A Tale of Two Cities. . . Trump’s Washington and Hidalgo’s Paris

By
eric
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31
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In Washington, President Trump announced that environmental regulations are “out of control” – and promised to get them back under control.

In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo (which sounds about as French as fries) has issued a fatwa banning diesel-powered cars built before model year 2001 – and is hoping to ban them all the way through model year 2005.

That’s 3.2 million cars (14 percent of the vehicle fleet) rendered economically obsolete by legislative edict. Imagine if you owned one of those 3.2 million. Your car now worthless to you.

Or to anyone else.

A similar thing would no doubt have occurred in Washington had the election gone a different way. It turns out they do have consequences; your vote does matter.

Libertarians (I am one) need to grok this.

We do not live in a perfect world and are likely never to experience such. Even if we could Jesus Hoover all the Clovers off the surface of the Earth and deposit them on Planet Clover. Because some of us would have kids and some of those kids would inevitably turn out to be Clovers, too. Plus, we Libertarians are far from unanimous on things.

The point is, who can doubt that we would not be hearing the words, “out of control” and “environmentalism” coming out of the mouth of a President Clinton?

I took flak before the election for urging that Libertarians vote for Trump, arguing that the alternative was far worse. The contrast between Washington and Paris at this moment bears this judgment out.

Trump has issued a regulatory freeze – just days after his inauguration. Had someone else been inaugurated, the likelihood is there would have been a slew of new regulations – to combat “climate change.” Trump has appointed a skeptic of “climate change” to head the EPA. That is, a person who does not believe in a static climate. He perhaps has noticed there are sometimes hot days and sometimes cold days. And that perhaps this occurred before the first Otto Cycle engine burped C02 into the ether.

He may have opened a book and learned that the air we breath is mostly – overwhelmingly – nitrogen. 78 percent, in fact. With the next largest slice of the pie being oxygen (21 percent) and then a very thin slice being C02 (about  .03 percent) and the rest traces of other gases.

Now consider the fraction added to the mix by “human activity.”

It’s enough to make one. . . skeptical.

And now we have a president who appears to be.

This is good news.

Even better news would be to open the papers tomorrow and learn that Trump has rescinded the regulatory fatwa issued by Lame Duck Barry in the last weeks of his presidency that officially classified C02 as an “exhaust emission” subject to regulation (more here). Lame Duck Barry did this a full year ahead of the deadline for a decision (2018) because he feared the “skeptics” might come to a different decision.

Lame Duck Barry being a good democrat (lower case) you see.

Of all the regulations Trump must stand athwart and call Halt! to, this one’s the most potentially deadly. Not to the Earth – as Lame Duck Barry and Co. assert will happen, if that happens. But to economic activity in this country. It is possible to clean up a car’s exhaust to nearly nil (this has already been done) and thereby clean up the air (which it is and has been for decades).

What is not possible is to reduce the volume of carbon dioxide coming out of the tailpipe – without reducing the amount of internal combustion going on under the hood. The engineering object of the past more than 40 years has been to convert the gaseous results of internal combustion from reactive to inert compounds . . . from smog-forming things like unburned hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen into  . . . water vapor and carbon dioxide. Which now constitute the bulk of vehicle exhaust, more than 95 percent of it.

But carbon dioxide can’t be converted into other gasses. And why would you want to? It is non-reactive. It does not cause or contribute to smog or to acid rain or to asthma or to allergies or to any human health problem. It does, however, “contribute” to mental health problems. The mere thinking of it induces what used be called neurasthenia in people who are… neurotic.

Or at least, gullible.

If Lame Duck Barry or his anointed (but not elected) successor truly did believe in “climate change” then why don’t they change their habits? How large is the home Barry The Ex has moved into? How large is Hillary’s “carbon footprint”? Why does Al Gore drive a Cadillac Escalade? It is a thread of indecency running through them all that the “change” they insist is necessary doesn’t begin at home.

It begins – and ends – in our homes.

Trump appears to be a heretic; he does not believe. And much more encouraging, he is not insisting that “change” be imposed on us. This also makes him dangerous. Not to us. To the regulatory apparat as well as the power apparat.

