Proponents of the “15-minute city” say it will reduce emissions and improve residents’ quality of life, but critics say the concept, supported by the World Economic Forum, is discriminatory and will lead to “climate lockdowns.”

Under the filter plan, Oxfordshire will be divided into six districts. Beginning in 2024, residents will be able to drive within their neighborhoods, but license plate recognition cameras will fine private cars £70 for passing a filter without a permit. Vehicles such as bikes and public transportation will be exempt.

Residents can apply for a permit to drive through the filters up to 100 days per year, and residents living outside the zones can apply for a permit for up to 25 times per year. The filters will be in effect daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The county council said the plan is not meant to coerce residents into staying in their neighborhoods, but rather to address traffic congestion by “making walking, cycling, public and shared transport the natural first choice.”

Critics of the plan garnered thousands of signatures on petitions opposing it. The plan also sparked several protests, with local workers speaking out in the press.

For concerned workers who pass through several districts daily to get to work, the council suggested they use a less central route such as the ring roads outside of the city center.

Community critics pointed out that this solution would add time and pollution, contrary to the plan’s goal to tackle climate change.

Conflict over the plan went international. Polarizing figures like bestselling author Jordan B. Peterson tweeted that the plan was the “worst imaginable perversion” of the idea that cities should be walkable, and Piers Corbyn went to an Oxford City Council meeting to protest. City council members reported being harassed.

Major media organizations, including The Guardian, Reuters, PolitiFact, USA Today, The Times and the BBC weighed in to support the local policy and discredit dissent as “conspiracy theory,” by pointing to some exaggerated online claims that people would be confined to their districts by force.

But the 15-minute city concept has sparked widespread public concern beyond Oxford, particularly among the growing number of people concerned by policy proposals promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) that involve widespread implementation of top-down environmental and urban policies, as seen on Twitter, in numerous articles and in videos.

[…]

What is the 15-minute city?

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, mainstream media, urban planners, the U.N. and developers — many with ties to the WEF — began promoting the 15-minute city — a new urbanist proposal that cities be redesigned into decentralized microcities where people could meet their needs for living, working and playing within 15 minutes of their home.Fifteen-minute city advocates say the self-sufficient neighborhood concept is an old one and is how cities were imagined before cars.

[…]

Building [cities] back better? 

[…]

Dave Reay, Ph.D., chair in Carbon Management & Education, School of Geosciences, at the University of Edinburgh, told The Guardian it was incumbent upon countries to “build back better” — a WEF slogan.

Different global actors began to hold up the 15-minute city as the way to do that — “to reduce emissions and improve residents’ quality of life,” as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) put it.

[…]

Mike Haigh, then-chief executive of the Mott McDonald consulting company and now chair of the WEF Infrastructure Industries Governors Group, spoke on a September 2021 WEF panel about the 15-minute city:

[…]

And in March 2022, the WEF published an article arguing the model would be critical for dealing with shocks caused by “climate change and global conflict.”

The pandemic gave the idea new relevance, WEF author Lisa Chamberlain said, referring to the lockdowns.

She cautioned that implementing the idea would require sacrifice, or “creative destruction brought on by a technical revolution,” but cities that don’t redesign themselves in this way will “struggle mightily.”

[…]

Who’s behind the push for the 15-minute city?

[…]

Efforts to pilot the 15-minute city in practice are largely driven by C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, made up of 96 mayors of cities from around the world, funded by major corporations and philanthropic foundations and focused on urban activism for climate change.

The group was founded in 2005, by the mayor of London, and in 2006, it merged with the Clinton Climate Initiative.

C40 Cities also works closely with developer Arup Group, a WEF-affiliated organization, to create development plans to redevelop “sustainable” or “net zero” buildings to address the problem of climate change.

In July 2020, the group published a framework for cities to “build back better.” The organization promotes the 15-minute city model as a new roadmap for a post-pandemic world.

C40 Cities in September 2022 announced it is partnering with a developer, Nordic Real Estate Partners — a Danish development firm with 18 billion euros in assets — and UN-Habitat to deliver proof-of-concept for “15-minute city” policies by implementing neighborhood pilot projects in at least five cities.

Cities such as Paris, Madrid, Milan, Ottawa, Seattle, Milan and Vancouver are among those that have declared plans to transform their cities into a 15-minute city model.

Melbourne has adopted a long-term strategic plan for 20-minute neighborhoods. 

