Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Wired contributor Daphne LePrince-Ringuet, the kind of anti climate policy protests which rocked France can be prevented with a few government handouts, and by convincing ordinary people of the good intentions of government.
To win the climate change battle, we need to talk about gilets jaunes
By DAPHNE LEPRINCE-RINGUET
Saturday 22 December 2018Shifting to a low-carbon economy won’t be painless, and politicians need to win the public over
On the first day of this year’s COP24, nearly 50 heads of state – including British prime minister Theresa May – signed a declaration proposed by the Polish government and ambitiously named the “Solidarity and Just Transition Silesia Declaration”. The paper didn’t make waves in the media, yet it addresses a key issue in the fight against climate change: ensuring that the transition towards a low-carbon economy comes with jobs and an decent quality of life.
Ironically, the story that hogged the limelight in the press was the gilets jaunes protests in France – whose root cause is linked to the very same issue. The carbon tax on diesel fuel announced by the French government as part of low-carbon strategy didn’t go down well with the middle class rural population, who can’t jump on a metro to go to work – but who also can’t afford to see their salary whittled down by an extra tax.
…
Building on those pillars, David Wei, director for climate at sustainable consultancy group Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), has written a guide for businesses to implement low-carbon models while reducing disruption for their workers. Wei’s handbook includes advice and case studies that are more hands-on than the ILO’s guidelines, such as increasing transparency or implementing re-skilling programmes. And it also highlights the importance of working hand-in-hand with governments. Political decision-making, it insists, is crucial to orchestrate a fair transition.
As an example of good behaviour, Wei points to Canada, where this year unions set up a Just Transition Task Force after the government announced plans to phase out the use of coal-fired electricity by 2030. The organisation bridges between policy-makers and the workforce, meeting with the communities affected by the plans, and then reporting to the federal government on how to create opportunities for them. A further $35 billion (£27.55bn) budget was allocated to support training and re-skilling, with the end-goal of making for a smoother shift of the workforce away from coal.
For Wei, this “inclusive economy agenda” should be the focus of governments and businesses alike for the years to come. “We have to look at the threats and risks that decarbonisation poses to the people,” he says. “You can’t ignore the social impact of a transition. If you don’t tackle the human dimension of climate change policy, you will never generate the political will necessary to meet the two-degree target [agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Agreement].”
Businesses and policy-makers will also need to communicate effectively if they want to win over those that will be impacted first-hand by the new rules of the game – especially if those rules imply sacrifices such as paying higher taxes.
…
See – if you want to defuse protests by mainly rural workers smashed by unavoidable fossil fuel tax rises, all you have to do is convince businesses to work more closely with governments, better communicate your good intentions, and give money to the unions, who will ensure the cash is fairly distributed to their members.
Isn’t that just like trying to convince the fox to trust the scorpion?
Yep. The trick is to get the people to ignore the blatantly obvious. Gaslighting comes immediately to mind.
Sounds a lot like Ayn Rand’s story Atlas Shrugged
Gas prices are $40.00 per gallon $10.32 per liter
Only the wealthy can drive or fly.
People are protesting in the streets
Production of anything is limited due to government interference
Exactly. [Ayn] Rand came from the soviet block where she experienced the misery that centrally planned socialist economies create – everyone is equal (except for those in charge) and they all get to share the same measly crumbs. She came to the west and saw the beginnings of the slide towards this antihumanistic socialist decay in America. She wrote those books to warn us. We should heed that warning. George Orwell also warned us in “1984”. Now the IPCC, UN, EU and progressive socialists want it all to come true in their lifetime. Oddly, the most vocal advocates are wealthy elites who, I presume see themselves in charge after all their rest of us loose our right to a happy and productive existence.
Andy Pattullo
Worse than that. Governments working with big business to manage the country is fascism.
Atlas Shrugged detailed a free public market. The government sets the market rules that apply to everyone without prejeudice.
government sets the market rules
≠========
In creating a fair market the government strangles the free market.
MarkS, I can only conclude that you are still in school and not spent any time in the real world.
Government makes rules to benefit those who benefit government.
The idea that the government acts without prejudice is one of the most ridiculous claims that I have heard in a long time.
Exactly. But sounds like you watched the movie (which was bad).
If you really want to wake up with chills, read the book.
