Category Archives: Enviromoonbattery

Eco-Mandated Paper Bags Are a Pain

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One consequence of moonbat micromanagement is micro-oppression. Via ABC7 Gay Area:

Some Bay Area shoppers are frustrated after Safeway has stopped offering handles [on] its paper grocery bags, citing a supply chain problem. …

“Cheap bag just ripped right there!” one shopper said while loading groceries into his SUV.

Too bad he can’t use vastly more efficient plastic bags, which allow you to carry large quantities of groceries easily. Now the paper bags don’t even have handles, making them still more inferior.

Nick Vyas, executive director [of the Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute] at the University of Southern California, said the shortage [of usable bags] stems from several factors, including tariffs on Canadian lumber, Indonesia revoking lumber permits, and California’s ban on plastic bags that took effect earlier this year.

Regarding the latter, Vyas piously praised “this environmentally-conscious decision, which is a right thing to do.”

California voters have earned the paper bags, which without handles are almost impossible to carry without tears and spills if you have more than two.

If only all consequences of tyrannical enviroposturing were this insignificant.

On a tip from Steve T.

Massachusetts Bill Would Limit How Many Miles You Can Drive

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Mobility is freedom. Consequently, it will be curtailed where Democrats have consolidated power — as in Massachusetts.

Independent Sentinel reports on Senate Bill S.2246, which adds rules to the state’s climate plan:

As part of the plan, the department of transportation will track residents’ mileage and impose fines for excessive driving.

In liberal utopia, bureaucrats will track every aspect of existence so as to control it.

It orders the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) to set binding goals for reducing statewide vehicle miles traveled (VMT). The bill will create a new government council tasked with pushing people onto public transit, one way or another.

Having your own car allows independence. The climate doesn’t like independence. The climate wants you only to be able to go where leftist bureaucrats have decided you should go.

No mileage limit is listed yet, but it’s coming.

In the near future, cars will automatically shut down when we have exceeded the mileage Democrats have allotted us. We will see if that makes the weather any nicer.

On tips from R F and abcanc.

Global Warming Allegedly Oppresses Dung Beetles

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Moonbats are getting increasingly desperate in their attempts to scare dupes into taking the global warming hoax seriously. Now we are told that allegedly anthropogenic climate fluctuation oppresses South American dung beetles.

Via USA Today:

[T]he long tentacles of climate change now extend all the way into the dreary lives of dung beetles in the Amazon rainforest, a new study suggests.

“With ongoing climate change, rising temperatures may push dung beetles beyond their physiological limits,” said study lead author Kim Lea Holzmann of the University of Wurzburg in Germany, in an e-mail to USA TODAY.

This is a problem because other creatures eat dung beetles, and because the bugs “play a key role as recyclers by breaking down animal dung and returning nutrients to the soil.” We are specifically reminded in the first sentence that humans are to blame, presumably for not submitting to total government control in the name of preventing harmless carbon emissions.

Per Watts Up With That?, the “study” consisted of leaving dung beetles out in the sun while sealed in plastic bottles. In real life, when it gets too hot, the beetles find shade or dig down into the earth. But climate research has nothing to do with real life.

On a tip from R F.

California Wastes Big on Bridge to Nowhere

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The homelessness grift and the bullet train to nowhere are hardly the only means California Democrats have had of flushing taxpayer money into oblivion. The New York Post reports on a bridge to nowhere:

In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC), a project featuring an overpass for animals atop ten lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California.

At the ceremony, Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to “complete the job within another $10 million,” before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick.

By now we know what this means: $64 million was only the beginning. The project, which was supposed to be finished last year, is currently $21 million over budget.

WAWC leader Beth Pratt tells taxpayers to keep bending over:

“There’s no boondoggle,” she said. “Given the times we’re living in,” a potential $21 million overage is “not that bad.”

The times we are living in are characterized by arrogant looting inflicted by pathologically greedy liberals.

Within days of Pratt’s announcement, the California Transportation Commission funneled another $18.8 million to the project, well exceeding the governor’s $10 million cap. The project’s total price tag now reaches about $114 million, reportedly including some $77 million in state funds.

