Chile’s Climate Constitution

Douglas Pollock

Short after the well-planned communist coup on October 18, 2019 and the burning, destruction, plundering and crime committed in Chile’s main cities, President Piñera unconditionally surrendered and handed over to the extreme left the Constitution in exchange for a peace that only came months later with the pandemic.

This is how a long process to change the Chilean’s basic political document began, process that citizens categorically rejected (62%) in an “exit plebiscite” in September 2022. However, just a few days later and ignoring the people’s mandate in an unconstitutional and illegal collusion between the current extreme leftist president —Boric— and Piñera, a second process was launched to draft a new constitutional text that will end in December 2023 with another plebiscite.

The new Constitution proposal, drafted by a committee of 24 “experts” and approved by 50 constitutional advisors elected by vote last May, is rather closer to those of Nicaragua and Venezuela than to the one enacted in 1980 under the government of President Pinochet that gave Chile stability and economic growth for almost 40 years. Amazingly, a chapter called “Environmental Protection, Sustainability and Development” (chapter XVI) was incorporated. It contains eight articles that raise climate change to a constitutional mandate, something never done by any nation.

In the usual green language, mandates such as “the State will promote justice in environmental matters”, will make the country’s industrial development judicialized, especially electricity generation; “the promotion of an energy matrix compatible with environmental protection and sustainability” will put an end to hydroelectric generation, the most abundant, clean, stable and affordable in Chile, as already happened with HidroAysén, twice the most efficient in the world —least flooded area per MW installed (run of river) and highest capacity factor (85%)—, which was replaced by a dead weight thermo-solar plant 30 times more expensive, and will impose renewables that will replace all other generation sources, especially those based in coal, gas and oil, increasing electricity prices, the loss of competitiveness, the industrial flight (to China), unemployment and poverty, as the West already knows well; “the State will implement mitigation and adaptation measures in a timely, rational and fair manner before the effects of climate change” is none other than the obsession to reduce CO₂ emissions and the consecration of the war against fossil fuels; among others such as school indoctrination on climate change. All of the above will imply more State, more taxes, more regulations, more loss of degrees of freedom and more misery for a country already impoverished by successive leftist governments.

In this latest attempt to ruin the nation with the blessing of the political right that suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, Chile will be irremediably thrown, once again, to an economic collapse and to the end of its sovereignty.

Meanwhile, for the last six years, by every 1 MW-h of coal-fired generation capacity decommissioned in Chile, China, India and Russia have increased that same capacity by 102 MW-h.

After thirty years of Chile being the world’s top nation in poverty reduction, today only a distant memory remain of those times of prosperity and the beautiful words pronounced by Bill Clinton on the eve of his visit to Chile in 1998 that once upon a time became true:

“Chile is the most precious jewel in the Latin American Crown”.

Douglas Pollock