Category Archives: climate change

Digital IDs and carbon rationing

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Imagine having to get permission from the government to board a train, take the bus, or drive your car; being fined if you exceed your annual travel allowance; or getting banned from travelling beyond a few miles from your home.

This could be the totalitarian nightmare faced by Britons if the Starmer regime succeeds in imposing digital IDs.

A comprehensive spying system based on digital IDs, linked to payments, will be a vital component of the climate lockdowns agenda.

It facilitates the long-planned system of carbon rationing, which will most likely take the form of personal carbon allowances.

The “elite” have been developing plans for carbon rationing for decades.

Back in 2006, the then Environment Secretary floated the idea of carbon “credit cards” which would be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme. Each individual would be issued an annual carbon allowance, with the card swiped when purchasing travel, energy, food and other goods.

Personal carbon allowances would be tradable, with those using less selling their surplus to those needing more. This appeals to socialists because it would redistribute resources from the middle classes to groups dependent on welfare handouts – the former driving cars, heating large houses and taking frequent holidays.

The Department of the Environment carried out a feasibility study on carbon rationing, which concluded there could be significant public opposition. Funnily enough, this took place at the same time the Blair government was considering imposing national ID cards. The European Union and various other governments have also been promoting carbon rationing and conducting trials.

As explained elsewhere, there are win-win strategies to address climate risks, whether natural or man-made, that do not require draconian mass surveillance and strict control over individual behaviour. But the “elite” appear determined to undermine freedom, perhaps as part of a wider agenda to crush dissent and place a greater share of economic resources under their own control.

Fortunately, there are several obstacles to carbon rationing. The first is the need to track and tally everyone’s trips and purchases. So, if people are paying anonymously for travel tickets using physical cash, this is a big problem for the bureaucrats.

It’s perhaps no coincidence the authorities are making it harder and harder to use cash, whether to board buses, buy train tickets, or pay for parking. Even pay-as-you-go travel cards don’t offer the required level of surveillance: different people can use the same one. But digital IDs, linked to payments and facial recognition, would enable it.

In the near future, buses and railway stations are likely to be equipped with digital ID readers and facial recognition cameras. You will be forced to scan your ID to travel on public transport, with every journey tracked and recorded.

The British government is currently funding a “digital ticketing” trial in the North of England. Participants no longer have to buy a ticket to travel by train. Instead, their location is tracked by their mobile phone and they are charged an appropriate fare. It’s easy to see how this technology could be modified with digital ID infrastructure to serve a system of carbon rationing.

Meanwhile, a network of cameras and satellite tracking will spy on every car journey. Car manufacturers may soon be forced to install digital ID readers, facial recognition and/or fingerprinting in vehicles so the authorities can identify the driver of a car at any given time, although this may not be necessary if digital IDs are linked to mobile devices that must be carried at all times.

A second obstacle is public opposition. We can expect climate change propaganda to be ramped up massively in the controlled media in order to manufacture consent for the draconian new system.

There will be much more coverage of natural disasters, which will be blamed on global warming. It’s even conceivable that crises will be deliberately created for this purpose. This needn’t be done directly by covertly starting forest fires or seeding clouds to cause torrential rain; it can be done indirectly by changing river management policies or neglecting the drains to make flooding more likely, or stopping the clearance of combustible undergrowth in forests and so on.

And to promote digital IDs, we can expect the establishment to further weaponise the public’s concerns about immigration. Many on the Right are likely to play the role of “useful idiots” in this regard, while others promoting this agenda will be controlled opposition or state assets.     

Finally, there are major practical problems with carbon rationing. Determining the optimum allowance is clearly impossible, given the insurmountable difficulties of calculating the costs and benefits of emissions.

Even working out the impact of any given activity is tricky. Should a rail journey include carbon released during the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure? And should the loading of vehicles be taken into account?

If a train is nearly empty then the emissions per person could be very high indeed. The same goes for buses. Yet running that service might be necessary for operational reasons, perhaps ready for a jam-packed service in the opposite direction.

There will be major issues dealing with consumption in shared households. It can’t be split both equally and fairly. What if one resident spends all day at home with the heating on, while another is at work most of the time?

In reality, carbon rationing will inevitably be based on a combination of politics and junk science, concocted by a coalition of puppet politicians and bought-and-paid-for scientists and economists.

The rations will be arbitrary and designed to advance various other “elite” agendas.

One of the goals will be the further destruction of the middle classes; another the “levelling down” of wealthy nations.

But what if public opposition and practical difficulties mean a system of carbon rationing can’t be implemented?

They will find other ways. Carbon rationing will be implemented by the back door.

Car ownership will become more and more expensive. Drivers will face further delays as roads are closed or narrowed, additional traffic lights installed and congestion deliberately worsened. Punitive new road charging will be imposed, particularly in large conurbations. Residents will increasingly be trapped in their 15-minute cities.

