The Baltimore city council just voted to outlaw gas powered leaf blowers yesterday. This is undoubtedly the most pressing issue for the city of Baltimore right now.
But it fits your pattern perfectly. Politicians get to act like they’re doing something (which will look silly once they’re out of office, of course) while ignoring the hard and inglorious work of addressing real problems.
You know, I am opposed to bans on gas powered motors on the grounds of "fuck you don't tell me what to do".
But in terms of pollution emissions, the efficiency difference between 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines is so dramatic that, under most reasonable assumptions, things like gas-powered leaf blowers emit more carbon than a typical car. If we are banning gas cars for the environment, then banning 2-stroke gas-powered tools should be a higher priority
(of course, both should not be a priority in the first place)
Haven’t we reached the inevitable realization that the CO2 Climate Change song and dance is a scam? Like all the other panics we’ve been gifted for the past few decades. It has no actual evidence backing it up, and it’s pushed by the same kind of grifters who gifted us the Covid nonsense.
Two years ago, the Governor of New York State announced that she wanted to ban gas appliances. Of course there was major backlash - gas appliances are all we have during electrical grid failures caused by storms and wind and solar generators destabilizing the grid.
I lived in a town in France where Monsieur Le Leaf-blower came round at 5am each morning not just in Autumn but all year round. When he wasn’t blowing leaves, he was blowing litter.
I strongly approve of a ban on leaf-blowers. What’s wrong with a brush?
I love leaf blowers, they blow the leaves to someone else's yard and they blow the leaves to the next yard- eventually the person at the end of the street has a great pile of leaves to use as compost!
Now that is community working together!
Sometimes someone blows the leaves back to where they came from and upsets the whole wonderful natural system of compost making- but you can't win all the time.
One of my favorite early videos was a bent over elderly lady in Southern California using a broom and a pan versus a young buck with leaf blower, she was clearly quicker without noise.
I physically cringe upon hearing intrusive pointless noise and dwell in my wildflower meadow front yard enhanced home surrounded by lawn mowing maniacs. Enjoyed my Petty moment yesterday phoning the city for a sprinkling during daylight violation on the sheep across the street who mows for 4 hours a week and has bare patches everywhere.
According to 1980s American band X, downtown Baltimore is covered with pimps and whores*. That's mainly a problem near "The Block". I've visited many times in the 1980s and 90s. It's an historic city, and the Inner Harbor was nice; it's amazing what a few hundred million dollars of public money can do to benefit politically connected cronies and -- at least for a time -- make a relatively shiny, safe area for the tourists and day trippers. Alas, even that's decayed due to the rot that plagues big American cities. The best that can be done with places like Balmer is to flush and remember to jiggle the handle afterwards.
I often read in articles by “smart” people that regulation doesn’t hamper economic growth. As evidence, these smart people point to growth in GDP. What they fail to understand is that GDP is simply the total value of all goods and services purchased in a year. It says nothing about what goods and services are purchased.
Increasingly, our GDP reflects purchases of the services of lawyers and consultants to guide business through the ever expanding morass of government regulation. One of the largest departments in the office where I work is Compliance. They’re nice people, but they produce nothing but Compliance. And no one cares about compliance outside of the government.
Every penny spent on compliance with the latest government edict is a penny that can’t be spent on actually making something. It’s such a simple idea you’d think that even the smart people would understand it. At least it seems that someone in authority is finally waking up to that concept.
> I often read in articles by “smart” people that regulation doesn’t hamper economic growth
The only way it would be possible for regulation to not hamper economic growth would be if the regulation was so obviously beneficial that _everyone was already following it voluntarily_
I mean, unless we're throwing out the efficient market hypothesis entirely
Regulation in the EU serves two purposes, the expansion of the bureaucracies, protectionism. It protects the agri-sector from outside competition - which is why food prices are high - it protects big business cronies from competition from not only outside the EU, but also from within making it difficult/impossible for start-ups or small business to comply because of the cost. This is why the EU has fallen way behind in innovation and invention, and goods are expensive.