Recently Cleveland, Ohio’s new mayor announced, with the support of the city development department, a bike advocacy group and real estate developers, that the city is “working toward being the first city in North America to implement a 15-minute city planning framework where people — not developers, but people — are at the center of urban revitalization.”

More city councils throughout the U.K. also announced they will investigate or implement 15-minute city plans.

A walkable city with amenities close to home, what could be the problem?

[…]

Some planners, even within the new urbanist school of thought, link the concept to the history of top-down urban planning approaches that exclude the marginalized.

At the CityLab 2021 conference, hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Aspen Institute, Jay Pitter, a Toronto-based urban . . . said many marginalized communities are opposed to ideas like this because they lead to further displacement.

[…]

Politico reported that Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has been internationally lauded, winning prizes for her leadership in fighting climate change and landing herself on Time’s list of 100 most influential people in 2020.

But she faced backlash from Parisians who charge her with destroying the city’s heritage and disrupting their lives by supporting the 15-minute city concept.

Analysts critical of the program in Oxford raised concerns about the concept more generally. They cautioned that the inspiration for the concept in the lockdowns, which were responsible for widespread social and economic devastation and new forms of social control, ought to be concerning.

They point out that while the concept of, “climate lockdown” sounds “ridiculous,” articles in publications like the BBC’s “How ’15-minute cities’ will change the way we socialise,”

[…]

Several organizations, including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), have circulated the idea that “climate lockdown” might be necessary for several years.

They promoted an article written by University College of London professor and WEF contributor Marian Mazzucato, Ph.D. suggesting that “climate lockdowns” might become necessary to address the looming “climate emergency.”

The WBCSD is a partner of and supported by the WEF-affiliated Arup Group. Arup and C40 have been partners for over a decade in their project to redesign cities. The 15-minute city is part of that project.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/15-minute-city-climate-solution-control/

By  Dr. Joseph Mercola

Most chronic diseases can be linked to the consumption of processed seed oils, according to ophthalmologist Dr. Chris Knobbe, who called consumption of the oils in Western diets so dangerous it is “a global human experiment … without informed consent.”

Story at a glance:

• Ophthalmologist Dr. Chris Knobbe says most chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration are linked to the consumption of processed seed oils.
• Knobbe says the large consumption of omega-6 seed oil in everyday Western diets is so dangerous it is “a global human experiment … without informed consent.”
• Polyunsaturated fatty acids, also called PUFAs, found in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils, trans fat and plant oils, owe their existence to “roller mill technology,” which replaced stone mill technology and removed their nutrients.
• Many people now consume 80 grams of PUFAs a day, which amounts to 720 calories and one-third of their caloric intake.
• Results from studies of tribal peoples and animals have demonstrated the deleterious effects of PUFAs in the diet.

What do heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration and other chronic health conditions of modern society have in common?

They all have increased by shocking amounts in the last decades. And, they are all linked to the consumption of seed oils.

In a recent speech at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, titled “Diseases of Civilization: Are Seed Oil Excesses the Unifying Mechanism?,” Dr. Chris Knobbe reveals startling evidence that seed oils, so prevalent in modern diets, are the reason for most of today’s chronic diseases.

Knobbe, an ophthalmologist, is the founder of the nonprofit Cure AMD Foundation, dedicated to the prevention of vision loss from age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

He is a former associate clinical professor emeritus of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

His research indicts the high consumption of omega-6 seed oil in everyday diets as the major unifying driver of the chronic degenerative diseases of modern civilization.

He calls the inundation of Western diets with harmful seeds oils “a global human experiment … without informed consent.”

The rise of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs)

Trans fats and polyunsaturated fatty acids, also called PUFAs, found in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils and plant oils, are a fairly recent invention and include cottonseed, rapeseed, sunflower, safflower, rice bran, soybean, corn and other popular oils.

PUFAs owe their existence to “roller mill technology,” which around 1880 replaced stone mill technology that was used to grind wheat into flour.

Roller mill technology facilitated the entire removal of the bran and the germ of a grain, leaving only the endosperm, a refined product with its nutrients removed.

According to Knobbe, writing on the Cure AMD Foundation website:

“The first of these [PUFAs] was cottonseed oil. This was soon followed by the hydrogenation and partial hydrogenation of cottonseed oil, producing the first ever artificially created trans-fat. The latter was introduced by Proctor & Gamble in 1911 under the name ‘Crisco,’ which was marketed as ‘the healthier alternative to lard … and more economical than butter.’”

