by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
As appearing in the Daily Sentinel
I’m not going to move to Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., or Seattle. You can’t make me, so don‘t try.
Those cities have all joined what they call “C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,” which has the most bizarre list of “ambitious targets” one could imagine, the ultimate extreme of the nanny state. They won’t actually implement any of the “target” goals, because if they do, as one writer succinctly put it, “people will die.” I’m not ready to sacrifice my own life for the good of someone else’s order, so I just won’t be going to those 14 cities.
We have previously discussed New York’s decision to ban old coal-fired pizza ovens, as well as Biden administration initiatives to ban gas stoves, ordinary dishwashers, furnaces, air conditioners, and more. It all masquerades as parts of the attempt to fix the climate, by banning things — things we all depend on in our daily lives. But it isn’t really about climate change; it is part of a much broader agenda, an attempt to control human behavior and modify generations of tradition and behavior. Consider the “target” goals of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and its member cities. Those goals include halting all consumption of meat, ending the use of all dairy products, restricting everyone’s diet to 2,500 calories a day, and limiting people to purchasing only “3 new clothing items per person per year.” So be careful, if you buy a shirt, a pair of shoes, and a T-shirt, then you can’t have any socks until next year. This is not long-term big-picture philosophizing — they want this done by the end of this decade. By 2030.
Further, if you thought the attack on automobiles was complete, these people are just getting started. This coalition’s target is to eliminate all privately owned vehicles” by 2030. Note that they don’t oppose all vehicles — just privately owned ones. Meaning they can still have cars, but you can’t. That will make it difficult to visit friends and family in places like Grand Junction, especially because they close with this gem of a goal: “1 short-haul return flight every 3 years per person.” That is defined as any flight less than 1,500 kilometers (932 miles). So in their world, flying between these big cities is fine, flying from D.C. to Denver is OK, but that final leg to Grand Junction is destroying the planet and should be stopped!