80% of innovation comes from SMEs and start ups. Big businesses have no need to innovate if their cash cows are protected.
Regulation of fishing improves the economy by preventing collapse of fish populations. For instance, female lobsters capable of producing eggs can't legally be kept and sold, ensuring the effective breeding population remains high. This can't be solved voluntarily because a single defector will make a ton of money at the expense of their competitors, so their competitors will also defect, etc. The EMH is only correct under certain constraints.
Most regulation is a net harm but there really are cases where having a State interfere with the economy is desirable.
Not nessecarily, for instance part standardization is very beneficial for an economy is it drives down maintainence costs but also harms the monopoly that the original supplier would otherwise have on spare parts and maintainance.
Part standardization is a mixed bag because you can't innovate if you're forced to use the same part as everyone else. Where standardization makes sense, it's fantastic, but regulators have to make a judgment call so it's worrying to give the State that power.
Ok so one example is something like bearing, in industrial equipment they are standardized as the buyer is typically well informed. By contrast when you have low information buyers like retail vacuums, dishwashers etc, often part standardisation goes out the window. Smart phones are a good example of near minimal standardisation between brands resulting in hundreds of different parts each unique and not interchangeable. You should be able to buy your phone screen from several suppliers but you can't, you need a like for like replacement. This has been happening with cars now and electric cars seem to be accelerating this process of non standard parts. The gains of non standard parts are often marginal in function for huge cost come replacement time. The issue is mechanical systems are far too complex for most to understand and over time they have incrementally become harder to repair with less standard parts with minimal change in function.
Moreover, nominal GDP is such a useless measure. Of course, GDP rises with increased government spending, population growth (via migration) and inflation.
Real GDP per capita tells a very different story, much closer to reality.
And GDP includes Government spending (aka waste). And GDP is always recalculated down one or two years later. And GDP provides no useful information as to the prosperity of people in the economy, that is measured by GDP per capita.
GDP increases with population growth, but doesn’t mean GDP per capita grows, that can actually fall. (See USA with its massive increase in population.)
Kind of a tangent, but you know what's kind of ironic?
Environmentalists will talk a lot about 'carbon neutral' and 'solar' power. Did you know, that humanity has already developed an incredibly efficient and totally carbon-neutral technology for capturing energy from the sun?
It's called trees.
100% of the carbon in a tree was pulled out of the atmosphere, making tree power definitionally carbon-neutral. There is obviously nuance to this, with old growth vs new growth concerns, monoculture vs ecosystem concerns, etc. But if people are serious about carbon neutral power, clear cutting forests (and then planting new ones only to clear cut them again later) would be considered a good thing
As an aside, so, a friend of mine is doing the self sufficient homestead thing, and has enough forest growth on his property to sustainably harvest enough to power his heat and electricity (via a wood gassifier and generator) forever. So, using his numbers, I ran some calculations.
If every square mile of the US was covered in forest and optimal for forest growth, we would be able to sustainably support the current energy usage of about 1/4th the current population. Note that this assumes we replace all their food and houses and literally every other economically relevant thing, with forest.
Needless to say, this is not a great look for the green people. I remain secure in my belief that, in order to _actually_ achieve the stated goals of environmentalists, >90% of all humans have to die. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether or not that's a thing we should be working towards
This sort of thinking is exactly what the World Economic Forum and the WHO think, and they are planning on wiping out about 90% of the world population.
Such maths on the back of a postage stamp don't help anyone solve the problems.
Neither do the simplistic, frantic and hysterical green solutions, such as carbon capture. Not that carbon is the problem, nor is there any climate change- it is all just a beat up of the science to promote world government and totalitarianism.
There are solutions, but they are complicated and take time.
We can't rush and change things overnight, it won't make any difference anyway as anything we do now will take many many years to have any positive benefits.
I made it out at around 95% - 97%, but 90% is certainly close enough I wouldn't quibble too hard over the numbers. It's certainly not a thing that can be accomplished without gigadeaths.
One thing I wish I could force green types to answer.
