Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Financial Times asks, if De Blasio is so hot on tackling climate change, why does he ride in a SUV every day when he visits the gym?
New York’s easy answers on climate change
Fixing infrastructure would be better for the city, and the planet
JANUARY 13, 2018 6 Climate change, New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio declaimed on Wednesday, is “a painful, horrible reality”. He is right, which is why it is disappointing to watch him refusing to face that reality squarely. Mr de Blasio talks a good game on climate change. Some of his initiatives responding to the threat have been worthwhile. But like his fellow Democrat and rival Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York State, he has a weakness for grandstanding instead of tackling the difficult challenges. Transport is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in New York State, and its impact is exacerbated by traffic congestion, dirty vehicles and crumbling infrastructure. Fixing those problems would do more to address the threat the city faces, and to improve the lives of New Yorkers, than attention-seeking stunts.
…
The worst aspect of these initiatives, though, is that they deflect attention away from the politicians’ own contribution to the problem. When Mr de Blasio said this week that it was “time for Big Oil to take responsibility for the devastation they have wrought”, it was a disingenuous oversimplification.
Without those oil companies, New Yorkers would have frozen in their homes in the bitter cold of the past week, and Mr de Blasio would not be able to ride an SUV to the gym every weekday.
It is true that fossil fuel interests have had a generally toxic effect on the debate over climate change in the US, corrupting the Republican party in particular into a reckless refusal to acknowledge climate science and its implications. But rather than looking for easy scapegoats in Texas or Europe, Mr de Blasio and Mr Cuomo should acknowledge their own responsibilities closer to home. Mr de Blasio has opposed a congestion charge for New York City, which would both improve traffic and raise revenue. Mr Cuomo, who controls the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the city’s subway, has presided over mismanagement and under-investment that are bringing the system to its knees. It has been far too slow to adopt technology such as electric buses already used in cities around the world, with the first pilot launched only this week.
…
Read more (paywalled): https://www.ft.com/content/a44ef4e8-f7ad-11e7-8715-e94187b3017e
What a surprise – a climate crusader who rides around in a SUV, who prefers high profile publicity stunts ahead of addressing real problems with solutions which might improve the lives of the people who voted for him, solutions which might even reduce New York’s carbon footprint.
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The answer is always something like “a congestion charge” – more costs that disproportionally affect the poor – rather than subsidised bus services, for instance, that are more useful to the disadvantaged.
Yet more proof that Green policies are always economically right wing.
Even though they don’t need to be, they are.
“The answer is always something like “a congestion charge” – more costs that disproportionally affect the poor – …Yet more proof that Green policies are always economically right wing.”
What Europeans mean by “right wing” has no application to US politics.. In the US, raising taxes and fees on incomes, goods, and services is opposed by the right. For example, the recent majority in the House and Senate, along with a republican in the WH, has resulted in the largest tax cut and simplification in decades.
And mandating electric buses will be far more expensive than the bus systems they replace, thus raising the costs of living in NYC.
At any rate, is this to suggest that the “left wing” in Europe would not impose a “congestion charge”? Or that the “left wing” in Europe could be counted on to oppose a “congestion charge” on vehicles? I think that is an indefensible statement.
The Left Wing solution is to give the gift of low carbon living to the poor, in the UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/petrol-car-ban-jeremy-corbyn-labour-proposal-air-pollution-climate-change-measure-uk-a7466301.html
“Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is considering radical plans to ban the sale of new petrol cars in the UK, The Independent can reveal.
The bold proposal would mean only zero- or low-carbon vehicles being sold after a set cut-off date, dramatically reducing air pollution and potentially saving thousands of lives.
The move would form part of a broader and revolutionary package of measures to transform Britain into a low-carbon nation.”
“to transform Britain into a low-carbon nation”
Only on the books. Burning wood pellets instead of coal at Drax emits more CO2 than coal. Yet that CO2 is kept off the books because wood pellets are considered renewable.
Europeans obviously can solve neither their economic nor their Carbon problems, granting (only for the sake of argument) that Carbon may conceivably be a problem at some level.
