The plan is clear. The political elite want to create what amounts to a new feudal system, with the manipulation of the green agenda providing a convenient pretext.
Ordinary people’s mobility will be severely restricted. They will be forced out of their cars and off the roads by a raft of new charges and controls. Their lives will largely be confined to “15-minute cities.”
But the perpetrators have a problem. These measures are deeply unpopular with a large percentage of the public. And they are being imposed in ostensible democracies. So, they need a strategy to overcome resistance.
One element is a relentless propaganda campaign to promote the idea of a “climate emergency.” With clear parallels to the manipulation strategies deployed during the pandemic, they’re trying to persuade the public that a form of lockdown is necessary to stop global warming.
This is why the BBC lectures viewers on climate change every time there’s a heat wave, flooding or forest fires. It’s also why the BBC has effectively banned proper debate on environmental issues, with sceptical voices not welcome on its outlets. The understandable anguish created by images of natural disasters is used to undermine free speech on the issue.
The second element is a focus on local government. There’s a reason why mayors and councils are taking a leading role in the “climate lockdowns” policy, while central government pretends to be more motorist friendly. The establishment is exploiting the different incentives facing members of the public.
The benefits of measures such as “low-traffic neighbourhoods” (LTNs) are highly concentrated and obvious to the relatively small number of beneficiaries. By contrast, the costs, which may be enormous by comparison, are typically dispersed and not always obvious to the losers.
If a through road is closed off by the council, many of its residents will support the new restriction (though some may be against – for example if it means much longer journeys). Their street may be quieter and perhaps safer. This constituency offers a bedrock of support for such measures.
It will be bolstered by locals ideologically wedded to the green agenda, perhaps the result of a lifetime of indoctrination by schools, universities and the media, with no exposure to the counter arguments.
They will be joined by state-funded “sock puppets” – campaign groups paid by government to lobby itself and create a fake impression of wider support for policies that the political elite have already decided to impose.
By focusing on the local level, the instigators can build a sufficient coalition of supporters to at least make the argument that they’re not imposing their agenda despite overwhelming public opposition.
Indeed, many of the losers from such policies will not even live or vote in the borough or city where the new controls are being installed. They may be commuters or businesses now facing prohibitive charges or massive delays to their journeys.
Residents in areas beyond the schemes may see a big increase in congestion as traffic is displaced. The emergency services might become less efficient as they can no longer take a direct route, or because cycle lanes mean motorists can no longer get out of their way to let them pass. Labour mobility, productivity and wages may decline because potential employees can’t reach jobs that match their skills, and economies of scale may be lost as the populations that can be profitably or efficiently served shrink (click here for a more detailed discussion).
It will not always be obvious to people that the “war on motorists” is to blame for these negative economic impacts, which in turn dilutes political resistance to the new restrictions. And these effects are spread over a much wider geographical area than the benefits (that accrue to a small, concentrated group), which means opposition is harder to coordinate.
Note that the purported non-local environmental gains are quite tenuous. The costs and benefits of any future climate change are impossible to calculate accurately. And the impact of the new controls will be negligible in terms of global emissions. In any case, anti-car policies are often counterproductive. Artificially created congestion can actually increase pollution.
Rather than restricting ordinary people’s mobility – and effectively creating a new feudal system in the process – policymakers should focus on win-win policies that both cut emissions and benefit the economy. This means ending the vast subsidies pumped into various polluting activities.
It speaks volumes that governments are so reluctant to take this obvious step. The green agenda is really about giving even more power to the elite and their institutions rather than saving the planet.
Richard Wellings
Transport Watch 
Completely agree with this. Local measures where I live included spending hundreds of thousands on ‘intelligent’ traffic lights. These keep cars waiting artificially long on the outskirts of the town to reduce pollution in the town.
i.e. they create more unnecessary pollution overall, just elsewhere.
The authorities narrowed a two-line each way road to one lane to create an extra-special bike lane and (in theory) a bus/tram lane. Somehow nothing came of the latter so trams and buses now stuck in queues with rest of traffic. Cyclists still use the pavement instead of the bike lane.
On the same road a 30kmh limit was introduced, so cars spend longer driving through town, which is frustrating for motorists and does (to my mind) nothing for noise or congestion levels – quite the opposite.
They also lost the ‘green wave’ which gave green lights to motorists sticking to the speed limit though town – clever because it encourages a sensible limit and keeps traffic moving efficiently. Nowadays if you stick to the 30 limit, you get stuck at every set of lights.
One way systems increase journey lengths, i.e. unnecessary pollution. The authorities are deliberately reducing parking spaces in towns, forcing car owners to park further away, in theory to get motorists to rethink their mobility needs. In practice, this just increases frustration – public transport & cycling work well here and are not unattractive, but they’re still not ideal for everyone.
And there’s an increasing tide of 30 kmh limits in towns ostensibly to reduce noise levels but again there doesn’t seem to be a noticeable difference between tyre noise at 30 or 50. Motors in petrol & electric cars are often quieter than their tyres. And, because they’re moving more slowly, you have the noise source for longer in a given place. And if that noise source has a loud stereo and a bad taste in music… well what benefits have you achieved for local residents?
It is just madness – bulldozing through misconceived, self-defeating and unchallengeable legislation in the supposed interest of the environment, but probably just making life a misery for normal residents and motorists everywhere.
But if you’re chauffeur driven everywhere, your house is out of town and you have staff to take care of your practical considerations, I can imagine it looks good to appear to be doing something to save our planet.
Re “democracies”
Any alleged expert or layperson who talks about “democracies” AS IF a real democracy ACTUALLY EXISTS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (or has existed at any time in ‘human civilization’) is evidently repeating mindlessly and blindly the propaganda fed to them since they were a kid and/or is part of the (unconscious, ignorant, naive, willful) crowd who disseminates this total lie because any “democracy” of ‘human civilization’ has always been a covert structure of the rule of a few over the many operating behind the pretense name and facade of a “democracy”: http://www.CovidTruthBeKnown.com (or https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html)
“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. […]. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies […]. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business […].” — from the 1976 movie “Network”
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” — Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice
In terms of “experts” or “awake” folks who sell you the fake program of democracies…
“All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organization. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer an absolute reassurance.” —Guy Debord
Isn’t it about time for anyone to wake up to the ULTIMATE DEPTH of the human rabbit hole — rather than remain blissfully willfully ignorant in a narcissistic fantasy land and play victim like a little child?
“We’ll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” —William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime
“Separate what you know from what you THINK you know.” — Unknown
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