(number made up for illustrative purposes)
if we need to reduce energy usage by 90% to bring the planet into balance, that _**literally**_ means reducing quality of life by 90%. So, who's eating that reduction. Is it 90% for everyone across the board? Or can we force it on to other people?
The tree service companies near me pay to take the trunks if they don't mulch them to a industrial burning spot where they are wasted.
A greenhouse nearby has 100,000 ft under glass and heats it fully with a wood chip burning device, possibly a gasifier and allows the tree companies to drop off logs for chipping with no charge whereas the burn place charges.
If you want to reduce carbon in the atmosphere you bury all solid organic waste in an anoxic environment, in otherwords, a landfill. Better yet, grow trees and bury them. If the condition are right, some beings a few million years in the future will be gifted a coal seam.
Or even better still, stop having conniptions over the atmosphere having more plant food in it, and the concern that might produce longer growing seasons, and increased arability in the portions of the planet that have the majority of the landmasses... :D
I don't have hard data on this, and think it probably warrants more research, but I personally believe that a _substantial_ amount of the increase in agricultural production over the last 100 years or so is due to rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere
I might go as far as "statistically noticeable" more than "substantial" there. Some of the increases have been *entirely* too rapid relative to the growth in CO2, which is... almost indistinguishable from zero. When the weed grow ops do hypercapnic grow rooms for fast production, they aren't going up a couple hundred PPM. They're going up multiple complete percentage points. Possibly double digits of percentage points.
So basically, my objection boils down to "I don't think the increase in CO2 we've seen is actually enough to have any significant impact on either the plant growth rates via pure CO2 content or temperature, but to the extent that they have any effect, that effect would be a net positive for the species' ability to feed itself". Of course, realistically, the filthy Gaia worshippers *despise* humanity, which is why that outcome is a problem for them.
This is one great example of why leftism is cancerous, and should be purged by any means necessary (including, but not limited to, the one we can't discuss on a German blog)
> Think about that: largely out of sight and with little public comment, Eurocrats passed an insane piece of environmental legislation last year that threatens to disrupt a third of Brazilian exports to Europe and that is endangering a free trade agreement with South America that has been in the works for a quarter century
Rich White Leftists: OH NO, YOU CAN'T DO THAT, IT WILL HURT THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE WORLD:
Indigenous peoples of South America: "uh, actually, if you do that, our entire economy will grind to a halt and millions will suffer
Rich White Leftists: shut up, you will speak when spoken to.
You can replace "...to protect our planet's forests..." in the title with any other Brussels legislation and the titel.will still be correct. Brussels is a menace.
Let's not forget the tree cutting programme of the EU worshipping SNP administration in Scotland and their Green allies. I bet there are similar projects to this all over Europe. The "green agenda" now has very little to do with environmentalism but plenty to do with social control, corporate greed and unrealistic virtue signalling absurdity:
As to my Netherlands; there is a little know binding EU treaty with a clause that will force my tiny overpopulated Netherlands to double its forested areas by 2040.
Already we are short some 1 million homes, which can't be built because of ludicrous green European policies.
Dimwittedness is endemic to socialist bent bureaucratic managers. Another example is the Canadian gun buy back program, which they have no way of implementing. There are no borders for stupidity.
This is what happens when "DO Something!" meets the competence crisis gripping most Western governments. The something that is done is inevitably and predictably destructive.
An excellent analysis of how social complexity is really no different from free-market complexity.
Here in the USA, our founders wrote a constitution for a federal (NOT a national) government, strictly enjoining it even from entering the arena of the bulk of such issues. Which constitution has eventually become entirely ignored by the power-hungry psychopaths that all governments anywhere inevitably attract and nurture.
The one problem I have with this article (going from memory; I haven't reread it recently) is that it takes the government's reasoning at face value. The government never does anything for its face value. If the government says it's doing something to right some kind of social wrong, and then the social wrong is not righted, does that mean the policy failed? Or did it succeed at it's true purpose?
Example: The civil rights act has clearly not fixed racism. Does that make it a failure? Or did it completely and totally succeed at it's goal of creating a distributed commissar system which gives the government total control over just about everything?