The UK is a tiny country. Their electric line loss through their grid is 1/25 the US level. Yet they produce (at some energetic cost) only 45% of their natural gas. The rest is imported (at additional energetic cost). Burning coal to power their electric cars is a Carbon no no.
Is banning petrol cars liberal, or is it just stupid?
California is pursuing legislation to ban ICE vehicles in that state. The clock is ticking.
Can’t you see their vision!
People happily getting up in the cold and dark to walk miles along what used to be motorways and ring roads to get to cold and dark offices, schools and factories using paper and pencils to do their work or operating machines by hand waiting for the occasional bust of electricity to come through from the windmills or solar panels to give them a chance of warmth and cooking. The people will love them for saving the world for the future.
I don’t really fancy that sort of future myself but there do seem to be those that do.
James Bull
You can’t have tax cuts without spending cuts. And I don’t see ‘Make government small again’ at the moment. Without spending cuts they will need more money printing by the not federal reserve.So more US debt and a worthless dollar. So far not a lot of change you can believe in but more kicking the can down the road.
Robertdv says,
“You can’t have tax cuts without spending cuts. And I don’t see ‘Make government small again’ at the moment.”
The regulations restricting infrastructure projects all the way to business ownership have been slashed at a ratio of 22 regulations removed per every rule made. WOTUS and Paris, TTIP, and EPA sue and settle are also gone. Taxes and tax simplification were also passed. And that is just in the first year.
Next, saying an elected government can never cut taxes because of the rank drunken Keynesian spending of the previous administration is just not going to get it. Without the simplification and tax relief, the next step for the US was to become a rathole like Spain or Italy, which ran up its national debt, raised taxes, destroyed its power, and then said, “The problem is tax evasion!” That was next. The money is coming back from overseas and business is booming, so we are worth more, which also effects the recovery from the trillions in US debt.
Is there still a left or a right wing when we talk about politics and or climate? When is the last time voting left or right changed anything?
Both wings are taken over by ‘progressives’ in power since you gave your country away to the private federal reserve. No president will or can ever drain this progressive swamp without first cutting their blood supplier.
@icisil : Even coal is renewable, its only a matter of time 🙂
Interestingly, Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers doesn”t believe in the supposed dangerous man-made global warming idea.
Readers might like to find out more about him and read his viewpoints:
http://www.weatheraction.com/
None of this seems to have registered with Jeremy and his supporters, unfortunately.
marty, I thought that since the introduction of mold, they aren’t making anymore of the stuff.
Some don’t get it that authentic US “right wing” means less taxes, less regulation, and less gooberment. It’s not the Euro-definition.
They have left vs left over there “Heads I win, tails you lose;”). That is the goal here, but we broke the mold in 2016! (:
M Courtney
“Yet more proof that Green policies are always economically right wing.”
I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I understood you correctly.
“a congestion charge” is yet another means of taxation the world doesn’t need. That’s not right wing politics, it’s left wing politics. Tax everything, take money from the working man’s pocket, then spend it on fruitful projects like wine women and song for government officials. Fruitful if you’re a government official.
Right wing politics encourages hard work and the ability to keep the money you earn to spend it on the things YOU want, not that, that others want.
And whilst I agree there are certain things we should all contribute to, bloated government isn’t one of them, nor are stealth taxes, like congestion charges.
Taxes to provide a benefit are good. Taxes as a punishment for, say, driving into town to work for a living are not. Nor are taxes designed to punish people for a governments failure to provide decent public transport.
Taxes like this are a demonstration of a governments failure, not its success.
You’re right. Rich people live downtown and can walk or bike to work. Poor people have to get downtown one way or the other. The rich, by various means including congestion taxes, make it difficult for the poor to drive to work. They also aren’t willing to fund decent public transit.
The left is supposed to support working people. These days, they support the liberal elites and the poor are hung out in the wind.
The liberal elites should take Brexit and President Trump’s election as friendly shots across the bow. As far as I can tell, they’re too thick to read the writing on the wall.