Domestic energy bills will be hiked further and even more people will struggle to heat their homes.

Digital IDs will still play a critical role in this agenda by making it easier to crack down on opposition. They dramatically lower the cost of enforcing compliance.

Resisters will be easier to identify and target. They can automatically be stopped from travelling to protests and in due course from posting on social media. They can be denied access to employment or essential goods and services, even their own money.

If the government succeeds in imposing digital IDs, the future prospects for freedom are very bleak indeed.

Richard Wellings

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Image: WEF

20mph limits are about climate lockdowns, not saving lives

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The transnational “elite” want to impose climate lockdowns but realise they’ll be resisted by the public, so they’ve implemented a strategy of deception.

Rather than telling the truth about their plans to restrict people’s mobility and trap them in 15-minute cities, they’re sneaking in these policies by the back door.  

Bogus pretexts are deployed to gain wider support for measures creating the foundations for climate lockdowns.

They created an air pollution scare and spread disinformation about the impact of car fumes on health. This provided a pretext to impose “low emission zones” and force lower-income motorists off the roads.

It also allowed the authorities to install infrastructure that can be repurposed for the long-planned system of road charging, as well as conditioning the public to the idea of paying tolls to enter certain areas.

Another strategy was to manipulate local political systems in order to impose “low-traffic neighbourhoods”. Many of the big losers from such policies lived outside the boroughs concerned, so had little say in the matter. So-called consultations were often rigged or ignored.

The focus of this article is a third ruse to advance the climate lockdowns agenda: the lowering of speed limits and the imposition of 20mph zones across the UK, 30km/h ones across Europe.

The authorities claim it’s about saving lives. Conveniently, this allows them to paint opponents of this policy in a very bad light, as not caring about victims of road accidents, including children.

But the perpetrators of 20mph zones are guilty of gross hypocrisy on this issue. Every second counts for victims of heart attacks and strokes. Yet the very same interests that promote 20mph policies have slowed down ambulances with a host of anti-car policies: cycle lanes or wider pavements that make roads too narrow to overtake the traffic; LTN road closures that force emergency vehicles to take a longer route; road humps and chicanes; cameras and fines that make drivers hesitant about getting out of the way at junctions; the proliferation of traffic lights that cause vehicles to bunch up; and so on.

Anti-car policies are counterproductive in other ways, too. They may encourage travellers to switch to more dangerous modes, such as riding motorbikes – a rational strategy to reduce the delays from artificially created congestion and lower the cost of the supertax imposed on fuel.

Moreover, investment in new roads historically played a major role in reducing casualty rates. The construction of motorways and dual carriageways took traffic away from relatively dangerous single carriageway rural roads. However, following the Conservative Party’s adoption of the radical green agenda, the roads programme largely ended in the mid-1990s.

Beyond the hypocrisy of their other policies, the 20mph brigade typically fail to acknowledge the economic trade-offs of lower speed limits. This is a classic example of focusing on the seen benefits while ignoring the unseen costs.

Lowering speed limits tends to reduce productivity. To take a simple example, a delivery driver might now be able to drop off nine items during his shift, rather than ten previously. Or consider labour mobility. A potential employee will be able to reach fewer job opportunities within a reasonable travel time. This makes it less likely he’ll get a job that matches his talents and also more likely he’ll stay unemployed. Then there are the lost economies of scale for businesses when they operate with smaller catchment areas, and so on.

Reduced productivity means fewer resources available for other goods, including healthcare, food, leisure activities and sanitation. In other words, 20mph zones have the potential to backfire, including in terms of saving lives, due to their negative impact on the economy.

The Welsh government’s own analysis of its 20mph policy estimated the costs of slower journey times at £6.35 billion over the 30-year appraisal period (2022 prices). This far exceeded the estimated road safety benefits of £1.39 billion.

Wales has a population of about three million. So, the cost of similar 20mph policies across the UK as a whole could well run into several billion pounds per year. And this is just one facet of the climate lockdowns agenda. Slower journeys and reduced mobility have major economic costs, as explained in detail in this article.

Even if we take the “saving lives” rationale at face value, it seems implausible that current 20mph policies are a cost-effective way of achieving that goal. It’s likely that spending a fraction of those billions removing obstacles to emergency ambulances would be a far more efficient use of resources. Another option would be enhanced road safety education; or maybe a programme of upgrading dangerous rural A-roads to dual carriageways.

In reality, however, the most cost-effective life-saving strategies probably lie outside the transport sector, in healthcare or foreign policy, for example. If saving lives were the real motive for 20mph then this “opportunity cost” issue would be subject to rigorous discussion and analysis. It speaks volumes that the authorities ignore 20mph’s cost-effectiveness compared with alternative allocations of resources.

Another giveaway is the tendency to impose extended 20mph zones rather than fine-tune the policy to location-specific trade-offs. While overall the costs of the Welsh policy were estimated to far exceed the benefits, the aggregate figures hide huge variation.