Crisco, the grandfather of commercially produced PUFAs or trans fats, is still widely sold today. The plan of vegetable oil producers, says Knobbe, was to undersell and therefore replace animal fats, which were priced higher. The plan was successful.

PUFAs became so popular that they now make up 63% of the American diet, form the basis of U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, food recommendations and are found in 600,000 processed foods sold in the U.S. today.

[…]

Chronic diseases rose with PUFAs

Many people are aware that diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease, metabolic syndrome and other conditions were less common in the first part of the 20th century than they are today. But the rise in the incidence of these conditions is more dramatic than many realize.

According to Knobbe:

• In 1900, 12.5% of the U.S. population died of heart-related disease; in 2010, that figure was 32%.
• In 1811, 1 person in 118 died of cancer; in 2010, 1 in 3 died of cancer.
• In 80 years, the incidence of Type 2 diabetes has increased 25-fold.
• In the 19th century, 1.2% of Americans were obese; in 2015, 39.8% were obese.
• In 1930, there were no more than 50 cases of macular degeneration; in 2020, there are 196 million cases.

Are the rises in these chronic conditions correlated with the rise in the dietary consumption of PUFAs? Absolutely, says Knobbe in his lecture.

He gives the following explanation:

“These disorders from heart disease to atherosclerosis to type-2 diabetes to macular degeneration and cancer all have the same thing. They all have mitochondrial dysfunction … The very first thing that happens when the electron transport chain fails … is that it starts shooting out reactive oxygen species — these are hydroxyl radicals and superoxide …

“These free radicals lead to nuclear mitochondrial DNA mutations … which contribute to heart failure … macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s … a catastrophic lipid peroxidation cascade [that] leads to toxic aldehydes.”

At the root of the harmful biochemical reactions enacted by seed oils is linoleic acid, says Knobbe, which is an 18-carbon omega-6 fat. Linoleic acid is the primary fatty acid found in PUFAs and accounts for about 80% of total vegetable oils. Omega-6 fats must be balanced with omega-3 fats in order not to be harmful.

[…]

PUFAs create insulin resistance

Diabetes, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome have become epidemic since the U.S. diet has been based on PUFAs. It is estimated that nearly 70% of Americans are now overweight or obese and a substantial amount are metabolically unhealthy.

This puts people at risk for Type 2 diabetes as well as the many chronic diseases associated with insulin resistance, from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.

In his lecture, Knobbe explains how these conditions develop:

“When you consume omega-6 to excess … it combines with reactive oxygen species like hydroxyl radicals … so this begins catastrophic lipid peroxidation cascade — these polyunsaturated fats are accumulating [in] your cells, accumulate in your membranes, accumulate in your mitochondria and they cause a peroxidation reaction.”

Because there’s so many reactive oxygen species it leads to developing insulin resistance at the cellular level and the production of lipid droplets in your liver, continues Knobbe:

“… that creates a catastrophic lipid part or it feeds back to the lipid peroxidation … so now you’re not burning fat for fuel properly so the person gaining weight and getting sick in this regard is now carb dependent — their glycolysis is working but … [they] start storing the fat … so this leads to obesity.”

[…]

Rat studies and indigenous people show PUFA harm

Animal studies have dramatically demonstrated the deleterious effects of PUFAs. In one study Knobbe cites, two sets of rats were put on identical diets except one group received 5% cottonseed oil and the other received 1.5% butterfat.

The result of the study was that:

“… the rats on the cottonseed oil grow to sixty percent of normal size and live[d] 555 days on average; they’re, weak, fragile, sickly little rats. The rats on the butterfat they are healthy; they grow to normal size and they live 1020 days so they grow to almost twice the size [of the cottonseed oil-fed rats], live twice as long and are infinitely more healthy.”

[…]

For example, the Tokelau people who live on islands in the South Pacific between Hawaii and Australia eat a diet almost exclusively of coconut, fish, starchy tubers and fruit.

Between 54% and 62% of their calories come from coconut oil, which contains saturated fat, Knobbe points out.

Nevertheless, a study of Tokelau men between 40 and 69 years found that they had no heart attacks, no obesity and no diabetes. They were “fantastically healthy,” says Knobbe.