We are living through the prequel…
“Gas prices are $40.00 per gallon $10.32 per liter
Only the wealthy can drive or fly.”
Hmmm, I gotta imagine that a whole lot of people aren’t driving as much…resulting in roads with little or no congestion. Wonder who would benefit from this scenario?
Gaslighting does come immediately to mind, as does paving the road to Hell.
Bob – thank you for the note on gaslighting
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/11-warning-signs-gaslighting
Here is my suggestion for Daphne Leprince-Ringuet:
“Kindly eliminate all fossil fuels from every aspect of your life, starting now. Call me in a month and let me know how that is working for you.”
Regards, Allan
Exactly
i think miss le prince-ringuet would be better remaining in edinburgh during the current revolution in france. her name alone marks her out as part of the social class the working class french have had enough of.
Perhaps persuading the lamb to lie down with the lion when it knows only the lion will get up.
If the French would trust in properly administered nuclear power instead of badly administered government they could solve this thing in a decade.
The French shut down their nuclear power because the Japanese nuclear power go smashed by a wave. Clearly they don’t trust their own, because someone else’s failed. Doh!
I don’t know of a single French reactor that was at risk from tsunamis.
But what about the millions of deaths from Fukushima?
Oh, wait. Nobody died. Never mind.
Thanks for the reminder, Greg. That means they could be back to cheap power in a few years tops. All that is required is that the public be given all the facts on the waste and the observed, immediate environmental impacts of safely operated nuclear installations vs. what is considered to be safely operated wind and solar generation. These data would be most effective when represented on a per-kilowatt-hour scale.
France has not shut down its reactors. They currently operate 58 reactors (2nd to the US) which produces 71.6% of French electricity. Germany closed down its nukes after Fukushima.When Germany runs low on power, when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t ‘shine they often buy French nuclear power. 🙂
I’m sure a bit more central control will sort this all out, any day now.
Despotism is the ultimate enforcement tool of socialism, from my perspective.
And if it doesn’t, why, just go for a little more central control, until it finally works.
Who centrally controls the central control?
This is where the Green-Math does not add up again. Assuming a very generous income of $100,000 this 35 Billion could support 350,000 people for one year at this level of income. There might be just a few thousand employed at coal plants. Where is the money going?
The Greens (Justin Trudeau) are insane. The “good behaviour” this article claims will help with the transition is exactly why we have Yellow-Vests in the first place. *facepalm*
But it is a lie; there is no $35 billion.
Wag the Dog…
Robert, you should write both Daphne and David Wei for lying, collusion and interference while requesting a full retraction from both.
Duncan:
No socialist program could possibly operate without appropriate oversight. This means:
o A ministry of Green-Stuff – there will be a slight haircut fr this vital service
o Inter-governmental coordination committee – there will be a slight haircut for this service
o Mandatory diversity & gender training – (training someone to do “gender” is somewhat of a mystery) – there will be a slight haircut for this service
o Green goalpost movement & compliance – there will be a slight haircut for this service
o Audits – – there will be a slight haircut for this service
o Future plans & programs – – there will be a slight haircut for this service
0 Travel & expenses to an infinite number of conference – there will be a slight haircut for this services
Fun disclosure: There is absolutely no sarcasm here.
After all those “slight haircuts”, there will be no hair left to cut.
There is an English language newspaper/magazine called Connexion sold in France, from a lot of the kiosks and delivered in the mail to ex-pat households. Inceasingly its editorial comments are like reading the Guardian. It runs with stuff like this.
As most ordinary French people outside Paris don’t give a fig about anything coming from Paris nevermind anywhere else, the constant CAGW drumbeat means little compared to maintaining the things a French person holds dear. When there are real threats to ‘the social contract’ any government of any hue has problems.
Macron forgot that the first ( and last) rule of politics , which is to do what is possible. He has lost, unfortunately he now will hang around for a long time as a lame duck. Still he has gone off before Christmas to enjoy himself in Chad. If anyone has been following the scuttlebuck about his personal predelictions, they will understand.
I’ll bet Trump didn’t bother telling Macron he is pulling the troops from Syria – France refuses to leave. That colonial mindset is still festering. Macron is meeting his troops in Chad.
France could back the Transaqua Project to refill Chad from the Congo :
http://africanagenda.net/the-time-has-come-for-transaqua/
Then France would be welcome there – such a large scale project needs advanced engineering. China is already involved.