There will be some locations where the benefits of lower speed limits outweigh the costs – perhaps near schools at certain times of day or on busy shopping streets with lots of pedestrians. At the other extreme will be major through-roads, perhaps in low-density suburbs with few pedestrians or cyclists around. In the latter locations lower limits are delaying large numbers of drivers, imposing significant time losses for little gain.

It’s therefore relatively easy to work out where 20mph is likely to be a cost-effective way of saving lives and reducing injury, and where the costs of the policy are likely to far exceed the benefits. This could also be quantified, at least roughly, for each section of road under consideration. Instead many authorities have preferred to impose large 20mph zones, in some cases stretching across whole boroughs. This once again suggests other motives are the driving force behind the policy.

Finally, the authorities occasionally admit their 20mph policies are linked to a deeper agenda.

According to Glasgow’s City Convener for Climate and Transport: 

“A citywide 20mph speed limit will bring Glasgow in line with many other UK cities and help to create safer streets and communities for all of us, reducing the risk of accidents and the severity of injuries sustained.

“Reducing the impact of traffic on communities will also contribute to the wider shift needed towards more sustainable forms of transport, which is vital if we are to achieve our target of Glasgow becoming carbon neutral by 2030.” (emphasis added)

Similarly in a “statement of reasons” for its policy, Oxfordshire County Council writes, “…20mph speed restrictions are being used to help promote alternative modes of transport for local travel.”

And from Wales’s Deputy Minister for Climate Change: “Introducing lower speeds will support the Welsh Government’s vision for walking and cycling to be the natural mode of choice for short everyday journeys.”

In a subsequent Senedd debate on the 20mph policy, he was congratulated by a Labour MS colleague:

“… I’d like to congratulate the Minister on having the courage of his convictions and doing what needs to be done. We have a climate emergency and we need to reduce our speed limits and we need to ensure that we make that transition out of cars into active travel and ensure that we meet our 58 per cent reduction by 2030, which is not very far off.”

These perspectives echo the content of the 2020 Stockholm Declaration – backed by the United Nations, World Health Organization and European Commission – and explicitly referenced by the Welsh government.

This is a reminder that the 20mph agenda is actually being coordinated outside democracy at transnational “elite” level (hence near-identical policies being imposed across the West and its vassals).

The Declaration resolved, inter alia, to:

“Address the connections between road safety, mental and physical health, development, education, equity, gender equality, sustainable cities, environment and climate change, as well as the social determinants of safety and the interdependence between the different SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals], recalling that the SDGs and targets are integrated and indivisible…”

And noted that “efforts to reduce speed in general will have a beneficial impact on air quality and climate change…”

In practice, the transition will impose a big reduction in people’s mobility because “sustainable” modes generally offer far longer journey times and much reduced travel options compared with cars.

Richard Wellings

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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Climate change policies and economic collapse

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Climate change is providing a pretext for all manner of restrictions on our lives. As a consequence, climate change policies are now one of the biggest threats to individual freedom.

There is good reason to believe this is at least partly deliberate, that the climate change agenda is a Trojan horse for more sinister ends: socialist-style central planning of the economy, dictatorial global government, and grabbing a greater share of assets and resources for transnational “elites.”

This context explains why the flaws of the official climate change narrative are rarely debated. They are largely ignored by tightly controlled media outlets and the seemingly bought-and-paid-for scientific establishment.

The standard narrative says climate change is a major threat to civilisation. A “scientific consensus” suggests it will lead to “extreme weather” – stronger hurricanes, worse flooding, droughts and forest fires.

This will destablise society, it is claimed. Parts of the world will no longer be able to support agriculture. Food and water shortages will worsen, leading to migration on an epic scale. Even relatively resilient countries face huge costs to strengthen flood defences, adapt essential infrastructure and so on.

An obvious flaw is how this perspective neglects or ignores potential benefits from climate change. Global warming could reduce heating bills and winter deaths in cold countries. Raised CO2 levels tend to increase crop yields. Higher rainfall could be helpful in many locations.

It is not obvious that the costs of any climate change will outweigh the benefits, or if they do, by how much. In any case, it is disingenuous to argue these costs and benefits can be properly quantified. They are highly subjective at the individual level and therefore hard to measure, monetise and aggregate. This is highly problematic when trying to set policy in a rational way or determine optimal temperature targets.

Scientific modelling provides a crutch for the policy activists. But the record of both climate and economic modelling is appalling – including over the short run.

And even if short-term success were achieved, this would not guarantee long-term accuracy. There are numerous factors that modellers cannot know, such as the impact of unpredictable natural events or sudden advances in technology – or indeed individuals’ preferences decades in the future.

Climate change activists perhaps have a more compelling argument when they argue that this lack of knowledge is a major reason why humanity should be worried. If the models were reliable, then people would have a good idea what’s in store and could take steps to address the problems. But the inherent uncertainties mean catastrophe is possible.

