Green-Scam

It’s not a conspiracy theory to believe the green elites don’t give a toss about working people.

Taking the meme ‘Everyone I Don’t Like Is Hitler’ to dizzying new heights, now we’re being told it’s far right to want to drive your car. Motorist and fascist, peas in a pod. Protesters against Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and so-called 15-minute cities – policies being adopted in various regions of the UK that will severely limit where and how often a person can drive his car – have been damned as hard-right loons. Who but a modern-day Brownshirt would bristle at eco-measures designed to save Mother Earth from car toxins? One author attended this month’s colourful protest against Oxford City Council’s anti-driving policies and decreed that this motley crew of car-lovers are on ‘the road to fascism’. Only they’ll never get there, presumably, given the elites’ penchant for road restrictions.

New electric car sales dropped 83% in the first month of 2023, according to figures from the German Motor Transport Authority. German authorities slashed subsidies in January, ostensibly to clamp down on resale fraud. However, new lows in the market may also be due to the viability of electric vehicles with current energy price hikes.

The number of electric cars purchased fell from 104,300 in December 2022 to 18,100 in January 2023, with a December surge caused by the end of the subsidy program. Electric car sales made up just 15% of all purchases in January compared to 55% the month before.

On Tuesday, February 14th, the European Parliament voted—340 in favour, 279 against—for legislation to phase out the sale of carbon-emitting gas and diesel vehicles by 2035. The vote endorsed a compromise agreement already reached by the European Council in October 2022, which laid out a roadmap for removing fossil fuel-powered vehicles by midcentury on Europe’s roads.

Under the new rules, manufacturers will be forced to meet a 100% CO2 emissions cut in new vehicles sold by 2035, with new regulations established for monitoring emissions. The new legislation will also hasten emission cuts ahead of schedule, with cars manufactured in 2030 legally required to have reduced emissions by 55% compared to 2021 levels, an increase on the previously agreed 37.5%.

Who can resist those ads peppering social media promising free money for solar panels and an escape from hydro bills?

Buyer beware. The real story is more murky.

Yes, there’s “free” money, as in $5,600 grants from the federal government’s Canada Green Homes Program. The same program also offers up to $40,000 interest free for energy upgrades.

What a scam.

… In Finland, Ståle Frydenlund, test manager for the electric vehicle association, locked five new models into the proving ground’s cold chambers overnight and set the thermometer for -40 degrees. When he returned the next morning, the results were not particularly reassuring. Three of the vehicles – Kia Niro EV, Nissan Ariya and MG4 Electric – could not drive out of the chamber on their own power.

“We had to put the gear levers in neutral and push the cars out,” said Mr. Frydenlund.

The true believers interviewed for this article try desperately to put lipstick on a pig.

Behold, the “15-minute city.”

At the most recent C40 World Mayors Summit last fall, it’s all people could talk about. “There may be fewer cars, more nature, more healthy air, more education, more sanitation. Citizens support this because with less pollution people live better,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo declared. All seemed to marvel at the model devised by French-Colombian expert Carlos Moreno. The idea is that city-dwellers should have access to their work, shopping, health, education, and leisure destinations in less than a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

Late last month, Joe Biden was mocked for posting a photo of himself in an electric vehicle (a GMC Hummer) that costs $110,000 and up. And for touting a $7,500 federal tax credit that doesn’t apply to vehicles that cost over $80,000. In other words, the 46th president was ripped for confirming the stereotype that electric cars are a vanity passion for rich green liberals.

The eco-elites are determined to stop us from travelling and earning.

It’s funny to think that The Archers started out in 1950, as a way of ‘educating’ farmers about what the UK government wanted from them in the new postwar Eden. One actor would often read announcements from the Ministry of Agriculture almost verbatim to another. Direct involvement of the government ended in 1972, apparently – but you’d never know it. Because after a couple of decades of being a perfectly good soap opera, like every other serial drama, whether on radio or TV, from the BBC or ITV, The Archers now feels like sitting in a doctor’s waiting room without a book, when you’re forced to plough through public-health pamphlets telling you how to think about everything, from breakfast to Brexit.

Municipal planning documents are typically only of interest to bureaucrats, developers wondering how the city’s going to make their lives more difficult, NIMBYs looking for ways to scuttle development and retirees with too much time on their hands. But a City of Edmonton planning document from a couple years ago has managed to take on a life of its own.