In recent years, the term "sustainability" has been used and abused. This term evokes a narrative in which human needs take a backseat to the imposition of economic contraction by the climate agenda and net-zero emissions advocates. The ruling classes in the West are determined to offer this sacrifice to Mother Earth as if it were an ancient animist ritual. Those being sacrificed on the altar are the citizens.
The sustainability narrative begins with the assumption that humanity is the planet's biggest problem instead of considering man as the factor capable of creating a better world. In fact, many climate activists consider having fewer people on the planet a priority. They demand not only a smaller population, but less consumption. They expect us to live in increasingly smaller houses, to have less mobility and to endure the cold and heat as in prehistoric times. These priorities are reflected in a regulatory bureaucracy that runs completely contrary to freedom.
The question is: sustainability for whom? U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen once declared that "addressing climate change is the greatest economic opportunity of our time." There is undoubtedly a lot of money to be made for the technocrats and fanatical elites who finance the campaigns of climate activists. This dynamic is found throughout the sustainability agenda. Rising energy costs in the West have helped China expand its share of the manufacturing export market, almost equaling the U.S., Germany and Japan combined. China already emits more greenhouse gases than the rest of the high-income world and is unwilling to undermine its economic growth by pursuing ridiculous targets. Strict climate laws hurt the poor. The only way to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 is to stifle all future growth, which could have catastrophic effects on the living standards of the working and middle classes. The shift to electric cars is certainly not a victory for the working classes of the West, but it is a boon for China, which enjoys a strong lead in battery production and also occupies a prominent place in the market for wind turbines and solar panels. Meanwhile, American electric vehicle companies are struggling with production and supply chain issues.
Let's review the history. In 1958, within the framework of the Maoist delirium called the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese regime set out to exterminate the mill sparrow, which, according to Mao, was "one of the worst pests." He called them "enemies of the revolution, they eat our crops, kill them," further saying that "no warrior will retreat until they are eradicated, we have to persevere with the tenacity of the revolutionary." The state press rushed to validate the measure, denouncing that each bird ate 4.5 kg of grain a year, food that was taken off of the people's plates, which is why many people could be fed by exterminating the sparrows.
To get rid of them, the population was forced to beat pots until the sparrows fell dead from exhaustion. Scarecrows, poison, stones, fire and ammunition were also used, and nests were destroyed. A group of sparrows found shelter in the Polish embassy. The Chinese Army surrounded the diplomatic headquarters for two days, beating drums until the feathered refugees died. Other animals fell victim to the use of poisons, such as wolves, rabbits, snakes and dogs. As a consequence, the pests that the sparrow once prayed upon devastated the countryside and destroyed so many crops that they caused the Great Famine. A couple years later, Mao addressed the people ordering them to forget about the matter, and thus concluded the public policy orchestrated from the highest levels of totalitarian arrogance with no consequences for its architect, who ended up killing more than 40 million Chinese citizens.
Today, it is easy to point at and even mock these types of stories. However, it is useful to remember that it was serious at the time of its implementation, and that the mechanisms used to validate its madness are quite familiar to us: a press addicted to power, willing to crush the narrative that came from this action; a group of experts who design a hegemonic and consensual narrative and a bureaucracy that implements painful measures motivated by the "common good." Today's sparrows are the world's reviled private cars, subject to all kinds of accusations and policies designed to restrict them. Is the comparison too harsh? Let's see:
All over the world, stories, journalistic reports and sponsored articles are creating an entire narrative to support the end of private vehicles. Curiously, those who never use public transportation or regularly walk down the street, that is: politicians, members of the World Economic Forum, the EU, the various UN agencies and other enlightened bureaucrats, suspect a series of magical solutions to replace private cars, and the punishment for those who continue to own them is increasing. Social engineers have been trying for years to remove private cars from public spaces, and it is a trap to believe that it is about eliminating the combustion engine in favor of electric ones. The commitment to electric cars is just a distraction, a trick that facilitates the introduction of the idea of the end of private mobility.
The plan is that in a few years, vehicles with combustion engines will not be allowed, and only those whose engines considered "neutral" will be authorized by some bureaucratic authority. This decision clashes with the possibility that free-market demand and innovation will continue to improve the energy efficiency of automobiles. If investment and research are conditioned by power, all possible development is nullified. The first cars had much less power and safety than those of today and consumed much more fuel. The successful evolution towards today's cars was the product of market freedom and not of a carefully formulated plan. Who knows what possibilities a future automotive industry could have that freely searches for new and more efficient alternatives. Are politicians really seeking to improve the situation?
The transition to electric cars is a kind of carrot that is sold as the great solution, although it is a fantasy whose scope is not being specified. Authorities have little to say about the problems that an abrupt transition would entail. If they did, it is possible that citizens would understand the dystopia they are being led to. There is popular talk of ending dependence on fossil fuels, without warning about what it will mean to depend on the rare earth metals necessary for the construction of batteries, nor are the conditions of extraction of these materials even mentioned.