The chances might be slight, but climate change could wipe out much of humanity, perhaps because unknown positive feedbacks occur or certain tipping points are breached. From this perspective, the lack of knowledge provides a rationale for caution.

Norman et al. write:

“Without any precise models, we can still reason that polluting or altering our environment significantly could put us in uncharted territory, with no statistical track record and potentially large consequences.” …

“It is the degree of opacity and uncertainty in a system, as well as asymmetry in effect, rather than specific model predictions, that should drive the precautionary measures. Push a complex system too far and it will not come back. The popular belief that uncertainty undermines the case for taking seriously the ‘climate crisis’ that scientists tell us we face is the opposite of the truth.”

However, while the nature of the uncertainty and opacity are not the same, there is also a lack of knowledge about the impact of policies designed to tackle climate change.

To paraphrase the above quotation, without any precise models, we can still reason that altering our economy significantly could put us in uncharted territory, with no statistical track record and potentially large consequences.

Climate change policies are already undermining productivity growth in many countries. The process by which living standards increase due to big reductions in energy and transport costs has been choked off.

Climate change is also providing a pretext for trade barriers, with industries in Europe resenting “unfair” competition from countries with looser environmental standards.

Then there’s the increasing state control of the economy, with major sectors centrally planned by government bureaucrats. Think of the forced shift to renewable energy and electric cars, or state meddling in agriculture.

All this promotes economic stagnation or decline. In turn, it could create a vicious circle, with interest groups lobbying more intensively for government favours as the size of the pie shrinks – a negative sum game compounding the damage.

Look how heavy industry in Western Europe, crippled by high energy prices, has been propped up by state subsidies to keep it alive, or how growing fuel poverty is putting pressure on the welfare state.

It’s possible to envisage climate change policies pushing the political culture in a far more socialist direction in reaction to social and economic problems caused by the radical green agenda (difficulties which will, however, be blamed on convenient scapegoats, such as an imaginary “free market”).

Climate change policies could therefore be a monumental disaster for the economy and society, threatening key drivers of wealth creation such as trade, economies of scale, and specialisation.

This would bring big declines in living standards, perhaps even disasters similar to those predicted by climate change alarmists, such as large-scale starvation and population displacement.

While it could be argued that economics is less uncertain than climate change, the outcome might also depend on highly unpredictable combinations of economic decline, reduced resilience and “external shocks” such as war, natural disasters or pandemics.

It is also conceivable that ill-conceived climate change policies could end up reducing resilience to climate change itself (natural and/or human-influenced), with catastrophic outcomes resulting from a combination of both. The uncertainty could thus be compounded.

The policy implications are clear. Climate change measures that create major economic uncertainty by damaging fundamentals such as individual freedom, property rights, wealth creation, productivity growth (and thus food availability) should be discarded. The focus instead should be on win-win policies that benefit both the economy and the environment. These are measures that should be implemented whether or not climate change is viewed as a serious threat.

This means phasing out the vast and inefficient state subsidies to activities that emit “greenhouse gases,” such as non-viable agricultural practices, elements of the fossil-fuel industry, loss-making parts of energy and transport networks, and much of the military.

Government theft of land, often on behalf of crony-capitalist corporations, should also cease. Property rights should be respected, including those of various indigenous peoples whose form of ownership might differ from current European norms.

State control over vast swathes of the planet is illegitimate. It took place through violent conquest without the consent of the original inhabitants. A policy of non-interference, combined with returning these areas to their rightful owners and ending state subsidies, would prevent much of the damage to ecosystems that bolster the resilience of the planet. Economy-killing climate policies would then be even less defensible.

Richard Wellings

Image: Croft, R., Wikimedia Commons, CC2.0.

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What life will be like under climate lockdowns

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They’re about to completely change our way of life – and most people don’t even realise.

Climate lockdowns are coming. This has already been decided outside democracy at a higher level.

And unless there’s a major change in current power structures, it’s happening whether the public like it or not.

While the term “climate lockdown” is useful shorthand, there are important differences from the lockdowns imposed during the Covid era.

Moving around won’t technically be banned; they’re just going to make it much more expensive, stressful and impractical.

Most importantly, the war on motorists will be ramped up massively – with new charges, red tape and restrictions. The kind of draconian measures seen in London will be rolled out to other cities, and then expanded to towns, perhaps even large villages.

There’s already a big campaign to condition the public to pay-per-mile road charging. This will most likely be added on top of road tax and fuel duty, plus ULEZ-style tolls for entering cities.

The system will be fiendishly complex by design. They want to make drivers fearful of huge fines if they stray into the wrong zone or make a minor mistake, to put them off travelling full stop.

Some councils are planning to force drivers to obtain permits to enter areas of cities or travel down certain routes. Personal carbon allowances are also being discussed (to be reduced in size over time).

