Climate change ‘solutions’ would create a dystopian nightmare

OPINION:

Last month at the World Economics Forum’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils (GFCs), our self-appointed global leaders gazed into their crystal balls to tell us what 2030 would look like if they win their war on carbon dioxide emissions. 

Despite many grand promises, their fossil-fuel-free utopia would, in reality, look a lot like Hong Kong today, where pro-democracy protesters riot against the threat of dictatorship. Or like Paris, where yellow-jacket protesters continue to riot against a government that’s out of touch with working people. High gasoline prices fueled by carbon dioxide taxes instigated the protests in 2018, and the protests continue to this day. 

The Global Future Councils tell us that if we follow their proposals, “By 2030, your CO2 emissions would be greatly reduced” — ignoring that fossil fuels provide billions of people with affordable energy and food. Apparently, the Global Future Councils believe CO2 emissions are more important than worrying about how you are going to feed your family. 

Speaking of feeding your family, the Global Future Councils has a plan for that, too: “Meat on your dinner table will be a rare sight,” they joyously proclaimed. And for lunch, the Global Future Councils advise us, “You can choose from dozens of exciting meals — most of them plant-based, so you eat more healthily and are more environmentally friendly than when lunch meant choosing between five types of burger.” 

Let’s hope the Councils begin by addressing the United Nations, where COP25 climate conference participants lined up in droves to purchase Burger King hamburgers.

Reducing your CO2 emissions will also be more important than finding affordable transportation.

“When you walk out of your door in the morning,” the Global Futures Councils tells us, you won’t have to worry about traffic congestion. The Global Futures Councils will have already “solved” this problem for you by pushing local governments to ban all private cars in your city. 

If you have the temerity to want to go — well, anywhere — you could choose to call a car to come pick you up, and “an algorithm will calculate the smartest route for the vehicle and pick up a few other people along the way.” 

You won’t have to worry about buying goods to improve your life, either, because, “The money in your wallet will be spent on being with family and friends, not on buying goods.” People will not only be deprived of enjoyable consumer goods, they will also have to suffer through the government-created economic depression that will almost certainly arise from the collapse in consumer demand caused by the Global Future Councils’ policies.

You won’t even be able to own your own appliances. According to the GFCs, “At home, all of your household appliances have been turned into service contracts. If your dishwasher is about to break down, it is no longer your problem. The service provider already knows about the problem and has sent someone to fix it. When the machine no longer works, the provider picks up the old machine and installs a new one.”

Fortunately, here in America, we still have property rights, and, in many cases, the freedom to choose how to live our lives, including which products to buy and which foods to eat. And every year, millions of people come from around the world to our shores to share in that American dream. 

Global Future Councils, please keep your 2030 nightmare world a figment of your imagination. Americans don’t want it.

• Peter Ferrara (think@heartland.org), the Dunn Liberty Fellow in Economics at the Kings College in New York, is a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute and at the National Tax Limitation Foundation.