Direct taxation bad. Big government bad.
Gee, M Courtney, its hard to take this kind of complaint from the left these days. What the greens do definitely isn’t right wing (free-enterprise, libertarian) anywhere I look, maybe totalitarian. You know I’m not left, but I have a member of my family that is and at least some years ago, no matter how misguided I thought their policies, they did at least have the poor for a constituency (and seemed bent on making this constituency bigger, though). But today, everywhere, they are not the party they used to be. I used to argue with my offspring about real left policies, but now, I simply tell her her party isn’t the the one she thinks it is. They get into power with one constituency and then they serve the global global governance constituency that their members didn’t vote for (er…do I have that wrong in your case M?).
The libs have way overplayed their hand…..
Fascinating how any policy that runs counter to your preferred brand of socialism, is right wing.
Must be nice to always know that anything you disagree with is evil.
I like to ask folks to examine the behavior they’re protesting to see if it’s authoritarian or libertarian as the left/right angle is a substitute for those terms anyway. well, it is until such times as the authoritarians redefine those meanings as well.
@Karl Horrex, good point! I’ll have to work that into what has become meaningless left/right “discussions.”
And equally fascinating to see how any policy that you don’t like is labelled left wing.
What a fatuous waste of space, all this name calling. If you don’t like a policy, you can deconstruct it and say why you don’t like it, but calling it left-liberal-democrat-socialist-communist on one hand or right-conservative-fascist on the other hand really says nothing substantive; it’s just a sort of flag-waving activity, devoid of meaning..
Parties of the left used to have specific goals, like fair wages, safe workspaces, access to health care and education, stuff like that. You may agree with it or not, but you could clearly see what their ideas were about. They were a sort of counterweight to the excesses of wide-open, unrestrained capitalism. Now, the former parties of the left have forgotten all that and embraced political correctness to an extreme degree, identity politics for every self-identified gender or ethnic sub-group, and an extreme, but very narrowly focused environmentalism, which has nothing to do with protecting the environment, but everything to do with hostility to “carbon”.
This was brought home to me during the last federal election in Canada when Tom Mulcair, the then leader of the nominally left-wing NDP, expressed admiration for the policies of Margaret Thatcher. I mean, really, that was supposed to attract votes? To heck with them. I voted for the liberals because they promised to legalize weed, and having been engaged in criminal activity for 40-odd years, I thought it would be nice to be legal for a change. The NDP lost the election, big-time, and rightly so.
Hard for this aging hippie to admit, but our previous conservative government did a pretty good job, at least on the climate front (spout a few platitudes and do almost nothing), plus trying to force responsible money management on first nations band councils. Apparently, though, it’s racist to require accountability for public funds freely given with no strings attached. And the navigable rivers thing, which is a bit arcane and takes too long to explain.
BTW, you need the congestion tax to force the poor to ride the bus, rather than take advantage of the freedom provided by their own cars.
Have you ever exercised your “freedom” to drive in NYC traffic? I’d rather be beaten about the head and shoulders with a large stick than attempt that act of futility.
You must live in a very rich country, where poor people can afford to own cars.
And where “riding the bus” is some sort of shameful penance, that real people don’t do.
I quite like buses, but streetcars, subways and light-rail are generally more comfortable.
Didn’t “Red Ken” introduce the London congestion charge?
The left wing solution is to subsidise while completely ignoring the total cost. Left wingers don’t really count. The other lefty solution is to make competition impossible, for example by regulating bus and tax traffic and raising taxes related to driving.
The result in expensive and ineffective city plan, but that suits to the left wing city major who’s either driving a SUV, being carried around as passenger, or worst, living in a highly subsidised apartment near so that can walk to work.
Left wingers never question their fancy city major’s privileged life, but rather just want to dump more tax money in evergrowing sinks.
Well the financial times is as you can read part of the problem. The planet is cooling and we are, according to multiple scientist, heading for a Maunder minimum or similar. This backed up by record cold and snow occurring all over the planet.