There’ll be even more street closures, obstacles, traffic lights, and other reductions in road capacity – all intended to create artificial delays and “nudge” people out of their vehicles. The kind of measures imposed in so-called low traffic neighbourhoods will be scaled up.

Mass surveillance infrastructure is being installed to facilitate these controls. Alarmingly, this will allow the authorities to ban dissidents and non-compliers from travelling to certain locations.

During a future pandemic, they could use the system to stop unvaccinated individuals travelling outside their immediate locality.

As well as tracking and controlling the public, the main objective is a big reduction in car ownership, and for the remaining drivers to travel far less. The plan is for much of the population to be increasingly limited to 15-minute cities (more details here).

In practice this will mean less choice in employment, business, shopping and leisure activities. It will also breed social isolation by making it much harder to visit friends and relatives outside your own area. The impact on the elderly and infirm will be particularly serious. Denied the convenience of door-to-door car travel, more and more people will stay at home waiting for items to be delivered.

Holidays abroad will also become a thing of the past, at least for lower-to-middle income groups. Perhaps they’ll have to sell their carbon allowance to rich people as energy bills and other basic living costs continue to rise. In any case, new anti-tourist taxes and regulations will increasingly make overseas travel prohibitively expensive.

Anti-tourist protests are already being instigated and amplified in order to condition the public ready for the coming crackdown.

The aviation sector, while still a target, is likely to be treated with a relatively light touch however. This is because air travel is critical to many agendas of the transnational “elite”, such as deeper economic, social and political integration across borders.

Accordingly, the focus will be on anti-tourism measures imposed at local level, such as new taxes and restrictions on the supply of accommodation. Tourist-dependent regions will be sold these policies with promises of moving upmarket, as richer long-haul travellers are forced to holiday closer to home by inflated costs.

Finally, it’s worth discussing how governments are going to try to hoodwink the public that they’re not really undermining people’s mobility. They’ll claim it’s still easy to move around using “greener” alternatives, such as trains and buses. (The EU is even promoting the idea that time-consuming and expensive sleeper trains can replace flights).

In reality trains and buses are only practical and viable in areas and corridors with relatively high population densities. In many locations it’s impossible for them to replace a large percentage of car journeys.

Taking the train (or bus) involves at least three stages. You have to travel to the station to catch it, leaving enough time for unforeseen delays, then make the train journey itself. At the other end you have to get from the station to your final destination.

In rural and suburban areas it’s typically far quicker to drive directly to your endpoint. It often takes nearly as long to get to the nearest station as it does to complete the whole journey by car. Moreover, there are huge swathes of the country that can’t be reached by bus or train – at least not in a reasonable time.

So, forcing people to ditch their cars and rely on trains and buses instead is effectively the same as massively reducing their mobility.    

Richard Wellings

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Why did the Conservatives become radical greens?

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It’s deeply disturbing that a supposedly conservative government has been destroying property rights, undermining the middle classes and strangling the economy – all in the name of the environment. How on earth did this happen?

Looking at the incentives facing the party’s leaders might provide some clues.

The obvious explanation is they’re doing it to attract votes. To win the next election they need to go beyond their core support. So, they have to reach out to the centre, perhaps to voters who might consider backing the Lib Dems.

Such calculations also factor in the marginal seats needed to retain a majority and the particular voter groups they therefore need to attract. To give a specific example, a “green” policy of opposing Heathrow expansion might be cynically designed to gain marginal seats in south-west London.

However, if this strategy has been at play, then it is likely to have backfired spectacularly. The government’s green agenda is a major factor in a cost-of-living crisis that has caused its support to plummet.

Moreover, the Conservative majority relies on working-class voters in the North and Midlands – a group that has suffered particularly badly as energy bills have rocketed and real incomes declined.

Many voters don’t connect the cost-of-living crisis to green policies. Indeed, media propagandists deliberately hide the link by blaming other things.

The inconvenient truth is that the UK’s heavy dependence on imported gas is a direct result of the renewable energy agenda and in particular the forced closure of cheap and reliable coal-fired power stations. But whether voters understand this or not, they still tend to blame the government for the consequences and the marked decline in their living standards. 

So, the “going green to attract votes” hypothesis doesn’t stack up. If this was a factor, then it has been a huge miscalculation. In any case, more moderate measures combined with some environmentalist rhetoric could have ticked the “green box” without doing such immense damage to the economy.

A second possible explanation is that the government has to conform with the “metropolitan elite” in order to retain power. This group, so the theory goes, has different values and priorities to the rest of the country. It also has immense influence because it dominates the media, civil service and other pillars of the establishment.

London-centred, its members use public transport far more than people outside the capital. An often-vocal minority cycle to work. Many of them live in gentrified, densely populated inner-city areas, a very different environment to that experienced by the suburban and rural rich.

15-minute cities might seem normal and desirable to them. But in reality, the purchasing power of this group and the local services it supports are very far from the norm, and could not be replicated in more than a relatively small number of locations.

