Just 10 days ago, I cited Director Terry Gilliam’s film “Brazil” for its dark-comic depiction of a dystopian world so overwhelmed by government bureaucracy and diktats that even the home heating and cooling system of the protagonist was run (and very poorly, at that) by the central-planning authority.
And a mere three days after that, I reported on Pennsylvania's Democrat Governor Tom Wolf vetoing a GOP-led bill that would have protected property owners from city and town mandates requiring them to stop using natural gas for heating. There seemed to be a theme in that story, as Wolf and eight other state governors continue their Quixotic push to reduce the bogeyman “carbon emissions” through impositions of building requirements, power-use directives, “carbon taxes,” public transit boondoggles, and other pie-in-the-sky novelties. The edicts appear to fit their climate-fever fancy and will drain private wallets, even while they drain individual sovereignty and opportunities away from the citizens the politicians repeatedly and deceptively claim are living in the “land of the free.”
And now, we might have a glimpse – many glimpses, in fact - of where Biden, Wolf and their collectivist cohorts want to take us, courtesy of the government of Spain.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy writes for The Verge that the feudal lords of Spain decreed Tuesday pretty much what Terry Gilliam predicted in his 1984 film: government air-conditioning commands.
“A decree published on Tuesday morning in the official state gazette and scheduled to go into effect next week mandates that air conditioning in public places be set at or above 27 degrees Celsius and that doors of those buildings remain closed to save energy.”
And, why not? In a nation that, like most, tested the malleability of sheepish people to follow ludicrous and economically lethal COVID19 lockdown orders on private businesses, the next-step-goose-step, additional imposition of climate-controlling edicts from the liege-lords simply follows the paternalistic plot.
Oh, and while we’re at this point in the “Brazil-like” dystopian story, let’s not forget that what the Spanish politicians mean when they say, “public” places is, like it is for most U.S. politicians and less-than-informed citizens, not what the word really means.
Tuohy continues:
“Those public places include offices, shops, bars, theaters, airports, and train stations. The decree is being extended as a recommendation to all Spanish households. The rules include maintaining heating at or below 19 degrees Celsius (about 66 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter and will remain in place at least through November 2023.”
Ahh, yes. “Public.”
As I’ve noted for MRCTV, “public” has been misappropriated by politicians and judges and bureaucrats in a rhetorical-judicial attack on private property. Public property is that on which tax money is spent. It’s claimed by the polis, and it pits taxpayers against each other, broadening the sweep of those who pay for it to people who never use it, or who never get to see the property used in the way they desire. Public control also sees little incentive to manage costs or the externalities the government land imposes on others.
Related: Chevron CEO: ‘There Will Never Be Another Refinery Built In The U.S.’ | MRCTV
Thus, if someone who owns REAL private property injures someone else or someone else’s private property, Common Law has established a tradition by which the damaged party can make a tortious claim, and the defendant can be made to deliver restitution.
But government is not a person. Government usually avoids paying for damages it has incurred, and even if the government does pay, it uses tax money to do it. This “sovereign immunity” status puts contemporary governments in positions like medieval monarchs, and there’s not a lot that REAL property owners can do to be made whole.
Thus, if my personal use of air-conditioning were really causing damage to the climate in such a way that it damaged your life or property, you could bring me to court.
But you’d have to prove it.
And the contemporary climate cultists cannot prove their argument. They push it not through individual torts, but through preemptive government edicts, like this in Spain.
Added to that is the energy problem in Spain, which also is caused by the lack of price-attaching free markets in energy that would see users cut back, of their own accord, as their OWN personal costs increased, and would see suppliers increase supply when demand and prices increase.
Adds Tuohy:
“Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has stated publicly that the country urgently needs to save energy, even encouraging office workers to remove their ties to help stay cool without artificial assistance. ‘I’ve asked ministers and public and private sector bosses not to wear ties unless it’s necessary,’ he said at a press conference last week.”
Tuohy seems to think that the PM was being facetious with that remark. But it’s no joke that the combination of Climate Cult fearmongering and centralized power supply in Spain, in tandem with a world-spanning energy market that has, since the early 20th Century, been at the mercy of government controls, favoritism, colonialism, warmongering, and terror, it’s no wonder that not only Spain, but France, Greece, Italy and India all are hopping on the Brazil bandwagon and telling private property owners how cool they can make their buildings.
As The Guardian reported July 29, France not only is imposing summer cooling limit, but a winter heat limit, and even a LIGHTING limit.
The German government is mandating that not only municipal buildings must reduce energy use, but that public gyms and pools must ban hot showers. Seriously.
"The German government recently '…unveiled ‘operation thermostat’ with the aim of reducing energy consumption by 10% this year and 30% by 2030. Measures include air conditioners being set at no less than 27C in summer and window shields being installed in public buildings.'”
By the by, 27 Celius is 80.6 Fahrenheit.
And it’s the same in India, which, like most of the others, sees the gub'ment imposing its political will on private shops, despite the politicians and bureaucrats not owning them. Instead, they syphon cash off of them and the peaceful market exchanges the businesspeople make with consumers, and then claim that their private property is “public.”
The long-held concept of individual ownership of oneself, and the principles to which that gives birth – principles such as private property, free speech, free trade, and free association – are being destroyed. The energy market has been rigged against competition and the ability of providers to offer their product directly to us at lower and lower prices. And there appears to be no question as to the fact that the already-imposed government controls on energy and private business have caused mass suffering over generations.
The question is, will people wake up and recognize the confidence trick and theft that’s been perpetrated before it’s too late, or will these political thugs impose more of this, so much so that, by 2030, we’ll be living in a global form of “Brazil”…?
Related: Trump Exec. Order Reviews Unconstitutional Federal Land Grabs | MRCTV