Whether we’re talking about animal studies or studies of non-Westernized people, at least 80% of obesity and chronic diseases in Westernized countries come from processed foods, Knobbe concludes.

“It is driven by vegetable oils and trans-fats … fast food restaurants almost all cook in soybean oil and canola oil.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/processed-seed-oils-cola/

By  W. Aaron Vandiver

There are better ways to address climate change than insisting federal lawmakers declare a national “climate emergency” — including building a left-right coalition that can work together to build resilience to the environmental challenges of the 21st century while preserving democracy, civil liberties and human rights.

In February 2022, 1,140 organizations sent President Biden a letter urging him to declare a “climate emergency.” A group of U.S. Senators did the same, in October 2022, and a House bill, introduced in 2021, also called on the president to “declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act.”

[…]

But what does it actually mean for the president of the U.S. to officially declare a “climate emergency”?

Most people don’t realize that under U.S. law, a national emergency declaration triggers a set of emergency powers that allows a president to act without the need for further legislation.

[…]

For civil libertarians across the political spectrum, from left to right, a “climate emergency” should be a focus of concern.

Even environmentalists who may instinctively and understandably support the idea should be worried about the potential for the authoritarian model of “emergency” governance that arose during COVID-19 to overtake climate policy.

[…]

Elements of the left and right should be coming together to reject demands that we sacrifice democratic norms, rights and freedoms for flimsy promises of safety from political and economic elites who seek to exploit a crisis — a cynical ploy that COVID-19 thoroughly exposed.

[…]

Before that, I might have supported a “climate emergency” without a second thought. Now, after three years of lockdowns, mandates, censorship and other heavy-handed policies, the trust is gone.

The leaders pushing for a new emergency who have failed to repudiate the abuses of the last one — even those with the purest of intentions regarding the environment — have lost credibility.

[…]

How would a ‘climate emergency’ even work?

Environmental advocacy groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity have called on the Biden administration to invoke specific emergency statutes that would give him the power to:

• Ban crude oil exports.
• Stop oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf.
• Curtail international trade and investment in fossil fuels.

The Center for Biological Diversity says that these emergency powers would allow Biden to put the U.S. on the path to “jettison the fossil-fuel economy and burgeon a just, anti-racist, and regenerative America in its place.”

However, there are many reasons to doubt such grandiose claims. Numerous energy and materials experts, including the well-known analyst Vaclav Smil, have concluded that a rapid transition to “green” energy may not even be possible.

[…]

Even if Biden fully exercised the emergency powers identified by the Center for Biological Diversity, this would have little effect on emissions.

Climate experts who must speak on the condition of anonymity to “avoid upsetting colleagues” admit that “while a climate [emergency] declaration is important in terms of media attention and galvanizing the climate movement, it does not have significant impacts on carbon pollution.”

When you look at the wish lists of the Senate and House members who want Biden to declare a “climate emergency,” and the demands of the many activists who say we must reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050, the emergency powers listed by the Center for Biological Diversity barely scratch the surface of what most say is needed.

[…]

Elizabeth Kolbert, a leading climate journalist, recently wrote an article “Climate Change from A to Z,” published in The New Yorker. Here’s what she says must happen to reach net-zero by 2050:

• The fossil fuel industry will essentially have to be dismantled, and millions of leaky and abandoned wells sealed.
• Concrete production will have to be reengineered. The same goes for the plastics and chemicals industries.
• The fertilizer industry will also have to be refashioned.
• Practically all the boilers and water heaters that now run on oil or gas, commercial and residential, will have to be replaced. So will all the gas stoves and dryers and industrial kilns.
• The airline industry will have to be revamped, as will the shipping industry.
• Farming “emissions, too, will have to be eliminated.”
• Electrical transmission capacity must be “expand[ed] so that hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, and buses can be run on electricity.”
• “Tens of millions” of public charging stations [must be installed] on city streets and even more charging stations in private garages.
• Nickel and lithium must be extracted for electric batteries, “which will mean siting new mines, either in the U.S. or abroad.”
• New methods for producing steel or building a new infrastructure for capturing and sequestering carbon” must be invented.

“All of this should be done — indeed, must be done,” Kolbert wrote. “Zeroing out emissions means rebuilding the U.S. economy from the bottom up.”

[…].