It seems likely that support for radical environmentalism is significantly stronger in the metropolitan elite than the general population. The Conservatives perhaps fear that reversing the radical green agenda would alienate this group, leading to negative media coverage, obstructive behaviour by the civil service and other problems.

Some Conservative politicians may also want to be part of this “elite” in order to enjoy the status, connections and financial rewards that come with it. If they reject the green agenda, they risk being ostracised.

It’s alarming to think that a small, privileged minority, concentrated in London, effectively has the whip hand over policies that affect the whole population, but this conclusion is certainly plausible when the incentives facing policymakers are considered.

A third hypothesis can almost certainly be rejected. Cynics often believe that politicians effectively get paid to implement various agendas.

A number of corporate interests are making vast profits from green measures. And it’s true they have a strong economic incentive to “capture” policy by investing in lobbying.

But this doesn’t seem to be taking the form of politicians benefiting financially. There are relatively few examples of former ministers getting well-paid jobs at renewable energy companies or other firms that benefit from green policies – and these may well be cases where the individuals concerned have genuine expertise in the industry. The phenomenon certainly isn’t widespread enough to explain government policy.

Moreover, there are also powerful vested interests that will lose out from the radical green agenda. They are attempting to sway politicians too – but, again, there is little evidence that this takes the form of substantial financial inducements. As previous scandals have shown, the reputational risks from exposure would be very high on both sides, which acts as a strong deterrent to any untoward activity.

Finally, there is the possibility that a significant number of ministers and MPs genuinely believe in radical environmentalism. It’s not about their careers, social status, or even the money, but ideological.

It’s striking that a significant proportion of Conservative MPs are not very conservative at all. They already support high taxes, heavy regulation, technocracy, political globalism, central planning, and rapid social change. This arguably makes them natural allies of the radical green agenda.

Their approach couldn’t be more different from genuinely conservative policies to protect the environment. These could focus on bolstering conservation and stewardship by restoring traditional property rights undermined by the state. For example, respecting private property by ending the practice of compulsory purchase would prevent a great deal of environmental damage.  

The key question is therefore how this not very conservative group came to dominate the Conservative Party and subsequently steer environmental policy in a non-conservative direction.

Whatever the real reason, the result is that the UK is effectively a one-party state when it comes to the radical green agenda. All the main parties support it and voters have little realistic choice.   

Richard Wellings

Why the war on motorists is wrecking the economy

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The government used the pandemic as a pretext to intensify the “war on motorists”, a key element of the elite’s Build Back Better agenda.

Councils were paid to close vast numbers of streets to through traffic, often as part of so-called Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes. Main roads were narrowed and cycle lanes expanded. Punitive new charges were imposed, in particular London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone levy, and there are now plans to roll out similar schemes to other cities.

These draconian measures made little sense in terms of the Covid-19 narrative. If anything, car travel should have been encouraged to reduce the spread of the disease. Instead, these policies almost certainly forced more people to use public transport than otherwise would have been the case – despite the apparent infection risks.

Government mismanagement of the pandemic also had a devastating impact on the economy. A massive state spending binge, combined with central bank money-printing on a huge scale, contributed to a cocktail of soaring inflation, a cost-of-living crisis and ballooning public debt.

The obvious way out of this predicament is to adopt policies that facilitate robust economic growth. This would increase tax revenues without a harmful rise in tax rates, thereby mitigating the government debt issue. It would also tend to increase real wages, addressing the cost-of-living problem.

The key to generating growth is rising productivity. But today many government policies seem to be deliberately designed to reduce productivity and undermine improvements in living standards. The war on motorists is a prime example.

A series of measures seem deliberately designed to increase congestion. These include a big rise in the number of traffic lights; the narrowing of junctions to reduce flows; the reduction of road space to make way for bus and cycle lanes; the widening of pavements; and the closure of through routes.

The resulting traffic jams lead to major productivity losses, with drivers wasting time sitting in their vehicles and burning fuel while stopping and starting repeatedly. While it is hard to put a precise figure on the resulting costs to the economy, estimates for losses from congestion in the UK are as high as £40 billion a year.

But the negative impact of anti-car measures goes far beyond this. Journeys are delayed even when there is no congestion. Motorists are stopped by traffic lights even in the middle of the night when the streets are empty. They have to crawl along at 20mph in boroughs where speed limits have been slashed. They have to take long diversions where through roads have been blocked off in so-called low-traffic neighbourhoods. And they have to drive around finding somewhere convenient to park because the council has restricted the number of spaces.

The impact of all this on productivity is especially obvious in the cases of delivery drivers and tradesmen. A delivery driver can make fewer deliveries in a given amount of time due to the artificial delays and diversions. A plumber or electrician can make fewer repairs due to the additional time required to travel between jobs.