If he follows through, he may not live. I believe it is that serious. They know what the stakes are. All their Jenga castles are on the verge of toppling. A similar thing happened a long time ago when another president suggested that perhaps the Cold War was not good for America and that maybe Congress rather than a private banking cartel ought to issue the nation’s currency, without charging interest to the American people.

But, for now, there is hope.

And possibly, change.

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Related posts:
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  2. The Impossible Standard . . . a Year Early
  3. A Tale Of Two Car Companies
  4. A Tale of Two Bullitts
  5. Will the US economy complete its collapse before the war criminals in Washington can destroy the world?

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31 COMMENTS

  1. I was especially satisfied that President Trump instituted a hiring freeze and a regulatory (I prefer the term “restriction” instead of “regulation”) freeze, primarily targeted at the Economic Prevention Agency.

    Then, when it came to the reaction of the pencil-pushers at those agencies, I knew something good was happening.

    Those hacks complained that they were ESSENTIAL to the proper functioning of the government (not to be confused with the nation as a whole).

    They are as essential to the government as an enema pill is to someone with diarrhea.

    America night have a chance of out-living these stupid restrictions. But they need to be obliterated quickly for America to be great again.

  2. With no nuclear armed godless Commies to frighten us with and with terrorism, a made in Washington phenomenon, now running out of gas, the war party needs a new enemy to keep us trembling in fear and under its thumb. What better enemy than climate change. Since the climate is forever changing, the state can demand unlimited power to tax, regulate and generally boss us around in order to create the illusion of keeping us safe from climate change.

    Fighting climate change is the dream come true of Progressives’ vision of a boot on the neck of humanity forever. Who would have thought that all of humanity could be enslaved because of an “excess” of a harmless gas which all vegetation needs to survive and thrive?

  3. How the hell can anyone justify giving one person like the mayor of paris or the president of US amerika or a professional busybody (AKA a bureaucrat) the power to arbitrarily decree such nonsense?!

    This is how a boot stomping on a human face forever becomes a reality. We are living in a very pivotal time for humanity. Either true freedom will emerge over the next decade or eternal tyranny will be established.

  4. “Climate change” is one of the biggest scams ever invented. It is not about “saving the Earth”. It is about giving TPTB the ultimate collective power – taxing human beings for simply existing.

    Barnum was correct: there’s a sucker born every minute. And TPTB are determined to take the suckers for everything they can.

  5. Another very good article.
    I know because it pushes many of my buttons.
    Another check is in the mail.
    Nobody loves high performance IC vehicles more than I do. I began on motorcycles in the late ‘50s just because no automobile could touch me at a stop light drag. They came, they tried, they failed !
    Now when the finish line is closer for me, I still like performance, but I also ponder the issue of tail pipe emissions. Our transportation is so clean now that more regulation is not the answer, if it ever were…
    Maybe we should think about what we really need. When I drive my Citroen 2CV, all “mighty” thirty HP and 602 cc, with ZERO pollution controls, how much absolute anything am I emitting ?
    Damn little !
    When I am sitting at a red light, next to a brand-new muscle car, what has he got that I do not ?
    It is possible to calculate how much absolute horse power is used each day in the US transportation system. It is way less than what we are driving around with.
    I would love to see some upper limit set, below which no emissions controls were required by the Gestapo on any type of IC fueled engine.
    I suggest 1000 cc, or less.
    This type of thinking has no future. All the EPA fatwas, and especially the war on Germany and VW, are about the revenue stream of the Money Changers.
    They are literally killing us; I wonder why it is not OK for us to reciprocate to them ?
    1988 Citroën 2CV6
    2005 VW Passat TDI

    • I’d love to see the EPA abolished, along with every other unconstitutional federal agency. It would mean, of course, that the Virginia counties around DC would see a massive round of mortgage defaults as the do-nothing bureaucrats lost their jobs, but there would soon be plenty of new owners for all those Mcmansions as new businesses sprang up in the absence of regulations.