Good read, thank you for the link.
Be careful with that journal. They have never been a useful read. I learned to read french and bought french newspapers. Although not much better, the info provided from government to these newspapers appears to be better than the translation / interpretation done by the English ones.
I assume Chad is the name of his lover.
You are naughty….but I like it!
Guess I need to read up on Macron’s “personal predilections” (or maybe not; enough of that stuff is enough), but it’s interesting to note that at least Nero stayed in Rome (actually, Antium, 35 miles away, but close enough) while it burned.
Macron’s flying outside he country, creating CO2 & on French-taxpayer expense account.
30 years of deindustrialization since the fall of the Wall is the cause of the mass strike. Climate etc is only a recent insult from the same liberal globalist cabal. A “Lehman II” is just about to hit that very clique – their desperation that with Trump exercising now his constitutional prerogatives, and the Gilets Jaunes not at all appeased, another Bush/ Obama bailout heist will hit a wall.
Time for a new paradigm with Russia, China, and USA tackling deindustrialization, financialization. GM is a text book case of the now flailing bankrupt looting system. The Paris Accord in all of this is just collateral damage.
Interesting — what makes the gilet jaunes so powerful is their lack of a central structure – which makes it difficult for the government to simply suborn that structure instead of trying to meet the overall group’s demands. Ms. LePrince-Ringuet seems to think that bribing the labor unions would act as a controlling force, but that seems unlikely, at least in France. I suspect if the unions started suddenly backing the government, they would find themselves similarly disenfranchised.
My understanding is that the gilets jaunts are staunchly anti-union, regarding the unions as part of the problem.
If you want to see how well it goes down in Canada, watch the result of the next election. The drama queen is toast.
Yes, running on a new tax is not a vote winner.
Last time I voted federally, all the people manning the polling station were elementary school children, and a lot of them had day glow hairdo’s. Probably no scrutineers in place either. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if we have the same level of dead voters and ballot stuffing as the states. As for CO2 reduction, as the Yellow Vests in France have pointed out, freighters off the coast spew out way more that all the ground transport combined in French cities.
I’m interested in knowing if the shipping argument is valid.
A modern aircraft carrier gets roughly 6 inches per gallon of diesel, so yes, shipping burns a lot of hydrocarbons.
Many tons of petroleum fuels are burned in the jets flying from the modern aircraft carrier, in the fossil-fueled ships refueling them and supplying them, in the escort around them, in the plants and bases supporting them. Yes, the carrier power plants are now all nuclear, but the “Navy” is not nuclear.
drednicolson
Aircraft carrier, or any modern ship? Of the tens of thousands of large vessels, only a handful are nuclear powered aircraft carriers. Of the hundreds of thousands of vessels and tugs and inland craft, none are nukes.
So if the public figures out the effects of a program, lie even more? As the intent was to harm economically rural residents enough to change their behavior regarding driving, suggesting they move to the cities and go on welfare is a solution?
History shows Governments are not Trustworthy.
Governments actions should be questioned and held accountable to the people.
Hitler, Mao and Stalin are just few examples.
Basically, one has to understand that, whoever wins the elections, the Government always gets in.
The government is already in before the election. Here in the US we call it the Deep State, but it exists in most all governments – the unelected bureaucrats who run the governments day-to-day operation and don’t leave when there is a change of elected administration.
Canada has a low coal power production of approximately 5% but they still need to have a 35 billion budget for retraining. With already an annual federal deficit of 20 billion, where is this money going to come but from more taxes on the middle class. This will not make any difference on Canada’s carbon dioxide foot print but will make everyone poorer.
The reference to Canada conveniently ignores what is in essence the concept of a social contract. Translation: the government doesn’t do anything without the prior consent of every constituency that is impacted in any way, and spends whatever is necessary to buy their consent. Result: national paralysis. We can’t get a pipeline built to the east coast or the west coast and our oil remains in the ground or is sold at a huge discount to the Americans. This contract with the coal miners will end up costing taxpayers a fortune. 35 billion to support training and reskilling sounds like several orders of magnitude too high even for our free-spending prime minister. At that rate, every coal miner could be trained to become a doctor, lawyer or (perish the thought) climate scientist.