> They did this while full of fulminous rhetoric about burnt rainforest ash in our grocery stores, and without the slightest idea of how the law would work, its downstream effects on the European economy and international trade relations, or really anything else.
Well, y'know. Sometimes you just have to pass a law to really find out what's in it.
Question Eugy: Based on your 1,115 number, as of May’23, it appears that the EU people are promulgating one new regulation every hour to 90 minutes or so , on the average, of every work day (8-12 per work day). They must have an amazing work ethic, or am I reading this wrong?
The Baltimore city council just voted to outlaw gas powered leaf blowers yesterday. This is undoubtedly the most pressing issue for the city of Baltimore right now.
lol unbelievable
Look on the bright side - you'll be able to hear the bullets more clearly.
The Fire. The Wire saga continues.
But it fits your pattern perfectly. Politicians get to act like they’re doing something (which will look silly once they’re out of office, of course) while ignoring the hard and inglorious work of addressing real problems.
Not so unbelievable if you're trying to sleep ;)
... or think.
Cutting down every tree in Baltimore would solve the problem of noisy leave blowers .
You beat me to it!
Yes, but then how would Baltimore ensure its robust export economy to the EU?
You know, I am opposed to bans on gas powered motors on the grounds of "fuck you don't tell me what to do".
But in terms of pollution emissions, the efficiency difference between 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines is so dramatic that, under most reasonable assumptions, things like gas-powered leaf blowers emit more carbon than a typical car. If we are banning gas cars for the environment, then banning 2-stroke gas-powered tools should be a higher priority
(of course, both should not be a priority in the first place)
Haven’t we reached the inevitable realization that the CO2 Climate Change song and dance is a scam? Like all the other panics we’ve been gifted for the past few decades. It has no actual evidence backing it up, and it’s pushed by the same kind of grifters who gifted us the Covid nonsense.
> (of course, both should not be a priority in the first place)
But 2 strokes are not as resource intensive (simple engines) and they last a lot longer
Better not to have leaf blowers at all
the leaves are the real problem sir.
Rakes, i say, let them use RAKES!
THE DAY OF THE RAKE WILL COME.
Two years ago, the Governor of New York State announced that she wanted to ban gas appliances. Of course there was major backlash - gas appliances are all we have during electrical grid failures caused by storms and wind and solar generators destabilizing the grid.
Thank god in Australia we use the word 'petrol' because otherwise its confusing as to what 'gas' is
I lived in a town in France where Monsieur Le Leaf-blower came round at 5am each morning not just in Autumn but all year round. When he wasn’t blowing leaves, he was blowing litter.
I strongly approve of a ban on leaf-blowers. What’s wrong with a brush?
I love leaf blowers, they blow the leaves to someone else's yard and they blow the leaves to the next yard- eventually the person at the end of the street has a great pile of leaves to use as compost!
Now that is community working together!
Sometimes someone blows the leaves back to where they came from and upsets the whole wonderful natural system of compost making- but you can't win all the time.
One of my favorite early videos was a bent over elderly lady in Southern California using a broom and a pan versus a young buck with leaf blower, she was clearly quicker without noise.
I physically cringe upon hearing intrusive pointless noise and dwell in my wildflower meadow front yard enhanced home surrounded by lawn mowing maniacs. Enjoyed my Petty moment yesterday phoning the city for a sprinkling during daylight violation on the sheep across the street who mows for 4 hours a week and has bare patches everywhere.
Have you played Spot the Leafblower? Whenever you see or hear someone making a God-awful racket with one you must say "Get a broom, loser!".
According to 1980s American band X, downtown Baltimore is covered with pimps and whores*. That's mainly a problem near "The Block". I've visited many times in the 1980s and 90s. It's an historic city, and the Inner Harbor was nice; it's amazing what a few hundred million dollars of public money can do to benefit politically connected cronies and -- at least for a time -- make a relatively shiny, safe area for the tourists and day trippers. Alas, even that's decayed due to the rot that plagues big American cities. The best that can be done with places like Balmer is to flush and remember to jiggle the handle afterwards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1JLf3BzwQw
No more landscape clean-up for the city's buildings & grounds. Or are they going to install power outlets every 50 feet for electric leaf blowers?