  7. If you live in part of the US that has smog tests (mostly metro areas), you may already have had to get rid of a car you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten rid of. I know I have, it was too costly to “repair”. And I have made “repairs” to a current vehicle that I wouldn’t have otherwise done to pass smog.

    At least you can still sell those cars to someone outside the smog test area. Maybe I need to find a place to register my cars outside the test area, then i don’t even have to do the tests.

    • You just need a place in a less onerous jurisdiction where you can receive mail containing your new vehicle tags. The DMV bureaucracy can’t prove you live in a specific location — they mainly just want your money. As far as the state of Texas knows, I’m still a Hawaii resident with a Hawaii driver’s license “temporarily” visiting the state — and paying the much lower Texas DMV taxes.

      • Hi Jim,

        This is exactly the kind of practical advice I laud (and recommend) … as opposed to telling a cop you are a “man” rather than a “person” and so not subject to laws requiring that you have a DL to drive, etc.

        • The thing is with out of (my) area car registration, is local police. Since I am close to the border with Illinois (I’m in NW Indiana) they are always looking for out of area car plates. Since about 50,000 people have fled the peoples republic of Illinois into my state, they don’t want to change their Illinois plate until they expire (in my case I still had ten months on mine).

          Indiana gives you 60 days to change to Indiana plates. The local PD’s seem to see it as an extra revenue stream (they even do stings at big apartment complexes). A friend with a leased car (with out of state plates) gets stopped often, and has to show his lease in order to not get ticketed. So basically if you want to run out your old plates, you better have a garage or other place to keep it out of sight when parked, where the cops don’t get an chance to remember it (since that is how they figure out most of them, see they have way to much time on their hands).

          So I would need to keep an Indiana tag from outside the smog zone. But in Indiana, the first two numbers are your county, so if they see your out of county plate all the time, they may use it as a traffic stop too. Maybe I need a not a in your face vanity plate. I think some of all of this is in order to make it difficult to do a run around.

          Hopefully this is the last year, since my area is in compliance with fed air standards now, a state congressman did write a bill ending the smog tests. I am not holding my breath, but maybe it will pass. The state keeps the test going because they claimed the Obama regime would be raising the air standards. Amazingly that never happened, and the Trump regime is less likely at this point.

  8. The appointment Trump made wrt “climate change” is probably his best one or only good one in a bad lot and I base that on what Tony Heller wrote. Apparently Tony knows him. TH runs the realclimatescience blog and is discoverer of much of the data malfeasance that has been going on. He, like me, is an engineer by profession and thus knows how to properly handle data.

    I’ve double checked Tony’s claims a few times, not very rigorously but enough to gut check. Others have done more extensive checking and the best counter argument produced is that the “experts” know best and can do what they do because X,Y,and Z. So we are told why the experts do these things and why they can do them so they are obviously being done. The experts just don’t tell the public and leave it to be found only someone goes digging below the surface.

  9. I’m skeptically hopeful that Trump will do well. If he does it just might change my opinion about voting.

    What you see in Paris is what you see in Japan. Classic high performance cars parked to rot because they are legislated out of existence.

  10. If you judge people and organizations by their actions vs. words, it’s plain to me that Uncle Sam is not the least bit serious about climate change.

    If he was:

    We would see nuclear power plants being green-lighted en masse. Nuclear power is the only viable means of generating electricity that produces practically zero greenhouse gases.

    We would see the federal motor pool shrink dramatically. How necessary are the Volgas for the apparatchiki? We should alse see the plane and chopper pool do the same, as the carbon footprint of those is quite significant.

    We would see most federal employees allowed to work from home to reduce pollution from commuting.

    We would see most business travel replaced with Skype/WebEx whenever possible.

    We would see a lot less military intervention…Army tanks, Navy ships, and Air Force planes are quite fuel-hungry.

    But I see none of those things, so I don’t think Uncle Sam really cares about climate change…or he thinks that We The People should be the ones who have to make the sacrifices.

