When radical leftwing city officials push insane, impossible policies, are they merely engaging in virtue signaling, hope to profit off graft for the issue, or want to inflict as much pain on ordinary Americans as possible?
That’s the question to ask about Houston and Austin signing on to an agenda to eliminate meat and dairy consumption by 2030.
Two Texas cities are participating in an emissions-cutting program that seeks to end meat and dairy consumption.
According to the organization, “C40 is a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis.”
Although largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg, C40 has other donors including FedEx, Google, and the Clinton Foundation.
Both Austin and Houston are listed as participating cities, with “membership operat[ing] on performance-based requirements, not on fees.”
Houston is a “Megacity,” according to the C40 membership ranking. Megacities are “Cities that show exceptional climate leadership at the global level, and have an urban population that currently/is expected to exceed 3 million or more people by 2030.”
Austin is in the “Innovator” membership category, which includes “cities that show exceptional climate leadership at the global level, but do not meet the population/size criteria of a Megacity.”
Altogether, the participating cities make up a quarter of the global economy.
According to C40 Cities Executive Director Mark Watts, “As always, C40 has adopted a science-based approach and that science is clear: average consumption-based emissions in C40 cities must halve within the next 10 years. In our wealthiest and highest consuming cities that means a reduction of two-thirds or more by 2030.”
Watts stated this in a report from C40 Cities in 2019 entitled, “The Future Of Urban Consumption In A 1.5°C World.” The report lays out “ambitious targets” for cities to meet regarding the urban consumption of building materials, food, clothing and textiles, private transportation, electronics, and household appliances, as well as private aviation travel.
The report defines “ambitious targets” as the following:
“Target level of ambition for consumption interventions that is more ‘ambitious,’ based on a future vision of resource-efficient production and extensive changes in consumer choices. This level was typically informed by expert judgment rather than existing research.”
Under meat and dairy consumption, the ‘ambitious target’ would be 0 kilograms of either for all citizens.
Of course, the idea that a large city in Texas is going to give up meat is absolutely bonkers. Barbecue is one of the biggest civil religions in Texas, only slightly behind football. You might as well ask Frenchmen to give up wine. And I’d really like to see leftwing apparatchiks attempt to close down every taqueria in Houston, as the beat-downs they’d receive would be epic.
We could ask why liberals continually push policies that they would hate living under themselves, but we all know the answer to that: They’ll never live under the rules they apply to others. You have to give up private vehicles and all air travel in the name of global warming, but they’ll feel no compunction in continuing to jet off to Davos because they’re special. The Gavin Newsoms of the world will always eat at the French Laundry, no matter how much they slam you for daring to leave your house to buy a hamburger.
Rules are for the little people. Nancy Pelosi will never give up here freezer full of high-end ice cream, but she’ll happily castigate you for daring to ignore the dictates of the ruling nomenklatura.
Those pushing eating the bugs will never have to eat the bugs themselves. The point is to make you eat the bugs…
Tags: agriculture, Austin, C40, Democrats, Global Warming, Houston, Social Justice Warriors, Texas
If I would the people who run the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, I’d be looking for an alternate venue. Loudly and publicly.
I’ve travelled pretty extensively and I’ve eaten my fair share of bugs. Let me be the first to tell you there’s nothing wrong with eating them, and sometimes they are quite good, but even in places where insectophagy is hugely popular and common (Changmai, Thailand for instance), people who have a choice and can afford to upgrade to macroanimal protein. And quickly too.
Bugs are poor food. They have always been poor food. They were poor food before the bible implied locusts were the food of the refugee, and they will be subconsciously regarded, by all peoples, as poor food for thousands of years to come. Subconsciously all peoples regard them in the same way as they regard cannibalism (something all humans practiced in pre-history), as a not-so-distant reminder of a hunter/gatherer past you and your ancestors left behind when you learned to till the soil. Everyone that can afford an upgrade away from bugs does upgrade away from bugs, and you’re seeing that in places like India, Thailand, China, Taiwan, and even Africa.
The thing that upsets people is the class implication and the destruction of choice. If you want to eat bugs, eat bugs. If you want to eat meat, eat meat. If you want to eat plants and only plants, eat plants. Kindly stop proselytizing your ‘gospel according to stomach’ to others and the rest of the world like some foil-hat-wearer with a bible canteen as though your dietary choices are some kind of revelation. They’re not.
“[T]he bible implied locusts were the food of the refugee,…”
John the Baptist ate honey and honey locust, AKA carob. He was similar in stature to the prophets who warned the Kings against idolatry and who at various times were commanded to eat a particular diet as a performative sermon to the people.
Eating locusts may be kosher but not one of the prophets lived off them because their arrival came only intermittently. The prophet Daniel, who strove to keep kosher adopted a diet of lentils.
For the Leftist, you are expected to eat bugs as an act of contrition for your bourgeois living standards.
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