Of course, this won't happen in the wealth suburbs. The armies of landscape maintenance workers can't work without their "Mexican Rakes".
I often read in articles by “smart” people that regulation doesn’t hamper economic growth. As evidence, these smart people point to growth in GDP. What they fail to understand is that GDP is simply the total value of all goods and services purchased in a year. It says nothing about what goods and services are purchased.
Increasingly, our GDP reflects purchases of the services of lawyers and consultants to guide business through the ever expanding morass of government regulation. One of the largest departments in the office where I work is Compliance. They’re nice people, but they produce nothing but Compliance. And no one cares about compliance outside of the government.
Every penny spent on compliance with the latest government edict is a penny that can’t be spent on actually making something. It’s such a simple idea you’d think that even the smart people would understand it. At least it seems that someone in authority is finally waking up to that concept.
> I often read in articles by “smart” people that regulation doesn’t hamper economic growth
The only way it would be possible for regulation to not hamper economic growth would be if the regulation was so obviously beneficial that _everyone was already following it voluntarily_
I mean, unless we're throwing out the efficient market hypothesis entirely
Regulation in the EU serves two purposes, the expansion of the bureaucracies, protectionism. It protects the agri-sector from outside competition - which is why food prices are high - it protects big business cronies from competition from not only outside the EU, but also from within making it difficult/impossible for start-ups or small business to comply because of the cost. This is why the EU has fallen way behind in innovation and invention, and goods are expensive.
80% of innovation comes from SMEs and start ups. Big businesses have no need to innovate if their cash cows are protected.
Regulation of fishing improves the economy by preventing collapse of fish populations. For instance, female lobsters capable of producing eggs can't legally be kept and sold, ensuring the effective breeding population remains high. This can't be solved voluntarily because a single defector will make a ton of money at the expense of their competitors, so their competitors will also defect, etc. The EMH is only correct under certain constraints.
Most regulation is a net harm but there really are cases where having a State interfere with the economy is desirable.
Not nessecarily, for instance part standardization is very beneficial for an economy is it drives down maintainence costs but also harms the monopoly that the original supplier would otherwise have on spare parts and maintainance.
Part standardization is a mixed bag because you can't innovate if you're forced to use the same part as everyone else. Where standardization makes sense, it's fantastic, but regulators have to make a judgment call so it's worrying to give the State that power.
Ok so one example is something like bearing, in industrial equipment they are standardized as the buyer is typically well informed. By contrast when you have low information buyers like retail vacuums, dishwashers etc, often part standardisation goes out the window. Smart phones are a good example of near minimal standardisation between brands resulting in hundreds of different parts each unique and not interchangeable. You should be able to buy your phone screen from several suppliers but you can't, you need a like for like replacement. This has been happening with cars now and electric cars seem to be accelerating this process of non standard parts. The gains of non standard parts are often marginal in function for huge cost come replacement time. The issue is mechanical systems are far too complex for most to understand and over time they have incrementally become harder to repair with less standard parts with minimal change in function.
There are some ideas so bafflingly stupid that only a “genius” could have come up with it.
Moreover, nominal GDP is such a useless measure. Of course, GDP rises with increased government spending, population growth (via migration) and inflation.
Real GDP per capita tells a very different story, much closer to reality.
And GDP includes Government spending (aka waste). And GDP is always recalculated down one or two years later. And GDP provides no useful information as to the prosperity of people in the economy, that is measured by GDP per capita.
GDP increases with population growth, but doesn’t mean GDP per capita grows, that can actually fall. (See USA with its massive increase in population.)
Finance should be excluded from GDP too, actually: efficiently allocating capital is useful but extracts far more wealth than it generates.
Kind of a tangent, but you know what's kind of ironic?
Environmentalists will talk a lot about 'carbon neutral' and 'solar' power. Did you know, that humanity has already developed an incredibly efficient and totally carbon-neutral technology for capturing energy from the sun?
It's called trees.
