French translation

What follows is a reblog from my old site as part of the updating process since that page was shut down. It was one of my first blogs, published on 30 April 2010 and it predicted fairly accurately the wave of smug green elitism that, over the last decade, has strangled the general population (the “people”) while the small class of rich environmentalists have done very well writing the rules for themselves.

What is happening in France, Belgium and elsewhere today with the “yellow vest” movement was predictable and completely understandable. The poor have been made to pay for the ability of the rich to virtue signal how green they are. The rich drive subsidised electric cars, power their homes with solar panels and chomp on organic kale. They are doing well. The poor pay for their privilege with higher fuel taxes, cold nights on an unaffordable electricity grid and expensive food bills. Factories are offshoring – the rich don’t need to work to pay the rent. Farmers are struggling while an obscene urban political class takes away their tools to succeed. It is no wonder those suffering have donned yellow vests and have risen up to claim the right of the people.

But the dogmatic zealots behind these green squeezes don’t care about the people – environmentalists think people are the cause of the problem and the planet would be better off if they suffered. The smug articles in Le Monde barely disguise their disgust of les paysans and seem to welcome more sacrifice for Mother Earth. A small minority of dogmatic zealots are imposing their will and making the poorer populations pay for the high and mighty views of their ill-conceived green fundamentalism. Through political pressure, communications campaigns and marketing tricks, these activists have hurt struggling consumers, large families, farmers and commuters. Have they gone too far?

In 2010 I called this environmental madness: “economic injustice”

Environmentalism is not the voice of the people, it is the will of a smug band of elitist virtue signallers who despise the people and have no qualms when the “peasants” suffer. Let them eat cake!

Almost nine years ago, I think I nailed this one.

The Economic Injustice of Environmentalism

30 April 2010

Environmentalism is a luxury for the rich and a burden for the poor. Not a burden in the sense of the global injustice of environmental effects that the Copenhagenistas had been arguing. No, the injustice is that the poor cannot afford the benefits of environmental solutions but are expected to pay the price.

Most environmentalists in the developed nations are decidedly upper class, pretend to be educated on the issues and don’t hesitate to lecture others about how things should be. They can afford to buy organic and argue that we all should (not realising that the poorest 20% of the population already cannot afford the five daily servings of fruit and veg needed to protect the body against cancers). They call to close factories and industries since they do not understand what it means to a working class person to need a job. They argue for the end of the carbon-based economy because they can afford to buy electric cars.

The most obscene economic injustice is renewable energy. For example, the main Belgian energy provider, Eandis, has just announced that it needs to raise electricity bills by an average of 20% in order to cover the cost of all of the eco-credits given to people to install solar panels (and the premiums they’ll enjoy when selling energy back onto the grid). Yes, solar panels … IN BELGIUM! Ironically, Belgium has enough nuclear energy to provide a secure, cheap source if only people could think straight.

Who could afford to buy solar panels and avail of the generous subsidies? The wealthy, environmentally concerned part of the population. Their energy bills will go down (they may actually make money by reselling energy on the grid if only they didn’t have so many gadgets). So the poorer part of the Belgian population is forced to pay 20% more for their energy so their well-off neighbours (OK, they don’t live next to each other) can enjoy free energy and sanctimoniously display their green self-importance. Somebody give me a rock.

I have written elsewhere that there is something seriously wrong with the GE-Jeremy Rifken plan to introduce a smart grid for a renewable-based world. Such a grid would ration and price energy according to the supply produced by domestic rooftop micro-generators. It would imply that energy would become a luxury item (not a right) priced according to availability. Rich neighbourhoods (with their subsidised eco-pods) would then have abundant energy while poorer neighbourhoods would have to deal with scheduled brown-outs and the economic disadvantages they would impose. These intentions may be pure, but such reasoning is badly flawed and quite obscene.

This has to stop. If we subsidise our conscience with eco-solutions that tax the poor, then we had better find another way to balance the economic injustice we are causing. The answer is obvious: put a tax on environmentalists.