Cities Climate Leadership Group: The Dementia is in the Details

First off, despite the headline, this article is not about Joe Biden.

But is about something as nearly as terrifying as having a rattled and addled president leading the free world.

It’s about the  C40  Cities Climate Leadership Group, a group of 96 cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, that have come together to try to figure out how to end western civilization as we know it.

Well, that’s not exactly their slogan or mission or even vision statement, but the policies advocated by the group would pretty much do that.  Technically, their “statement of principles” is as follows:

C40 is committed to being an equitable, diverse and inclusive organization.

Not only in the way we recruit, manage and develop our international workforce, but also in the manner in which we work with C40’s nearly 100 member cities worldwide. 

To succeed in our mission of helping the world limit global heating to 1.5°C and building healthy, equitable and resilient communities, we are working to deliver a future where everyone, everywhere, can thrive. 

This vision can only be achieved with a diverse workforce and an inclusive mission.

The group started as a talking shop amongst big cities about how to end climate change – it has morphed into something a bit more powerful and consequential in the past few years.

While it tries to hide as much as possible behind incomprehensible buzzword globalist jargon, C40 is rather hellbent on changing the world and they may have the money to do it.  The funders and partners are a who’s who of the internationalist socialist socialite state,  from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to of course, the Clinton Foundation, to various government agencies all the way to a company called Arup – they’re helping California build high speed rail and they don’t recognize the existence of Taiwan (they list their Taipei office as being in “Greater China” and California still hired them) so you know they’re on the up and up and improving the lives of regular folks. 

Not to pick on Arup, but they did help produce a report in 2019 that stated quite bluntly that: 

“To avoid climate breakdown, emissions from global urban consumption must halve by 2030. For this to be achieved, emissions from consumption in high-income cities must decrease by two thirds within the next decade. At the same time, rapidly developing economies need to adopt sustainable consumption patterns when growing.”

The same people now in charge of high speed rail said that 250 years of economic progress needed to be halved in 11 years, 6 years now, or the climate will implode.  That does bring up the question as to why keep building the thing since it won’t be done until after everyone dies, but that may be a bit too cynical.

C40 policy initiatives are divided into sub-topics called “accelerators” – from clean air to divesting from the fossil fuel industry to equity and good food –  and a city can join as many as they want. Los Angeles is in just about every one, but San Franrcisco seems a bit more choosy when it comes to their priorities.

To say the accelerators’ goals and plans are ludicrous would  be an insult to the dictionary definition.  Here are a few samples…

Good Food (of which LA is a member) is one:  

“Cities committing to this accelerator will work with residents to achieve a ‘Planetary Health Diet’ for all by 2030, with balanced and nutritious food, reflective of the culture, geography, and demography of their residents.”

Now the “planetary health diet” (PHD) doesn’t specifically mention eating bugs, a number of C40’s partners, like the World Economic Forum, have said that that should be a way to go avoid other types of protein that emit too much greenhouse gas (looking at you, Elsie.)  

However, the PHD does put forward a very plant-based existence, relegating non-plant foods to a very small sliver of the pie:

Los Angeles and Santa Monica are signed up for the “Green & Healthy Streets Accelerator,” rather ironically named because it does not envision very many feet car accelerators at all:

“We envision a future where walking, cycling, and shared transport are how the majority of residents move around our cities. This shift towards zero emission mobility will result in less congestion and less pollution, while making our roads quieter and the air we breathe cleaner.”

And when it comes to urban planning and design, C40 is on the side of the “15 minute city” big time:

“Implementing ‘15-minute city’ or ‘complete neighborhood’   policies that provide public amenities, essential shops, and a mix of economic activities within a short walk or bike ride of residents’ homes” 

The list of societal atrocities C40 is behind is practically endless – let’s just say that pretty much every bad idea you’ve heard about pretty much anything in the past five years is included and touted as a solution to, um, erm, climate change and stuff-ish (note – if you do go to the C40 website – which I suggest you do – use that old crappy laptop you never bothered to get rid of because you are going to want to throw it through a window.)

But in the end does it really matter?  Isn’t C40 just another excuse to spew carbon flying around the world for “peer-to-peer networking and thought leader sessions” in warm places in cold months and cold places in warm months?

A bit – like nearly every MASSIVELY IMPORTANT CLIMATE CHANGE AGREEMENT TO BE SIGNED, the agreements are legally non-binding.  Like the literally dozens of CLIMATE SAVING AGREEMENTS the state of California has signed with anyone who can fog a mirror, these statements and pronouncements and such do not carry the force of law.

But while agreements and excuses for junkets and ways to hire idiot nephews like this cannot directly implement anything, they absolutely change the conversation about the issues they focus on.

The goals may seem aspirational, but that is enough to make sure every local bureaucrat involved in anything related to a C40 “policy” at least takes them into consideration when formulating actual rules and regulations.  They form a lattice work upon which such laws can comfortably hang, allowing local electeds to say that the new law they just passed setting a $100 fee to drive into a “zero emission zone” merely reflects “international best practices.”

Policy conversations change, interactions with private companies are seen in a new, rather dim light, do-goodery foundations are automatically consulted, academic studies (at least ones that agree with the premise) are trotted out, and the public just has to sit back and take it because we’re not qualified:

In other words, C40 and groups like it create an umbrella of acceptability and anything outside that umbrella is all wet.

And society ends up drowning.