By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
In France, the riots continue. The arrested seem to be primarily members of the younger generation. Some wonder if this is some kind of new French Revolution. A coup? The violence has forced the closure of the Eiffel Tower and over 89,000 security forces have been deployed. Some of the French Police have removed their helmets, and are joining the protesters. The thing is, this is not a leftist protest. This is not a bunch of Muslims causing havoc for their Islamization of Europe cause. This is a backlash against the leftist establishment that even has some of the protesters chanting Trump’s name! President Macron’s approval rating is in the basement, and he has all but disappeared.
As a result, Macron’s administration has surrendered. The French government, under the pressure of the violence, has suspended the wildly unpopular fuel tax, for six months at least.
The leftists in Europe have egg on their face over this. They’ve been lobbying for every climate change tax they can muster. The French, in fact, have a delegation doing exactly that right now, advocating for every tax, mandate and control the UN can think up, at COP 24, the UN climate conference in Poland.
The thing is, the liberal left policies are economy-killers, and the citizens, once it reaches their pocket books, don’t like it.
Poland, where the current climate conference is being held, is heavily dependent upon coal. Over three quarters of Polish electricity is generated using Poland’s ample supplies of Europe’s best quality coal. Coal has one of the highest energy densities of any fuel in common use, matching or surpassing gasoline, diesel and natural gas, and blowing away ethanol.
For Poland, coal means a way of life, and freedom. The realistic alternative to coal for Poland is not variable wind and solar, but dependence on Russian natural gas. Going back under Russia’s thumb is the last thing any Pole with a sense of recent history will tolerate.
Environmentalism not only kills economies, it kills people. The fierce wildfires in California, where the death toll continues to rise as hundreds of people remain missing and likely dead from the Camp Fire that wiped the entire town of Paradise off the map, are largely due to environmentalism and the man-made climate change lie. Laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, according to Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., “have resulted in endlessly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive restrictions and requirements that have made the scientific management of our forests virtually impossible.”
These laws, and others like them, have drastically reduced the amount of forest thinning and controlled burns that used to effectively keep wildland from becoming a danger to people and property.