Buckle up, folks, because the latest scheme cooked up by the climate cultists, called “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World,” is here. But before we dive into the insanity, let’s take a quick look at the Frankenstein behind this disaster—the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

Formed in 2005, the C40 Cities initiative started as a network of major world cities coming together under the guise of fighting climate change. Founded by then-Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, this group has morphed into a global cabal of 97 cities—representing over 700 million people—working together to impose draconian climate policies that governments wouldn’t dare pass at the national level. These mayors, in love with their newfound global power, have turned C40 into a petri dish for radical climate action, setting the stage for policies so extreme, they’d make the Green New Deal look reasonable.

The group’s mission? To turn cities into the front line of the so-called “climate emergency.” Forget waiting for national governments—C40 thinks it’s time for your local mayor to impose sweeping changes on how you live, what you consume, and what freedoms you have left. And here’s the kicker—they’re doing all of this without your vote or consent, using unelected global bureaucracies to push their agenda.

Their latest report, The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World, is the holy grail of eco-dystopian fantasies. It’s a blueprint for gutting the economy, wrecking industries, and—most importantly—controlling every aspect of your life. This isn’t just about reducing emissions; it’s about using climate change as an excuse to expand government control over your personal freedoms.

Consumption-Based Emissions: The New Way to Blame YOU

Let’s kick this off with their latest con, the idea of consumption-based emissions. You buy a car? Well, you’re not just responsible for the gas it burns. Oh no, you’re now responsible for the steel, the rubber, the shipping, and the manufacturing process, regardless of where any of that takes place. 85% of the emissions they’re blaming you for come from somewhere else​, and yet, somehow it’s YOUR fault because you dared to buy a product. See how slick that is?

Urban consumption is a key driver of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cities can have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions beyond their geographic borders by influencing global supply chains.

This is the scam: shift the blame to YOU, the consumer, and then shame you into compliance. It’s brilliant, really, if your goal is to micromanage people’s lives. They get to blame you for every factory in China spewing carbon because you bought a t-shirt. And here’s the kicker—they don’t expect the rest of the world to clean up its act; they expect YOU to cut back, suffer, and shut up.

Mayors as Mini-Dictators: Power Grabs Disguised as Climate Leadership

Now, onto the real heroes of this story: your local mayor. That’s right, according to this report, city mayors are supposed to morph into eco-warriors and reshape markets by telling you what you can and can’t buy​. Oh, and they’ll be getting into sectors they have no business touching, like aviation, food, and even clothing. Your mayor—who can’t even fill potholes on time—is now going to be in charge of limiting your meat consumption, slashing your car ownership, and determining how often you can fly to visit your family​.

The key consumption categories that cities should target are food, buildings and infrastructure, clothing and textiles, private transport, aviation, and electronics and household appliances.

This is insanity on a whole new level. These bureaucrats, who couldn’t manage a bake sale without screwing it up, are suddenly climate experts who will dictate how you live your life. According to the C40 report, mayors need to be “entrepreneurial” in creating markets that enforce these draconian cuts on consumption. The irony is rich, because when was the last time a government entity ever created anything worth a damn?

These clowns want to create markets? What does that even mean? Translation: they want to crush free markets and replace them with bureaucratic controls, the kind only a socialist could love. They want to shut down industries that make cities thrive—transportation, food, clothing, and more—while dictating what you, the plebeian, are allowed to consume.

Killing Jobs, Crushing Economies: The Economic Suicide Pact

Oh, but wait—it gets worse. The report is full of idiotic recommendations that will blow up entire sectors of the economy. They want cities to cut clothing purchases by 66% by 2050​. Do these morons have any idea what this means for jobs in the retail, textile, and shipping industries? Apparently not. You don’t need new clothes, peasant. Wear that ragged old hoodie for the next 20 years while they lecture you about your “carbon footprint.”

And don’t get too attached to your car, either, because they’re coming for that next. Reduce car ownership by 39% by 2050​? Great idea—unless you actually need to, you know, get places. But hey, if you live in some urban utopia where public transport actually works (it doesn’t), maybe you’ll be fine. For the rest of us in the real world, this is a non-starter.

And let’s not forget aviation. These morons want to slash air travel too because apparently flying to visit relatives is a crime against Gaia. Less flying, fewer jobs, but more trees or something. You’ll just have to accept that Grandma’s birthday isn’t worth the climate destruction caused by your round-trip ticket. Never mind that the people pushing this will still be jetting off to Davos or their fifth climate summit of the year—rules are for you, not them.

Green Tyranny: Engineering Behavior, Not Solutions

Now comes the really insidious part. The entire report is based on the idea that your behavior needs to change—not the behavior of the industries or the energy producers, but yours​. The elitists behind this report are obsessed with engineering how you live, what you eat, and how much you’re allowed to consume.

They want to tell you to eat less meat​, because, of course, animal agriculture is a villain in their story. Forget that many people rely on it for protein and livelihoods—nope, you’re expected to get with the program and adopt a diet of kale and soy because someone in an air-conditioned office decided that’s what’s best for the planet.

And don’t even think about upgrading your phone or replacing your aging refrigerator. Nope, you’ll be punished for that too. They expect you to stretch your electronics and appliances’ lifespan for as long as possible​. You don’t get the convenience of modern living, but hey, at least you can pat yourself on the back for saving the Earth, right?

This isn’t about making life better; it’s about making you suffer. That’s the plan. This is about controlling how you live, while the elites sit in their ivory towers, completely unaffected by the draconian policies they’re enforcing on you.

