Sunday, December 15, 2019

Rationing to save the planet!

Yesterday this appeared in the Globe & Mail, touted as Canada's "newspaper of record".

The climate crisis is like a world war. So let's talk about rationing

It's time for mandatory cutbacks on the kinds of consumption that threaten all of us


One expects this sort of thing from the Toronto (Red) Star, traditionally the Globe & Mail has been a bit more... rational? Staid, perhaps?

What this is, my friends, is that since Brexit and Trump, our Betters are becoming very tired of having the Lower Classes running around doing whatever the hell we want. Its been decided by The Great And the Good that the peasants are revolting and must be brought to heel. Like a fractious dog.

Eleanor Boyle is a Vancouver-based writer. She is the author of High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat and the forthcoming book Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today.

It's too bad meat is so tasty, driving so convenient and airline travel so desirable. Because those all create large amounts of greenhouse gases and worsen the climate crisis. We know it, and some of us feel guilty getting on a plane, hopping in the car or eating burgers. But how are we to cut back when we're not sure what level of a high-emission behaviour is sustainable – and when everyone else is doing it?

Some environmental activists and leaders suggest we should practice moderation, take the bus, eat veggie burgers. But voluntary measures just can't deliver when the problem is this big and time is so short. That's why it may be time for mandatory cutbacks on the kinds of consumption that threaten all of us.

It may be time for rationing.


Yes, it may be time for rationing because all you fat disgusting fools out there are behaving immorally and eating like the pigs that you are. Time for the peasants to walk off some of that lard while Eleanor Boyle and her high-minded friends continue their world-saving crusade, jetting from The Hague to the Bahamas and back, dining on the finest Wagu beef. More for them and less for us.

First gun control, then gasoline control, and finally food control. Keeping the peasants in their place and paying their taxes like they were meant to.

I would like to point the idiots in charge to the current situation in France, where this is being tried in real life with a fuel tax. 6000 people showed up in front of the Presidential Palace this week with the stated purpose of dragging Mr. Macron out into the street and kicking his ass. Every cop in Paris was there to protect him. I submit that creating a situation like that in Canada, where the national sport is hockey and not wine, cheese and surrender, might be "problematic" for the idiots in charge.

The Phantom

5 comments:

Orvan Taurus said...

I am suddenly reminded of a bit from MAD magazine, about how to make sports more violent, er, appealing: Grenade Hockey.

Matthew said...

Nit: lacrosse, not hockey.

Joe in PNG said...

Somehow, and it's pretty cynical of me to think so, but I somehow suspect that the authors and editors of this bit of wasted tree corpse aren't going to be following their own advice.
True, there's probably a militant vegan or two who will loudly eschew the consumption of meat (but will happily import his various substitutes for food from all over the world).
And I'm sure a few of them will make a point of righteously virtue signaling how they are using a bus/bike/train/walking- for a day or two, and right back to driving their cars.

The Phantom said...

Greetings gents.

This is Canada. The Globe & Mail is a Canadian newspaper. All you have to do right now to see the astounding stupidity of this piece is look out the window. Its COLD and there's snow on the ground.

There are a very few people out there hard-core enough to bike in this weather, maybe a couple hundred in all of Toronto. Everyone else is on the bus, the subway or in their car.

Everyone else in the rest of Canada where the TTC doesn't reach is driving. Period.

There is no fresh local produce in winter here. They ship it from Florida and California/Mexico.

Starvation was common in this country up to about the 1930s. Freezing to death is still pretty common as a way to die, plenty of drunks manage it every year.

You want to not DIE in the winter, you need to burn something to survive. Wood, coal, propane, natural gas, furnace oil, kerosene.

I'm going to trust the government to ration the thing that's keeping me alive? No, not really.

Joe in PNG said...

Which is amusing. One would think that newsmen would notice that cold white stuff normally falls out of the sky at roughly the same annual intervals, or that the air freezes their faces at about the same time period. Or that they have to make some kind of heat in their work and living areas lest their faces and bodies freeze.

But these are Leftist after all, and thinking about the possible personal consequences of actions and policies they prescribe for others just don't enter their little heads.