Governments who beacon the climate agenda as a sign of their moral stature should perhaps consider that important raw materials, such as cobalt, come mainly from countries that have poor mining resources. In order to extract them children are forced to work in mines, exposing them to all types of diseases and accidents, some of them lethal, all under the complicit gaze of the well-intentioned climate catastrophists. According to official data from provinces like Katanga (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Copperbelt (Zambia), the proportion mine workers below the age of 18 is 40%. In atrocious conditions, under unbearable heat, clouds of red dust and low visibility, these children must dig tunnels 650-1,000 feet deep, exposing themselves to the risk of suffocation due to collapses, in exchange for just $1-2 per day. This is the cost of sustainable ambition.
Private property is the greatest moral and civilizational driver, as well as the most important factor in the development of civic and family life. Without this incentive, impoverished, lacking mobility and isolated, dependency is reinforced, and the capacity for opposition is nullified. In a free society, transitions of any order are determined from the bottom up. Everything else is a totalitarian delirium.
The sellers of this electric dream say little about where the materials are supposed to come from for the widespread implementation of electric cars. They don't say it because they have no idea, nor do they explain how the massive expansion of renewable energy will be implemented, what its environmental impact will be, or that there are innumerable logistical problems, such as where electricity will come from at night in times of low sunlight and wind, as well as how to execute safe and sustainable storage. It is also not known where all the necessary charging points will come from, or if these will be a rare luxury. By the way, the fact that a car emits less does not mean that it pollutes less, whether due to its production, its impact or the disposal of its parts. There is no evidence that electric cars represent an improvement in the care of the environment. It is a costly game in which, if we are lucky, we will end up in a draw, all while significantly restricting property and mobility rights.
Recently, the CEO of General Motors' Cruise, Kyle Vogt, in an interview with Fortune, stated: "One of the greatest shifts that will occur in our lifetimes is going from driving to being driven." As for car ownership, he predicted: "Owning your car will be seen as the ultimate luxury in the future." Traditional automakers have a lot to gain from these regulations. It is because of them that cheap models are disappearing from the market, also raising second-hand market prices. They have turned automobile manufacturing into a very expensive process. It is worth saying that the forced transition to electric cars generates a barrier to entry in the market that is impossible to overcome for new suppliers, unable to compete with the heavyweights. Government impositions reinforce the oligopoly, making it so the cars of the future will be more expensive, not to mention the lack of quality associated with low competitive pressure.
Consequently, the regulations, fines, prohibitions and disincentives to innovation and production of private cars that are being implemented in the most important cities in the world all hurt, of course, the middle and lower classes. To consider this a coincidence is to take naivety to an extreme. Trying to maintain that a declining quality of life of the most vulnerable strata of society is a symbol of progress is an exercise in unbridled perversion. Maintaining that it is only meant to change the type of energy used by private cars serves only to masquerade the anti-ownership policy that seeks to tear people away from the dream of owning their own car.
With the excuse of the common good, we are facing a clear confiscation of property, to the extent that the replacement being forced upon us is impossible due to availability and cost. On the other hand, the promoters of inclusion and diversity do not seem to remember the benefits that cars imply for the elderly or families with children, for those who have reduced mobility or who simply enjoy autonomy in getting to work and cost-effective travel. Exterminating enjoyment, comfort, advancement and social activity does not seem like an important cost to central planners.
The parallel between cars and sparrows hardly distant. It is the same political philosophy that seeks to plan people's lives for them, that determines what the common good is while ignoring citizen approval, preference and will. It is the same dogma that implements impractical and absurd measures that always lead to the abolition of private property.
The private vehicle is a symbol of freedom that became popular at times of greatest growth of the middle classes and of wealth creation and technological innovation. If the attack on this symbol succeeds, and it seems to be doing so, it promotes a society in which only the rich and the politicians will be able to travel in their own cars. The story is well known: whether it is openly called communism or goes by any other name, all central planning and implementation of collectivist policies only brings misery and setback.
The ban on combustion vehicles is an elitist project that ignores the needs and desires of the population, without any democratic decision or economic logic. This demonstrates the anti-democratic character of our elites, arrogant technocrats who consider citizens stupid and incapable of solving problems, when the reality is that it is citizen solutions and free markets that improved energy efficiency in the first place.
Refusing to clearly explain the impossibility of the electric-car transition in terms of quantity and price is not coincidental. Demonizing the use of fossil fuels as if it were a whim of crazy and evil polluters allows us to hide the social and economic importance that cheap energy represents in the development of our societies. It doesn't take a genius to see the limits of the energy transition, the corruption that arises from regulations and green incentives, and the inevitable rise in prices that is turning energy into a product suitable only for the rich. It is clear who will be the ones to suffer the consequences of these lost public policies.
The centralized and coordinated policy of exterminating private mobility also exposes something else: the uncontrolled exercise of power. Forcing people to return to dependency is strengthening the paternalistic and authoritarian will over citizens' preferences and rights, under fallacious accusations of lack of solidarity. What is hidden is the fact that private property is the greatest moral and civilizational driver, as well as the most important factor in the development of civic and family life. Without this incentive, impoverished, lacking mobility and isolated, dependency is reinforced, and the capacity for opposition is nullified. In a free society, transitions of any order are determined from the bottom up. Everything else is a totalitarian delirium.