100% of the carbon in a tree was pulled out of the atmosphere, making tree power definitionally carbon-neutral. There is obviously nuance to this, with old growth vs new growth concerns, monoculture vs ecosystem concerns, etc. But if people are serious about carbon neutral power, clear cutting forests (and then planting new ones only to clear cut them again later) would be considered a good thing
As an aside, so, a friend of mine is doing the self sufficient homestead thing, and has enough forest growth on his property to sustainably harvest enough to power his heat and electricity (via a wood gassifier and generator) forever. So, using his numbers, I ran some calculations.
If every square mile of the US was covered in forest and optimal for forest growth, we would be able to sustainably support the current energy usage of about 1/4th the current population. Note that this assumes we replace all their food and houses and literally every other economically relevant thing, with forest.
Needless to say, this is not a great look for the green people. I remain secure in my belief that, in order to _actually_ achieve the stated goals of environmentalists, >90% of all humans have to die. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether or not that's a thing we should be working towards
Can we start with the managerial class and the politicians?
This sort of thinking is exactly what the World Economic Forum and the WHO think, and they are planning on wiping out about 90% of the world population.
Such maths on the back of a postage stamp don't help anyone solve the problems.
Neither do the simplistic, frantic and hysterical green solutions, such as carbon capture. Not that carbon is the problem, nor is there any climate change- it is all just a beat up of the science to promote world government and totalitarianism.
There are solutions, but they are complicated and take time.
We can't rush and change things overnight, it won't make any difference anyway as anything we do now will take many many years to have any positive benefits.
I made it out at around 95% - 97%, but 90% is certainly close enough I wouldn't quibble too hard over the numbers. It's certainly not a thing that can be accomplished without gigadeaths.
One thing I wish I could force green types to answer.
(number made up for illustrative purposes)
if we need to reduce energy usage by 90% to bring the planet into balance, that _**literally**_ means reducing quality of life by 90%. So, who's eating that reduction. Is it 90% for everyone across the board? Or can we force it on to other people?
If not, why do their needs outweigh mine?
Are you familiar with the Georgia Guidestones?
The tree service companies near me pay to take the trunks if they don't mulch them to a industrial burning spot where they are wasted.
A greenhouse nearby has 100,000 ft under glass and heats it fully with a wood chip burning device, possibly a gasifier and allows the tree companies to drop off logs for chipping with no charge whereas the burn place charges.
If you want to reduce carbon in the atmosphere you bury all solid organic waste in an anoxic environment, in otherwords, a landfill. Better yet, grow trees and bury them. If the condition are right, some beings a few million years in the future will be gifted a coal seam.
Or even better still, stop having conniptions over the atmosphere having more plant food in it, and the concern that might produce longer growing seasons, and increased arability in the portions of the planet that have the majority of the landmasses... :D
I don't have hard data on this, and think it probably warrants more research, but I personally believe that a _substantial_ amount of the increase in agricultural production over the last 100 years or so is due to rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere
I might go as far as "statistically noticeable" more than "substantial" there. Some of the increases have been *entirely* too rapid relative to the growth in CO2, which is... almost indistinguishable from zero. When the weed grow ops do hypercapnic grow rooms for fast production, they aren't going up a couple hundred PPM. They're going up multiple complete percentage points. Possibly double digits of percentage points.
So basically, my objection boils down to "I don't think the increase in CO2 we've seen is actually enough to have any significant impact on either the plant growth rates via pure CO2 content or temperature, but to the extent that they have any effect, that effect would be a net positive for the species' ability to feed itself". Of course, realistically, the filthy Gaia worshippers *despise* humanity, which is why that outcome is a problem for them.
This is one great example of why leftism is cancerous, and should be purged by any means necessary (including, but not limited to, the one we can't discuss on a German blog)
> Think about that: largely out of sight and with little public comment, Eurocrats passed an insane piece of environmental legislation last year that threatens to disrupt a third of Brazilian exports to Europe and that is endangering a free trade agreement with South America that has been in the works for a quarter century
Rich White Leftists: OH NO, YOU CAN'T DO THAT, IT WILL HURT THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE WORLD:
Indigenous peoples of South America: "uh, actually, if you do that, our entire economy will grind to a halt and millions will suffer
Rich White Leftists: shut up, you will speak when spoken to.
