Environmental tyranny continues its westward march as London Mayor Sadiq Khan doubles down on recent environmentalist efforts intended to negatively affect working and middle-class families.
London’s Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) are a new form of environmental tax designed to punish working people for the crime of daily commuting as they work to support their families. The scheme targets people who drive older vehicles and commute in designated ULEZ London metro areas, hitting drivers with a daily $16 tax for driving a vehicle that doesn’t meet the Mayor’s so-called clean air standards.
These standards are designed for new electric cars and other environmentally-friendly vehicles leaving many London commuters, including those with older cars and those who use business vehicles, incurring what could be an economically-destructive daily bill that will ultimately raise consumer prices and punish ordinary Londoners.
In response, some in London have taken measures into their own hands by sabotaging the newly-placed ULEZ surveillance cameras by aiming the cameras away from the streets and cutting the camera feeds altogether, to the delight of persecuted daily drivers and all who condemn the draconian moves.
This new tax also comes as many parts of the UK are considering the dystopian 15-minute city model, which aims to lock citizens into a set 15-minute radius, resulting in many neighborhoods being effectively isolated from the broader metropolitan areas.
The Sadiq Khan administration has responded to the pushback by doubling down, trying to expand the scope of the program to other London neighborhoods, along with reinforcing cameras with protective measures to discourage sabotage from fed-up commuters.
Ultra Low Emission Zones should alarm many around the world because the extremes to which progressive environmental activists are willing to go to enact their plans for drastic carbon emission reduction will also force first-world citizens to give up their freedom of movement, even as nations like China and India are responsible for most of the world’s pollution.
London’s plan is just part of a larger agenda that will try to force lower- and middle-class families away from independent combustion-engine transport and onto defunct, dangerous modes of transportation like public buses or trains. If London’s efforts in this arena aren’t enough to separate people from their beloved private transportation, other means, like outright banning the sale of combustion engines, might be the next step in taking freedom of movement from the ordinary person, and that would be a dark future.