Trudeau needs money. He effectively opened our borders by signing the UN right to migrate document. It will cost billions when thousands of unskilled “migrants” flood into Canada (welfare, medical, housing, education). He also gave $2.6B to the UN climate fund, and needs that every year. That’s where this money will go. I hope Canadians can see through the “revenue neutral” carbon tax scam. Everything the globalists do centres on income redistribution. Even my intelligent friends haven’t yet figured out that there are two ways to redistribute their money: climate reparations to foreign countries, and allowing mass immigration with financial backing for immigrants. Combine this with traditional foreign aide and their is one big number of $$$$.
There is nothing more dangerous than a young ambitious politician using his current position as a springboard to a higher office. Martin O’Malley, former Democratic governor of MD instituted 24 new taxes including a rain tax and $3billion surcharge on electricity to support offshore wind to build green credibility. For all that pain, he wouldn’t have carried his home state in the Democratic primary against HRC if he hadn’t dropped out and managed to get a Republican elected to succeed him. Unfortunately while some of the green taxes got reduced, many remain.
They publish almost as much BS about how to make their message more effective as they do BS doomsday stuff about what terrible things “climate change” is going to cause in the future. The bottom line is that even the well indoctrinated will pay lip service to the meme, but when it comes to real sacrifice they won’t want anything to do with it until some real physical and persistent consequences that have been predicted come to pass. IOW, the liars cannot sustain their campaign on words alone in the long run. I really believe that despite the indoctrination our youth get in schools, the meme is doomed in the long run.
I remember Obama once commenting that the reason why more people didn’t support him was because he hadn’t given enough speeches.
Hey MarkW
This is completely OT but you may have a link to some knowledge I seek. My impression has been the Ring of Fire has been becoming generally more active over the last decade or so after a period of relative calm. It there a source that provides data on activity over the total range of the ring arranged chronologically and rating each event by magnitude?
Try this website …..
Ring of Fire
Thank you for the link. Though informative, it did not provide what I was looking for. My impression of increased activity is one based on a time span of the last decade or two, not just the last few years. And one of not just for eruptions but also seismic activity in general. I noticed that as for seismic activity around the time of the slide below Krakatau which resulted in a Tsunami, the only activity noted in the vicinity was a 5.0 at about 5 K deep.
Personal circumstances trump ideology. Unless forced. That’s the next step.
SITE ISSUE
Sorry for the off topic post, but I cannot see anywhere to post about site issues.
Several times recently if have been redirected to a site that McAfee says is dangerous.
The last one was real-prizes-zone1.com.
This generally happens when I change page in this site.
[Please copy this also to the “Tips and Notes” Forum on this site. .mod]
Yeah that Amazon add is frustrating on my iPhone 🙁
[Amazon ads are apt to be the most frustrating apps on Applephones. .mod]
I keep getting a virus advert that totally disrupts my PC forcing me to shutdown and reload
Anthony explained a while back that these are attacks. Don’t click on the link. I just shut the window and come back in a different window. BTW it has not only happened to be here. It happened just this morning on a story I clicked on the link for at the Drudge report. It has also happened at like the Conservative Tree House and the Ace of Spade HQ blog.
Add an application like Malwarebytes that will kill the ad before it even appears rather than letting it execute then saying it is bad. You would then get a ‘Site Blocked’ indication in the popup or ad window.
Stephen Richards
You might try using Opera Browser which has an inbuilt pop up blocker. It also has a free Proxy feature although it’s not a proper Proxy, but it helps if you don’t want to pay for one. Add Ghostery https://www.ghostery.com. I can’t remember the last time I had a redirect or malicious attack.
Stephen, I use chrome (with Duckduckgo as my search engine) and Adblock plus. Even with this app I once-in-a-while see the browser crash when visiting this site. There is IMHO someone attacking this blog.
Astonishingly, another child who forsook schooling in favor of climate alarmist indoctrination, continues in her vocation; spreading nonsense and silliness.
Daphne starts her religious tirade sermon, by blaming the protestors. It is the gilets jaunes fault for not trusting their superiors, Daphne states in her falsehood centered condescension writing.
Then after firmly establishing the gilets jaunes as immature and impatient children, she hands over the discussion to another alarmist earning gobs of money from climate alarmism.
Empty articles circulating the same tired nonsense and specious phrases.