The Fake Prosperity Pitch: Selling Poverty as Happiness

As if all this wasn’t absurd enough, the C40 Cities geniuses are trying to sell this agenda by claiming it will make you “more prosperous and happy.” Yeah, because nothing says happiness like having your personal choices dictated by bureaucrats​. Nothing screams prosperity like slashing entire industries, killing millions of jobs, and leaving citizens with fewer options for food, transportation, and clothing.

What they’re really doing is pushing poverty and austerity under the guise of “sustainability.” Their idea of prosperity is for you to own less, eat less, and travel less. But don’t worry, they’ll frame this as a “just transition”​—which is code for “you’re going to be poor, but at least the planet will be green.”

The Bottom Line: This Plan is an Eco-Fascist Nightmare

Let’s cut the nonsense. This C40 Cities report isn’t about “saving the planet”—it’s about control. It’s about giving more power to local governments to meddle in your life and destroy free markets under the pretense of environmental responsibility. The fact that they’re pushing this on cities—where the majority of the world’s economic activity occurs—isn’t an accident. They want to crush consumption, cripple industries, and turn you into a compliant little eco-serf, living under the iron fist of the climate elite.

They aren’t just coming for your car, your steak, and your flights—they’re coming for your freedom. And if we don’t push back, we’ll end up living in a world where every purchase, every bite, and every mile we travel is controlled, taxed, and regulated by these climate despots. That’s the future they want: total control, total compliance, and zero freedom.

So no, C40 Cities. We’re not buying it. You can keep your utopian eco-fascism, your behavior controls, and your idiotic plans to kill jobs and wreck the economy. We’ll take freedom, thank you very much.

H/T Tom Nelson

By Jo Nova

Finally, 15 years and a trillion dollars too late, George Monbiot says what skeptics have been saying all along. Nearly every single carbon reduction scheme is a useless make-work machination that creates the illusion that the government is doing something. He calls it “perceptionware”.

A new paper was released in Science pointing out that in the last 25 years, barely 4% of climate policies in 41 countries have made any real difference. And by “real difference” we mean reducing a useful fertilizer, so it’s a good thing that 96% of the ploys failed, but a tragedy that a thousand billion dollars was stolen from decent people.

In any case, finally Monbiot sees the tip of the iceberg of grift and graft, but doesn’t realize his own role in it, doesn’t realize the same failures of journalists like him also failed the science world where 96% of papers have achieved nothing they set out to do as well — like predicting the climate. Climate science has been spinning its wheels, creating perceptionware and failing to figure out the climate for fifty years, but George hasn’t noticed.

Monbiot hasn’t even taken the obvious leap: Where were the Greens, the people who supposedly were the smart ones who cared the most? Most of these carbon reduction failures were obvious to anyone who owned a calculator. Could it be George, that the Greens were the dumb ones wrapped up in their own perceptionware game, pretending to care about CO2 to impress their friends at dinner parties but not actually giving a damn? Or worse, could it be that some Greens were bought off by industries and foreign countries that profit from the carbon grift?

Who stood up for the poor, the workers, and the taxpayers who were being shafted — only the skeptics.

“Grand schemes, many backed by governments, masquerade as positive action on the environment. They should be disowned”

Let’s talk about perceptionware. Perceptionware is technology whose main purpose is to create an impression of action…

Monbiot zeroes in on the endless fantasia that is the quest for airline biofuel:

…perhaps the clearest example of perceptionware is the repeated unveiling, across the past 25 years, of mumbo-jumbo jets. Throughout this period, fossil fuel and airline companies have announced prototype green aircraft or prototype green fuels, none of which has made any significant dent in emissions or, in most cases, materialised at all. Their sole effect so far has been to help companies avoid legislative action.

Now he worries the poor are starving as we burn their food, and chop down forests so we can fly to Bali:

But never mind, this perceptionware is now Labour policy too. Failure is baked in. Even with restrictions on which feedstocks can be used, any significant deployment of biofuels for aviation will increase total demand, which means either that agricultural crops are removed from human consumption, raising the price of food and therefore increasing global hunger, or that wild ecosystems are destroyed to make way for agricultural expansion.

George still doesn’t realize the root of the problem is Big Government itself. In the crazy biofuel market, it was the government that “picked the winner” and decided we should burn food to save the world, not the free market.  Who could have guessed that high energy plant matter would also be the same stuff people wanted to eat?

As for using waste, this promise is repeatedly rolled out to justify disastrous policies. Biodiesel would be made from used cooking oil, but as soon as production increased, new palm oil was used instead. Biomass burners would mop up forestry waste, but soon started taking whole trees and, in some cases, entire forests. Biogas would be made from sewage and food waste, but operators quickly discovered they could produce more with dedicated crops like maize and potatoes. Why? Because waste is generally low in energy, variable and expensive to handle. Already, there’s intense competition for the small portion of waste that might be commercially useful, as companies chase carbon payments: so much so that fresh palm oil has been sold as waste oil, as this attracts a higher premium.

The government funded monopoly in science created a fake crisis that parasites could feed off, and he is surprised that parasites turned up to dinner.

Where were all our expert climate scientists, George, while 25 years of money and time was wasted? Did they or did they not want to save the world, or were they too stupid, or too scared to say the obvious?

REFERENCE

Stechemesser et al (2024) Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades, Science, 22 Aug 2024, Vol 385, Issue 6711,pp. 884-892, DOI: 10.1126/science.adl6547