The cost of all government expenditures have a disproportionate effect on the poor — even those expenditures whose express purpose is for the ‘relief’ of the poor. It is not possible for any government at any level to transfer and redistribute the prosperity that is being produced by the more productive without at the same time transferring and redistributing an amount of nature’s poverty that is even greater than the amount of prosperity that is being redistributed. The fundamental rules of reality deem that governments will be — and must be — failed institutions.
“It is true that fossil fuel interests have had a generally toxic effect on the debate over climate change in the US”
“Without those oil companies, New Yorkers would have frozen in their homes in the bitter cold of the past week, and Mr de Blasio would not be able to ride an SUV to the gym every weekday.”
Without those oil companies, the Financial Times would not be able to print or post its views or communicate using mobile phones!
C’mon oil companies, reduce your potential liability by not selling oil/gas to NY.
It’s terrible that the oil companies were so insistent on selling NYC what it was so insistent on buying.
You can’t make this stuff up.
In Sweden, the ‘Green’ Party leader is flying between Arlanda and Bromma, both located in northern suburbs of Stockholm …
Well you see Rinkeby better from the air? It’s better to see Rinkeby from above? Greens are elitist leftists, so they think they’re entitled to what politburo is entitled to.
Not only Rinkeby. Stockholm have more suburbs with same status (no go zone)
Suburbs like Malmö, Göteborg? Swedes love enrichment so much they are about to give free train tickets through the country to the next one. Then next Oslo, Turku and Helsinki are places where one ‘trivs jättebra’, as Fatima said. The green elitists love different so much they think every criminal is a refugee as long as it’s not European.
And they always tell us every refugee is not a criminal, as if anybody had claimed that in the first place. You can’t fix stupid, but could we still require that everybody that comes in, has papers, has been registered with fingerprints, and will be dumped back after if not before amok-running with a knife? We had a nice case of Abdiqadir Osman Hussein, who is a convicted anti-feminist with Wiki-notability, to put it mildly. It took more than a decade to get him out of the EU. Others not so well known individuals have also enrichened us. We’d be much better off by deporting these singular cases before racism turns into a war between antifas and their prey. How this relates to climate?
Same gullible people love taxes, love everything un-European, and are reaching to degrowth. Most of them buy CAGW and want to fix it by emptying Iraq to Europe.
LOL! Malmö (South end of Swe.) and Göteborg [Gothenburg] (West end.), the 3rd and 2nd largest cities in Sweden, suburbs of Stockholm (East end.)? Ok, maybe, but I doubt that the locals respectively would accept that …
According to the Swedish police [Dec. 2nd, 2017], there are four problematic districts in Stockholm incl. Rinkeby and Tensta, six in Göteborg, two in Malmö (incl. the infamous Rosengård, the most problematic one in Sweden), one in Örebro and one in Växjö. All of them where Swedes are in minority.
Oslo have (as far as I know) one – Grønland [Greenland]
SasjaL, I’ve been told that it’s racist to even bring up that topic.
MarkW,
Anything that opposes the utopian far/extreme left views [of almost all left/right ‘top’ politicians, MSM, ‘artists’ and low educated], are not only racistic, but also fascistic and nazistic. (While not knowing the correct definitions of the words.) Their views are much closer to genuin fascism, than any of others. I notice the same trend in the USA and you are behind for once …
Maybe De Blasio has taken lessons from The Inconvenient Hypocrite himself. “Do as I say . . .”
He is now onboard with McKibben:
https://350.org/a-message-from-mayor-bill-de-blasio/
From the article: “But like his fellow Democrat and rival Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York State, he has a weakness for grandstanding instead of tackling the difficult challenges.”
That seems to be a common trait among Liberal Democrat politicians.
From the article: “Climate change, New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio declaimed on Wednesday, is “a painful, horrible reality”.”
And yet there is not a bit of evidence to back up this claim. These people are living in Bizarro World, where everything is just the opposite of reality: Black is white, up is down, CAGW is real, etc.