She’s just doing what she’s been trained to do. http://invisibleserfscollar.com/coups-culture-consciousness-contrived-to-shape-our-future-character-and-behavior/
The educational system is working hard to produce just this sort of result. If it wasn’t so dastardly, you’d have to applaud the techniques effectiveness.
‘Shifting to a low-carbon economy won’t be painless…’
The the annual understatement award goes to…
Mankind lived in a low-carbon economy for over two hundred thousand years until the late 18th Century.
It is called misery, continual hunger, disease, high infant mortality, short life expectancy and abject poverty.
“Shifting to a low-carbon economy won’t be painless”
So is poking yourself in the eye with a stick, but why would anyone want to do that either?
Macron is applying the same behavioral economics that drove Obamacare.
ENABLE – European Network for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics in 2004, in cooperation with Harvard, Princeton, and the European behavioral economics institutes including the Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making (CREED), all interfacing with London’s Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
Looks like the writer should know of these .
A very nasty animal psychology narrative applied to citizens dressed in an appeal to “feelings” cannot work and causes chaos.
The green agenda is a global confidence trick. Now that it is being rumbled it has a difficult problem on its hands. political bribing only exacerbates the problem. It will evolve; but it will take the consequences to really bite hard first and that will take time and cause a lot of aggro.
Al Gore’s Church of Climatology does not admit any responsibility for its actions nor does it allow any dissent from its main theme, that we will all drown in the rising seas if we don’t repent our carbon sins. Us great unwashed masses have no comprehension of just how humble we should be in the face of the God of climate change.
The church is truly from another planet.
The most dangerous phrase in any language:
Trust me, I’m from the government.
I guess there is a first time for everything.
OMG how can they be so out of touch?
They work for the government.
Being out of touch is a job requirement.
They (bureaucracy, journos, politicians) are not “out of touch”. They geniunely just don’t care.
This argument sounds very much like what was said here in the US when Obama and the Dems were trying to push Obamacare on everyone. It was often said that the reason people don’t like Obamacare is because they “don’t understand it”. In other words, the message wasn’t getting thru correctly. No, people understood it perfectly well, they knew what it was and they simply didn’t want it!
Sounds like they are trying to find a way to do more to treat the populace like mushrooms on a mushroom farm…you know, keep them in the dark and feed them manure!
Communication (Science of Science Communication) is the new growth industry, notice the only mention of science (other than water) for an organization that says it is the National Honor Society for Science and Engineering. Wonder what their mission is?
Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference, Our Changing Global Environment,
Scientists and Engineers Designing Solutions for the Future, November 14–17, 2019, Monona Terrace Convention Center, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Scientific and Engineering Content Tracks
Water Track, featuring sessions on emerging research and/or solutions in water science and technology, including global water resources, quality, management, and analysis
Energy Track, featuring sessions that examine emerging energy research and innovations, including conservation, sustainability, renewable energy, alternative energy technologies and assessment
Life and Health Track, including sessions that address how life will be affected by environmental changes and how we can respond
Sigma Xi Mission-related Tracks
Science Communications Track, including sessions on the science of science communication, engaging, and educating the public on environmental issues
Research Ethics Track, featuring sessions on ethical challenges facing the research community and ethics of communicating about environmental changes
Professional Development Track, including sessions on career advancement and general challenges facing the research community such as research funding, cultivating effective interdisciplinary collaborations, leadership training, publishing, and diversity
It will be difficult because cheap energy is important for job and the economy They can try and trick the people by phasing in these taxes very slowly to spread the economic fallout over many years. If a competing country has low energy costs, and low wages jobs, industry will move to that country.
Stevek,
This is exactly why China hypocritically pushes the CAGW meme. They know that it will increase the cost of energy for everybody else and since the worlds economy has become one where the value added to raw materials is dominated by energy, rather than labor, whoever has the cheapest energy will dominate world markets.
One thing that many fail to see is that even though China has a high ‘official’ price of electricity, they heavily subsidize it for energy intensive industries like aluminum, steel and silicon, much of which comes from coal with little to no scrubbing of any real pollution.
If the green blob only understood the severe environmental damage being done in China in the name of green virtue signaling, their collective heads would explode. But then again, isn’t this just NIMBY?
Daphne, I have a brdge to sell, winks.