    • Yup, Its not about “climate” or “greenhouse gasses” t all, never was. Back when I was a siddow cawlidge kidd global freezing was all the rage…. to which, after some basic investigation and pondering, I replied “balderdash”. Five yeaars later the same “data” were used to “prove” global WARMING. Can’t these clowns get their lies, er, squeeze me, lies all in a row?

      When I was in highschool we learned about the various “cycles” of naturally occuring elements and some other compounds.. water, oxygen, carbon, etc. Hah, the carbon coming out of our tailpipes in the form of CeeYoTwo came from somewhere, that engine didn’t make it out of nothing.Where? Ah, the OIL gotten out of the ground, refined and made into fuel, Well, where did THAT come from? Dead trees and grasses and weeds and algae….. alright, where did THAT come from? From fixing carbon taken from carbon dioxide in the air (and very handily stored in… the OCEANS)and using it to build….. cellulose and other carbon based plant cells. ALL the carbon on the planet that moves about or is stored in cells follows similar patterns. WE eat plants, and critters that eat plants, and thus ingest carbon in that tissue… and we breate out carbon dioxide.Whe nwe die, these bags of bones we live in for a few decades decompose… oxidise, mostly, and restart the cycle for those carbon molecules.

      But I suppose part of how these goons can carry off their hoax is that kjids these days are subjected to such extreme dumbing down in the gummit skewlz they no longer learn this stuff, OR how to think through what they DO learn.

      • Nope, scientists were concerned with global warming throughout the 20th century. The media pounced on the “imminent Ice Age” ignoring the fact the only the few actual scientist was arguing what would happen in some 10,000+ years time. In such time another Ice Age is probable. But then what would the solution be? Would Conservatives understand realize that emitting copious amounts of CO2 would in fact keep the Earth warmer than it otherwise would be?

        • FTFY

          Scientists have studied global temperatures throughout the 20th century. Some believe CO2 ice core proxies indicate significant increases in CO2 and methane.
          https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/

          Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now 40% higher than before the industrial revolution. This increase is due to fossil fuel usage and deforestation.

          The magnitude and rate of the recent increase are almost certainly unprecedented over the last 800,000 years.

          Methane also shows a huge and unprecedented increase in concentration over the last two centuries.

          Remember. British economy is financial not industrial.

          Cui Bono Caelum Recensere.

        • Which scientists, Gil?

          You – like most “climate change” tub thumpers – always imply it’s unanimous or nearly so. It isn’t.

          Moreover, many of the “scientists” peddling “climate change” have no specific expertise in the relevant fields or aren’t event “scientists” at all (viz, the “science guy”).

          It ought to bother you just a bit that they have had to resort to a fundamentally dishonest term – “climate change” – to peddle their agenda. Why no longer “global warming”? Too specific, perhaps? To easy to dispute, based on facts?

          Enter the always changing climate.

          • Let’s not forget that “scientists” at a government agency, the NOAA, recently fraudulently altered its historic temperature record in order to make earlier years cooler and later years warmer. The new record now shows a warming trend which could be used to bamboozle the public into giving up more money and freedom to bureaucrats and politicians to protect us from a non event.

              • And do they think people forget how they were saying the globe was going into an ice age back in the 1970’s and 80’s? And that millions would be starving to death in the 90’s and 00’s?

                They have a credibility problem. People are doing the crying wolf thing, its amazing more people don’t believe anything they say. IMHO, even if it is warming, that’s not a bad thing. More area’s up north (and south) can be farmed, longer growing seasons etc. Sea rising is bs too, the volume of H2O doesn’t change.

          • Even if “scientists unanimously agree” on anything, science isn’t established by consensus. Government fakery is, however, established in exactly that fashion.

            • I read an article from Australia the other day that they have changed physics exams to essay questions about environmental impact of nuclear power and similar. The surface excuse is to attract girls which is IMO just that, an excuse. What they really want to break is objective thinking. Understanding how to handle data so people fall for the bullshit of “consensus” and political process to determine what is correct. Equations and data get in the way.

    • “We would see most federal employees allowed to work from home to reduce pollution from commuting.”

      Yes, all four of them could “work” at home once their number is whittled down to what is actually needed.

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