A 2021 report by Deutsche Bank said that we may have to accept “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship” to reach net-zero by 2050. The U.N. has suggested countries are moving too slowly, leaving us with no option but the “rapid transformation of societies.”

[…]

How a ‘climate emergency’ could infringe on civil liberties and human rights

How worried should we be that a “climate emergency” intended to “rapidly transform” our entire society by 2050 — which would be the 80th national emergency in U.S. history — might gradually expand in scope to infringe on basic civil liberties and human rights?

[…]

In October 2020, University College of London economics professor Mariana Mazzucato, who chairs an economics council for the WHO, published an article expressly raising the possibility of “climate lockdowns” to address a “climate emergency.”

[…]

A “climate emergency” is a powerful legal tool that could conceivably be used to impose “green” restrictions on the public in circumvention of the normal democratic lawmaking process, particularly if a presidential administration comes under pressure to stretch its emergency powers beyond their intended purpose.

[…]

The book “Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It,” by three environmentalists, methodically picks apart arguments that solar, wind and other “green” energy technologies are clean, renewable or good for the planet.

Even to find sufficient quantities of minerals for “green” energy to be developed at scale, mining companies may begin “deep-sea mining” — some have already applied for permits — which ocean ecologists fear could annihilate ocean ecosystems.

Mining for lithium and other metals at a large enough scale would also have to take over vast areas of wildlife habitat, worsening the global biodiversity crisis.

[…]

Climate activists and progressive politicians seem to believe that this collateral damage to the environment is a small price to pay for a “green” economy, which will ultimately save more of the planet than it destroys — but there are reasons to be skeptical.

Gefology Professor Simon Michaux, Ph.D., for instance, concluded there are not enough minerals and other resources on Earth to build economy-wide “green” energy technologies and infrastructure.

And of course, it remains doubtful that “green” energy is even capable of powering the growing global economy, which still gets over 80% of its energy from fossil fuels. Even under a “climate emergency,” for the foreseeable future, we will most likely be stuck with the environmental damage caused by both fossil fuels and “green” energy.

Missing from the conversation about a “climate emergency” is a broader understanding of how ecological damage to soil, water, forests, biodiversity and ecosystems drives climate change and interrelated environmental problems.

As activist Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., explained, the globalized industrial food system is a main driver of climate change due to land use change, agrochemical pollution, monocultures, and other unecological methods.

[…]

Governments around the world are using environmental goals to forcibly shut down small farms as they promote dependence on industrial technologies and factory foods that could make climate change and other environmental problems worse.

[…]

Would government officials use a ‘climate emergency’ to let Bill Gates ‘dim the sky’?

As if all the above were not worrisome enough, there is one final thing that the U.S. government operating under a “climate emergency” might try to do — something that has unparalleled potential to end in ecological disaster.

Another New Yorker article — this one by the country’s foremost climate activist, Bill McKibben, who has led the charge for a federally declared “climate emergency, warns, “Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet is a Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Toward It.”

McKibben’s article is about “solar engineering” — spraying reflective chemicals into the stratosphere — to cool down the planet. Scientists funded in part by Gates have been studying the issue.

[…]

The potential side effects of “dimming the sun” are mind-boggling. They include turning the sky from blue to white and plunging entire regions of the Earth into ecological chaos.

‘Left’ and ‘right’ must collaborate to pursue alternatives to a ‘climate emergency’

[…]

This issue should not be framed as a dispute between “deniers” and “believers” in climate change. The prospect of a wide-ranging and long-lasting emergency mode of governance should prompt serious questions from everyone across the political spectrum.

These questions include:

• Will a “climate emergency” put us on the path to solving climate change, or will it merely centralize power and enrich special interests while potentially undermining democracy, civil liberties and human rights?
• Will a “climate emergency” be used to promote dubious or even dangerous “green” technologies that actually harm the environment?
• What happens if/when emergency measures most likely fail to affect climate change? Will the government keep doubling down on policies that do not actually work, creating a doom loop of failure followed by louder calls for more to be done?

[…]

One major cause that a left-right coalition could get behind is local, small-scale, organic agriculture — healthier and much friendlier to the environment than the globalized industrial food system, which is responsible for at least a third, and by some estimates, a majority of greenhouse gas emissions.

Small-scale organic agriculture also is good for family farmers and small business owners, and more conducive to local food security in a time of global instability and economic uncertainty.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/climate-emergency-authoritarian-governance-covid/

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