Leftists love being the voice of the voiceless.
https://1drv.ms/i/c/b333d642626add3d/ET3damJC1jMggLOjAAAAAAAB-QbIR9ZH-VZLS1qXNLghVg?e=YBXj6M
You can replace "...to protect our planet's forests..." in the title with any other Brussels legislation and the titel.will still be correct. Brussels is a menace.
The humongous scale of NATO headquarters in Brussels is mind-blowing.
"The Fable of the EU Regulation on Deforestation Free Products"
Ah, yes. One of Aesop's finest.
EU wants to protect you. Run, Forest, Run!
*applause*
Let's not forget the tree cutting programme of the EU worshipping SNP administration in Scotland and their Green allies. I bet there are similar projects to this all over Europe. The "green agenda" now has very little to do with environmentalism but plenty to do with social control, corporate greed and unrealistic virtue signalling absurdity:
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/snp-cuts-down-millions-trees-30510623
As to my Netherlands; there is a little know binding EU treaty with a clause that will force my tiny overpopulated Netherlands to double its forested areas by 2040.
Already we are short some 1 million homes, which can't be built because of ludicrous green European policies.
interesting, do you have the exact name of the treaty or, better, a link?
more camping in the woods. start passing out the tents.
really, it could be a "good thing"😂
The EU is run by NGO dimwits.
Dimwittedness is endemic to socialist bent bureaucratic managers. Another example is the Canadian gun buy back program, which they have no way of implementing. There are no borders for stupidity.
Best, quickest and most sustainable way to stop this and similar atrocities:
The Berlaymont building housing the HQ of the EU-Commission is build on ancient forested grounds.
GET RID OF IT and start enjoying local fauna and flora on the re-claimed 3-4 hectares again.
They will gladly get rid of it....and move to proper quarters 10x larger
👍👍👍
Hopefully they get a suitable plot in Gaza ...
This is what happens when "DO Something!" meets the competence crisis gripping most Western governments. The something that is done is inevitably and predictably destructive.
I would like to advocate for doing NOTHING instead:
https://studiahumana.com/pliki/wydania/In%20Praise%20of%20Passivity.pdf
An excellent analysis of how social complexity is really no different from free-market complexity.
Here in the USA, our founders wrote a constitution for a federal (NOT a national) government, strictly enjoining it even from entering the arena of the bulk of such issues. Which constitution has eventually become entirely ignored by the power-hungry psychopaths that all governments anywhere inevitably attract and nurture.
Excellent idea.
The one problem I have with this article (going from memory; I haven't reread it recently) is that it takes the government's reasoning at face value. The government never does anything for its face value. If the government says it's doing something to right some kind of social wrong, and then the social wrong is not righted, does that mean the policy failed? Or did it succeed at it's true purpose?
Example: The civil rights act has clearly not fixed racism. Does that make it a failure? Or did it completely and totally succeed at it's goal of creating a distributed commissar system which gives the government total control over just about everything?
But we dare not accuse them of bad intensions.
Oh, that's too harsh, not "destructive", merely counter-productive! lol
Lord, the need is great!
Which I called, the spirits
I can't get rid of it now
from goethe’s zauberlehrling: “master, the need is great. i can’t get rid of the spirits i’ve summoned!”
> They did this while full of fulminous rhetoric about burnt rainforest ash in our grocery stores, and without the slightest idea of how the law would work, its downstream effects on the European economy and international trade relations, or really anything else.
Well, y'know. Sometimes you just have to pass a law to really find out what's in it.
I love how when idiots pass a law that bites them in the ass, their only response is, " that sucks, sure wish we could do something about that."
Question Eugy: Based on your 1,115 number, as of May’23, it appears that the EU people are promulgating one new regulation every hour to 90 minutes or so , on the average, of every work day (8-12 per work day). They must have an amazing work ethic, or am I reading this wrong?