In addition, the productivity of the retail sector is negatively affected. Because it takes longer to travel to a given outlet, shops will tend to be smaller, serving a lower population, thereby reducing economies of scale and efficiency. The delays will have a similar impact on distribution, favouring smaller and less efficient warehouses rather than larger, more efficient ones a greater distance apart.

Employment opportunities are also harmed. If a potential worker is prepared to commute for an hour each way, then the delays will reduce the size of the area in which he or she is prepared to take a job. With fewer options available, workers are less likely to find employment that is a good match for their skills – an outcome that again will tend to reduce productivity.

Similarly, businesses will have a smaller pool of potential workers available. They may struggle to find the right people. An entrepreneur might decide to build a smaller and less-efficient factory because the number of suitable workers within its catchment area is lower than otherwise would be the case. And clusters of expertise, together with associated competition and innovation, will tend to be negatively affected due to the shrinkage of the talent available in any given location.  

The negative effects on labour mobility will of course be multiplied if the war on the motorist leads workers to abandon car ownership entirely. Vast swathes of the country are poorly served by public transport, which typically isn’t viable outside urban areas with a high population density and core routes between cities. Commuting by public transport is often completely impractical in the outer suburbs, yet alone in rural areas.

This article has only scratched the surface in terms of the damage being done. The enormous impact of anti-car policies on ambulances and the other emergency services hasn’t been discussed, for example.

The big question is whether our politicians understand the scale of the harm they’re inflicting.  Perhaps they think the ends of this draconian top-down agenda justify the means.

Richard Wellings

How to avoid paying the London ULEZ charge

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A key part of the “climate change” agenda is the policy of driving ordinary people out of their cars and as a result making motoring the preserve of the wealthy and well-connected. One of its most enthusiastic promoters in the UK appears to be Transport for London.

Across the capital, the space available for cars is being reduced, with numerous roads either closed or narrowed, often to make way for bus or cycle lanes that are barely used. Speed limits have also been lowered and the number of traffic controls expanded. Adding to motorists’ misery, a new £12.50 daily charge has been imposed on drivers of older vehicles inside an extended and extensive Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) bounded by the North and South Circular Roads.

The new charge is reprehensible in several ways. Firstly it targets older vehicles which tend to be driven by poorer motorists. In other words it could be perceived as a sly way of trying to force poorer motorists off the roads without stating this openly.

Secondly, it targets diesels in particular, even relatively new ones – this just a few years after motorists were encouraged to buy diesels by the government because they were told they were better for the environment. Diesel drivers have clearly been betrayed after following government advice and now face heavy losses, either through the ULEZ charge, depreciation or the costs of buying a different vehicle.

Finally, the charge is being imposed during a pandemic, a time when elderly and other vulnerable people are avoiding public transport due to the infection risks. This is also a bad time for drivers to be out and about looking for a newer car. Moreover, the policy adds insult to injury for those who need to drive as part of their job and now face a large extra bill at an already extremely difficult time.

It should also be noted that the pretext for the charge – reducing the harm to health from air pollution – doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. The “evidence” behind this policy is highly questionable, with some commentators describing it as “junk science”. Moreover, the charge itself is unlikely to make much difference to levels of air pollution, yet alone to people’s health. And restricting people’s mobility is likely to be harmful in many ways – fewer outings and less exercise, for example – while the associated economic damage will tend to mean fewer resources are available for healthcare.

Indeed it’s possible that there is a hidden agenda behind this supposed health measure, namely putting in the infrastructure for more general and widespread road-user charging. This would be used to drive even more motorists off the roads, not just owners of older vehicles. It would be naive to expect TfL not to massively expand charging over time, especially given the longer-term anti-car agenda.

In this context, it is imperative that motorists resist this programme and do everything they can to starve TfL of revenue, thus limiting the resources it has available to impose yet more harmful policies.   

Owners of older vehicles who drive frequently and extensively within the ULEZ zone realistically have little choice except to buy another vehicle instead of paying the prohibitive charges. However, for more occasional motorists, there are several strategies that could mitigate the costs and perhaps tip the balance in favour of keeping an older car – particular if much of the mileage takes place outside inner London.

The first method is to cluster trips on a single day, only paying the charge once rather than several times had the trips been spread out over several days. This is not ideal and could take some organising – it will not be possible for everyone – but could be worthwhile financially for those with sufficient flexibility.

Another strategy is to cooperate with nearby friends or family to borrow each other’s cars, providing the drivers are insured and with due regard for infection risks among the vulnerable. So, for example, one friend would use the vehicle in the morning, another in the afternoon, and another in the evening. Using the same car would mean only paying the charge once instead of three times. Alternatively, a driver who owns an older diesel could borrow a friend’s newer petrol vehicle.

For drivers who live relatively near the ULEZ boundary, it may be feasible to park outside the zone and stay out of it for the vast majority of shopping, business and leisure trips.