“Climate change, New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio declaimed on Wednesday, is “a painful, horrible reality”.” What’s worse, is that the person who quoted him then said, “He is right.”
If their Bizarro World stuff stayed in Bizarro World, it’d be almost tolerable. Invariably, the rest of us out in the real world suffer real consequences for their imaginations.
Just a (slightly o/t) headsup – Hansen is at it again. https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/the-childrens-climate-lawsuit-against-the-children/
sorry for the double post. Stupid tiny keyboard
You would think with at least one of these lawsuits…someone would have to prove global warmng first
“You would think with at least one of these lawsuits…someone would have to prove global warmng first”
…..And base the proof on something more substantial than the over-simplified rote “CO2-drives-climate” dogma that they have memorized and now recall and regurgitate ad infinitum.
Yes, that’s what I’d like to see. And the entirety of the Earth’s climate history needs to be entered into “evidence,” with a full explanation of how CO2 has acquired this “climate driving” power it never possessed in the past.
Why not a special tax on the rich residents of NYC to pay more for “green” infrastructure, green roofs, solar panels, wind turbines, etc? After all, the rich have likely made plenty of money on investments in oil stocks or mutual funds with large investments in oil stocks. Seems like this should be right along the lines of Democrat ideals.
Just show me the “devastation” caused by CO2,and I’ll start listening.
… and show me the frantic preparations for these devastations (such as building higher sea walls) and I’ll believe it too. Instead we get forced to pay for snake oil.
For that matter, show me that “warming” is “caused by CO2” in any world that isn’t computer-generated fantasy.
” a reckless refusal to acknowledge climate science and its implications.”..
You can’t win…some parasite has invaded their brains
With Progressivism and mental illness, determining which is cause and which is the effect is impossible and thus pointless.
Invoking brain parasites could be a way out of the conundrum.
Toxoplasmosis
or an amoeba chowing down on myelinated neurons.
Or the Star Trek NG parasite.
Has anyone ever checked for little gills on the back of DeBlasio’s neck?
Tax-oplasmosis
Creates a compulsive interest in taking money from everyone and everything around you.
A mental “Will-o’-the-wisp?” that forges short circuit mental shortcuts between and among otherwise at least semi-healthy synapses?
Yeah. Electric from ‘Jersey is a way to combat climate change (numbers) in NYC.
Some carbon piggies are more equal than others.
They still smell the carbon tax money long after the Waxman Markey bill died, so close and yet so far.
And let’s ask this question: What is the difference between a “congestion tax” and a “carbon tax”. A tax by any other name would still be foul.
Instead of a congestion tax, how about a politician setting an example for the rest of us to follow. You know, take the subway to work, teleconference instead of going to meetings by plane, recycle, get rid of the SUV and ride a bike, etc.
Well the congestion tax hits hardest the poor, women and children. Where the carbon tax hits hardest women, children and poor people?
To moderate the use and proliferation of all carbon – and not just fossil fuels – all food products should be labelled with their carbon content. That way, zealots in particular and the citizenry in general could have a tangible way of contributing to the fight against global warming.
Show us your evidence that man-made CO2 is the predominant driver of the IPCC’s 0.7 C ° increase in global average temperature over the 100 years ending 2005 and you might have a point.
Until you do, you have nothing but assertion.
You might also tell us what you mean when you use the imprecise term “climate change”.
Correction: Delete “Climate Change” and replace with “global warming”.
Oh no, you all don’t understand. Most likely, DiBlasio invests in Al Gore’s carbon offsets. If so, he’s carbon neutral so it’s okay.
To moderate the use and proliferation of all carbon – and not just fossil fuels – all food products should be labelled with their carbon content. That way, zealots in particular and the citizenry in general could have a tangible way of contributing to the fight against global warming.
BB. If the labeling were implement, I wonder how many would be surprised that there is no food with zero carbon content.
Salt.
Rhoda R, when you can survive on nothing but salt and water, you can call it ‘food’.
Salt is good for the greens!
You can choose all-natural and eco-bio-salt, and serve with water. That would end some emissions.
