Europe’s Al Gore
Sunday, March 11th, 2007 10:41 am by Neal |
| EU President, Jose Manuel Barroso, lectures the peasants on the sacrifices they must make in the name of global warming. Like Al Gore, Barroso doesn’t believe in leading by example. |
Writing for the Independent, Dominic Lawson has this column on Europe’s premier global warming hypocrite, “Global warming gurus set a bad example”
Anyway, we Europeans don’t need to listen to an American hypocrite. We’ve got one of our own. The EU’s president, Jose Manuel Barroso, is revelling in his new-found role as putative global leader in carbon-use reduction. According to yesterday’s FT: “In the past few months it has been hard to keep track of the climate change initiatives pouring out of Mr Barroso’s Commission.” One of Mr Barroso’s initiatives is called “You control climate change”, which, he says “makes clear to what extent we are all responsible for climate change and what individuals can and need to do to limit this threat”.
So what did Mr Barroso do “as an individual” when it was pointed out that while urging Europe’s car manufacturers to produce vehicles which emit fewer than 130 grammes of C02 per kilometre, he nevertheless continues to drive a sports utility vehicle, the VW Touareg 4×4, which emits 265g/km? Mr Barroso said: “I never see myself as an example. A moralistic approach is not mine.” Mr Barroso is obviously a keen student of AC Grayling.
There’s much more to Lawson’s story which you can read here. For example, Lawson notes “Tesco’s sudden decision to ‘save the planet’ by reducing the amount of fresh produce it air-freights” which is devastating to the fresh fruit and flower farmers in Kenya.
I’m not worried about the planet. However, can we survive the army of hypocritical bureaucrats like Al Gore and Jose Manuel Barroso who view our freedoms as annoying impediments to their “legacy” as saviors of the planet? Mother Earth will be fine, but what about the farmers in Kenya?