and whatever else is on President Biden’s progressive wish list, is now classifying climate-related policy as “infrastructure.”

“The truth is that every infrastructure decision is, already inevitably, a climate decision as well,” Buttigieg said during last week’s Climate Summit in front of more than 40 world leaders.

After Biden announced that he intends to cut carbon emissions by 52 percent as early as 2030, Buttigieg wasted no time appearing on CNN to mislead Americans about the consequences of implementing the radical climate policies included in the American Jobs Plan (AJP).

The president’s “big, bold, but achievable commitment” on climate issues will help the country “resume that position of U.S. leadership and then challenge the other nations of the world to be part of the solution as well,” he said.

Evidently causing thousands of Keystone XL Pipeline workers to lose their jobs is just the type of bold commitment that Buttigieg admires. Or, as the ever tone-deaf John Kerry said at a White House press conference last week, “I don’t think it’s going to mean that much [job] dislocation, frankly. It’s going to mean some greater opportunity.”

Buttigieg did not explain how imposing oppressive regulations on the energy, transportation, and agricultural sectors represents “leadership,” nor did he articulate how imposing a massive tax increase to pay for this plan will benefit the American economy. And if the past serves as any indicator, considering that more than 85 percent of emissions come from outside of the U.S., there is little reason to believe that other countries will follow America’s “lead” and willingly contribute to their own economic demise.

Predictably, Biden’s climate plan is not predicated on actual science. It is built on fear-mongering and leftist hysteria. The AJP is just another progressive ploy for more government control over our lives and virtually every industry, and it will have a devastating effect on the market.

According to a UN climate model, even if we were somehow able to achieve Biden’s goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 2030, and if every president carried out his plan for the next 8o years, it would still only decrease the planet’s temperature at the end of the century by 0.07° Fahrenheit.

In order to accomplish this rather insignificant milestone, Americans will be forced to sacrifice greatly.

According to a White House Fact Sheet, Biden’s attempt to reduce greenhouse gases in the AJP involves spending $213 billion to retrofit two million homes and $174 billion to build 500,000 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. The Biden administration also intends to transform our energy systems, establish a net-zero producers forum, support “ambitious renewable energy goals and pathways in Latin America,” invest in tropical forests, support “environmental justice and climate resilience,” and conduct “climate exposure assessments on all U.S. installations.”

Biden’s climate goals amount to an economic surrender that would make our country poorer, weaken our foreign trade advantages, and eliminate the energy independence that the Trump administration established over the last four years.

The president’s plan would negatively impact the fossil fuel and natural gas industries, which currently supply 80 percent of our energy, in favor of more expensive forms of renewable energy, such as wind and hydropower. Biden wants to turn the entire country into California, where disastrous green policies have increased the cost of electricity by 30 percent in the past 10 years. He wants us to mirror Denmark, whose electric prices have doubled since the 1990s. His climate plan will also raise the cost of air and car travel and force us to eat less red meat and consume less dairy.

Buttigieg and the rest of the Biden administration are well aware that this will come at a great cost to the American taxpayers. They know that significantly raising the cost of electricity and other goods and services will disproportionately impact middle- and lower-income workers, which is why they are deceptively creating a false choice between greater government control and lower standards of living, on the one hand, and an environmental catastrophe, on the other.

“This is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of a climate crisis,” Biden said at the Climate Summit.

There is no evidence that we are in a climate crisis or that there will be one in the near future. But in order to sell this package, Buttigieg has echoed Biden’s apocalyptic doomsday rhetoric by creating a sense of urgency. Instead of being transparent about the serious costs that this plan would have for Main Street Americans, Buttigieg casts these infrastructure and climate policies as citizens’ duty to their country.

“It’s not in the context of your daily routine that you’ll modernize the U.S. energy grid. But it is the case we have to make that choice as a country, and we have to make those policies that are going to make it possible,” he said.

Buttigieg wants us to believe that if this radical plan is implemented, somehow it will not affect us personally but will still benefit the country.

In reality, this climate plan will adversely affect both our daily lives and the prosperity of America as a whole.

Meanwhile, the world’s biggest polluters, including China and India, will be forced to concede nothing. But Buttigieg insists we have no choice, because “climate change” is now infrastructure too.

David Keltz was a speechwriter for the Administrator at the U.S. General Services Administration from 2020–21 and is the author of the new book The Campaign of his Life and Media Bias in the Trump Presidency and the Extinction of the Conservative Millennial. He previously served as a White House Intern for Vice President Mike Pence. You can follow him on Twitter @david_keltz.