No, even salt needs to be mined and transported, at a minimum. And how is that done? Like everything else useful, through the use of fossil fuels. Unless you happen to live next to the salt mine and can (with payment to the owner, of course) walk over to carve out a chunk for yourself. ;-D
Some salt comes from evaporation, though even that still needs to be collected and transported.
If you want to get technical (a fancy word for anal), even the mined deposits were originally created through evaporation.
A. The Financial Times is paywalled,
and
B. FT seems to be owned by a Japanese company and edited by an English journalist that studied German and Modern History. Thus, must get science from Al and Bill,
and
C. The writers just make stuff up, such as this climate nonsense,
Therefore, I’m off to trudge through the cold and snow to feed our animals.
Mission 2020
All Media: News organizations and editorial articles.
http://www.mission2020.global/media
Where the Media gets some of their information from for articles and editorials?
Mission 2020
Organizations ‘Mission 2020’ collaborates with:
http://www.mission2020.global/collaboration
Climate Works Foundation, San Francisco, Calif., Est. 2008
Board includes: Christiana Figueres
http://www.climateworks.org/about-us/people/our-board
Climate Works Foundation, San Francisco, Calif.
Research Partners include:
Bloomberg New Energy Finance
IEA
McKinsey & Company
Oxford Economics
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
World Bank
World Resources Institute
And others
http://www.climateworks.org/about-us/partners/research-partners
inre: Barbara and green capture of financial institutions
This might make your day:
Treasury report will focus on community bank relief, Mnuchin says
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/treasury-report…community-bank-relief…/2625738
Jun 12, 2017 – The first of the Treasury Department reports ordered by President Trump on overhauling financial regulations will come out Monday evening and feature relief for community banks and credit unions, Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested Monday. “These banks are not what created the financial crisis,” …
Trump promises community bankers he will ease regulations …
http://www.chicagotribune.com/…/ct-trump-community-banks-regulations-20170309-story….
Mar 9, 2017 – President Donald Trump assured a group of U.S. community bank executives he’ll deliver regulatory changes that will make it easier for them to lend money.
Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy
2017 Board members include:
Michael Bloomberg, Co-chair
Christiana Figueres, Vice-chair
Gregor Robertson, Vancouver, Canada
Mayor of Atlanta
And others from around the world.
http://www.globalcovenantofmayors.org/about/board
The World Bank
Press release: December 12, 2017
Re: Partnership announcement of Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy and The World Bank.
http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2017/12/12/global-covenant-of-mayors-and-world-bank-announce-partnership-for-climate-action
World Bank Live
Christiana Figueres: World Bank Climate Leader.
Short biography:
https://live.worldbank.org/experts/christiana-figueres
The writer at the Financial Times blithely announces
Once again, assertions without evidence and no sign that the author is capable of, or willing to, address the matter seriously. I am all too used to such statements from the likes of Michael Mann but it is more disappointing to see them in The FT, which I still liked to think of as a publication with some gravitas. It is another sad loss to journalism.
Agreed. I would think the FT would have a bit more intelligence, but like most “big media” seems to have become part of the Borg.
Oil Companies Should Stop Supplying New York City
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/oil-companies-should-stop-supplying-new-york-city/
How Do You Know A Climate Alarmist Is Lying? Their Lips Are Moving
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/01/13/how-do-you-know-a-climate-alarmist-is-lying-their-lips-are-moving/
LMFAO.
“It is true that fossil fuel interests have had a generally toxic effect on the debate over climate change in the US”
What a parroting of AGW nonsense.
They don’t dare try and explain how and name who it is that fossil fuel interests have influenced?
https://twitter.com/chaamjamal/status/952714894880661504
I’m still waiting for one of these climate warriors to name, with evidence, what impact oil companies have had on the so called conversation.
Declaring that you must be losing because the other side is doing something despicable is the language of losers.
Name names, provide proof, or go home.
With Trump the economy now HAS wings.
Economic growth during the Obama years was anaemic. President Trump has restored it to where it should be, around four percent. link