Finally, Transport for London has been reluctant to disclose the location of its ULEZ enforcement cameras, despite several Freedom of Information requests. The zone covers a large area and coverage is unlikely to be comprehensive. Those of a suspicious nature might think this is the real reason why several London councils closed numerous minor through roads in the months leading up to the ULEZ extension.

Many people will understandably not want to break the law on principle, even if the ULEZ is unethical in many ways. Nevertheless, it seems likely that some shorter journeys may be possible without the charge being imposed – particularly if obvious pinch points like major junctions and main roads entering the zone are avoided.

One possible way to experiment with this is to join the ULEZ Auto Pay system and then keep a record of the routes taken each day, say by marking them on a map. It will soon become clear which journeys are possible without the charge being imposed.

Drivers may feel that there is little they can do to resist the global agenda to reduce their mobility by forcing them out of their cars. However, there are ways to limit the damage and also push back by defunding the organisations hellbent on transforming our way of life without our consent.

Richard Wellings

Image: Wikimedia Commons

How to manufacture a climate crisis

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The establishment is hinting that the kind of draconian restrictions imposed during the pandemic will be redeployed to enforce their climate change agenda. As with Covid-19, a key part of the plan is to generate fear across the population through psychological manipulation and media propaganda.

The desired result is a major reduction in personal mobility, with ordinary people taxed and regulated out of their cars and off flights. Heating costs will also be hiked dramatically as gas boilers are banned and replaced with expensive and less effective heat pumps. Food supplies are another target.

The aim of the ramped-up indoctrination campaign will be to convince the general public to accept this top-down assault on their living standards.

Key elements of the programme are already in place. The BBC long ago effectively banned any proper debate on its airwaves. Don’t expect to see scientists who point out flaws in climate modelling on the UK’s state broadcaster; or economists who question whether the benefits of reducing emissions are worth the costs.

Establishment journalists have also been encouraged to insert climate change into news stories. Almost every time there are floods, reporters tell viewers that such disasters are likely to get worse. The same policy is applied to heat waves, forest fires and hurricanes. Even cold snaps are blamed on global warming as part of the “extreme weather” trope.

Improved communications technology has been a great help to this campaign. Alarming footage of disasters in previously little noticed regions now spreads rapidly around the world, particularly if it fits the establishment’s narrative.

But propaganda by omission is another key element of the strategy. The public is kept in the dark about the debate over the frequency of climate-related natural disasters – and the possibility that even if their frequency were increasing there could be other causes.

The role of government policies is also conveniently neglected. Environmentalist-inspired changes to river management policies, such as reducing dredging, have made flooding more likely in some locations. The “green” agenda and its huge costs have also contributed to cuts in maintenance spending on drains and other vital infrastructure. Green land-use policies promote construction on brownfield sites, which for historical reasons are often on low-lying land near to rivers.

Another long-term factor is urbanisation, which promotes flooding as water runs off rapidly from concrete surfaces into drains rather than being delayed by vegetation and soil. (It also increases temperatures via the urban heat island effect.)  

Policy changes have also been implicated in forest fires. Management methods designed to mitigate the risks, such as thinning and clearing combustible material, have been phased out under pressure from greens. Moreover, arson is a leading cause of wild fires in some regions. This human element is another reason why assessment of long-term trends is problematic. There have been examples of environmentalists engaging in other forms of arson attack, and it is worth bearing in mind the possibility that various kinds of political actors could play a role in future incidents. 

Finally, water shortages have been made more likely by policies to obstruct the construction of new reservoirs, including in regions with growing populations. The subtext is that the resulting shortages would provide a useful rationale to reduce consumption by imposing new regulations and compulsory water meters.     

So, there is substantial evidence that many of the policies imposed by environmentalists actively contribute to the “natural” disasters that are then used by propaganda outlets to promote the idea of a climate crisis. The economic damage caused by green policies also makes societies less resilient. Yet discussion of these crucial factors is typically absent.

There are two main dangers from the one-sided propaganda and indoctrination programme currently being implemented by governments and their media assets. The first is that it will encourage the adoption of harmful policies that impose higher costs than any climate change they aim to prevent. In other words, there is a high risk that the cure will be worse than the disease, with negative effects on low-income groups and poor countries in particular. A sensible strategy would be to implement win-win policies that benefit both the economy and the environment – for example, ending the vast and inefficient state subsidies and privileges given to various polluting activities. However, governments and transnational bodies have been curiously reluctant to adopt this approach.

The second danger is that climate change will be used as a pretext to bring in a far more tyrannical economic and political system, for example by empowering unaccountable transnational institutions that lack the usual constraints. Indeed there are clear parallels with the Covid-19 pandemic, which is being used as a convenient excuse for elites to grab more power and to impose vaccine passports as a stepping stone towards a long-planned global system of digital IDs.   

A free and open debate about climate change is absolutely essential if these alarming outcomes are to be avoided. However, the wider agenda behind the climate change narrative could plausibly explain why elites are so obsessed with eliminating dissent.

Richard Wellings

Image: US government