Helping animals across the road is only a pretext. The bridge is a jobs program for useless enviromoonbats.

As the WAWC-endorsing Wildlife Crossing Fund notes, citing the California Department of Transportation’s estimate, “for every $1 billion spent” on wildlife crossings, “13,000 jobs are created.”

Presumably at least a few of those 13,000 would be engaged in some productive activity if Democrats did not pay them to drag out boondoggles — of which there will be many more if Dems remain in power:

At the groundbreaking ceremony, Newsom envisioned WAWC as a catalyst for the construction of wildlife crossings across the state. California, he boasted, set aside $105 million “to replicate projects like this all up and down the state.” Pratt reportedly thinks “hundreds more crossings are needed.”

You can see why Newsom has presidential ambitions. California’s deficit has been estimated to reach as high as $35 billion in coming years. As Margaret Thatcher famously observed, moonbats eventually run out of other people’s money. But if he achieves power at the federal level, he can just print more.

On tips from R F and abcanc.

Enviromoonbats Propose Reverting to 19th Century Shipping

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With moonbats at the helm, the future of shipping cargo will look a lot like the past. Via CNN Climate:

A 100% wind-powered cargo ship that can dramatically cut transatlantic shipping times and carbon emissions, according to its operator, could launch in early 2027.

It is unlikely that reverting to pre-20th century technology would reduce shipping times. But the point is the allegedly harmful carbon emissions.

French company Vela will run a service between France and the US with its custom-made seacraft. …

A life cycle assessment, conducted by Vela and climate consultancy group Carbone 4, calculated carbon emissions from the North Atlantic crossing would be up to 96% less than a conventional container ship, and up to 99% less than air freight.

Because sailboats make less noise than modern boats that use motors, they could “also be less disturbing to wildlife,” which moonbats care about unless you are talking about whale-killing offshore wind turbines.

Giant kites have also been proposed; K Line’s Seawing is a 10,764-square-foot (1,000-square meter) kite that could cut cargo ships’ carbon emissions by an average of 20%, says the company.

The International Maritime Organization agreed in 2023 to reach net-zero emissions by approximately 2050. Hopefully the global warming hoax will be behind us by then, or shipping could be set back by well over a century, thereby reducing our standard of living.

Coming soon: the future of trucking, featuring horse-drawn carts.

On a tip from Steve T.

Climate Kook Eurocrats Spend Ever More on Private Jets

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The moonbats running Europe have stultified the economy and driven energy prices into the stratosphere in the name of their climate ideology, according to which anything consuming fossil fuels must be suppressed or the weather will be warmer, which would supposedly constitute a catastrophe.

Even Politico can’t help but notice their hypocrisy:

The EU is planning to spend as much as €16 million over the next four years to fly its top officials by private jet, according to a tender document.

This is an increase of €3 million from the previous four-year period and is 50 percent higher than the period before that, which ended in 2021.

Taxpayers are forced to finance the lavish travel arrangements of pernicious bureaucrats who have limited the public’s ability to travel.

According to Diane Vitry, aviation director at the NGO Transport and Environment, private jets pollute “five to 14 times more than commercial flights and 50 times more than trains per passenger.” But Eurocrats find them more convenient.

In its response, the Commission said that increased private jet spending was not a row-back of its climate ambitions and that it retained its commitment “to be a front runner in the transition towards a climate-neutral society.”

That is, they will suppress those they rule over all the more tyrannically, so as to make it up to their weather gods.

On a tip from R F.

Libs Sue Energy Companies for Selling More Affordable Energy on Grounds It Is Less Affordable

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Energy prices have been coming down with Trump in office. But liberals are devoted to driving them back up again.

Via Ars Technica:

Michigan is taking on major oil and gas companies in court, joining nearly a dozen other states that have brought climate-related lawsuits against ExxonMobil and its industry peers. But Michigan’s approach is different: accusing Big Oil not of deceiving consumers or misrepresenting climate change risks, but of driving up energy costs by colluding to suppress competition from cleaner and cheaper technologies like solar power and electric vehicles.

EVs are not cleaner. Solar is not great for the environment either. Cheaper? Who knew enviromoonbats had a sense of humor?

On a tip from Steve T.