The first shots are being fired in western Europe:
Who pays for environmental virtue?
The gilets jaune revolt begs the issue: who pays to save the planet? The Paris accords absolved the very countries driving emission increases — China and India — from mandating emissions cuts until 2030, leaving the burden largely on the backs of the West’s own middle and working classes.
Yet many of these people need fossil fuels to get to work or operate their businesses. Tourists may gape at the high-speed trains and the Paris Metro, but the vast majority get to work in cars. More than 80 percent of the Paris metropolitan area population lives in the suburbs and exurbs, in an area nearly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
Like the revolutionaries of 1789, people are enraged by the hypocrisy of their betters. In pre-revolutionary times, French aristocrats and top clerics preached Christian charity while indulging in gluttony, sexual adventurism and lavish spending. Today they see the well-off and well-connected buying their modern version of indulgences through carbon credits and other virtue-signaling devices. Meanwhile, as many as 30 percent of Germans and as many as half of Greeks are spending 10 percent or more of their income on energy, the definition of “energy poverty.” This is occurring while these policies prove sadly ineffective in reducing emissions while the much disdained US leads the large countries in cuts.
It’s not about saving the planet; it’s about the “elites” (who are elite in name only, not in talent or competence or intelligence) signaling their virtue to their peers, while defecating on the commoners and telling them it’s cotton candy.
[Update a while later]
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost exactly nine years since I wrote this piece about the Precautionary Principle. And nothing has changed.
The WSJ has been especially egregious in this regard. Todays vomit looks like it’s available for free.
Mr. Macron is now facing calls to placate the masses by reversing course on his signature agenda: making France more economically competitive through sweeping changes to its labor market, taxes, public spending and pension system.
They’ve been spouting this excrement for weeks: “Protests over Macron’s pro-business agenda…”. What a bunch of gag-inducing horseshit, today’s contribution by Noemie Bisserbe and Stacy Meichtry. It’s not just fake news, it’s deliberate retconning of reality. “Make France more economically competitive by increasing gas taxes for no economic reason”.
Some of these people should be hoisted on pitchforks.
My mistake, looks like it’s not available, though it did come up in its entirety for me on first click for some reason.
Comrade, criticizing the media is un-American and a direct attack on the first amendment. Your job is to read and believe, not to question. I’m afraid you have been reported to Attack Watch. Your rehabilitation studies will be delivered directly to you via Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and email or just turn on your TV, programming has been changed to match your needs.
We are watching. We are listening. Be a good student.
Does this mean I can’t host the Oscars or win a Heisman?
Curt, you most likely followed a link fro a search engine. If you search for “Protests Threaten Macron’s Campaign to Remake France” (the headline on the article), the first link will be the WSJ story, and since the referrer was a search engine, the WSJ site will return the whole story. A link from a blog or just c/p- ing the URL does’t send the referrer the WSJ site is looking for, so it will only return the first few lines of the story as a teaser. FWIW the NYT’s website does this too.