Posted on 03/01/2018 9:16:21 AM PST by Signalman
With her city under siege by one of the worse winter storms in years, and the army called out to deal with a rare snow paralyzing transportation systems, the mayor of Rome should have had plenty of things to do for her people.
But for Virginia Raggi, the most important thing was to be more than 6,000 miles away, in the sunny climes of Mexico, announcing a ban on one of her city’s most popular private forms of transportation.
In other words, the global warming gang was once again being humiliated by weather that refused to cooperate with the leftist agenda.
ven more humiliating for the citizens of Rome, though, was that Reggi chose the site on foreign soil to make the coming ban public on Monday — before she even made the announcement at home.
“Rome has decided to ban the use of diesel cars from its historical centers from 2024,” Raggi told the environmentalists, drawing a round of applause.
“My citizens still don’t know,” she added laughing. (The Daily Caller has the video here. The announcement comes about the 5-minute mark.)
While the might not have known what their 39-year-old mayor was up to in Ciudad de Mexico, Romans were getting a taste of global warming at home. (The environmentalist crowd has been trying to call it “climate change” ever since they realized the weather was something they couldn’t lie about, but everyone knows what they’re really selling.)
And this is what global warming looked like in Rome this week, while Raggi was regaling her fellow greens.
“The Arctic storm dubbed the ‘Beast from the East’ saw temperatures across much of Europe fall Monday to their lowest level this winter and even brought a rare snowstorm to Rome, paralyzing the city and giving its residents the chance to ski, sled and build snowmen in its famous parks and piazzas.
“Rome’s schools were ordered closed, while train, plane and bus services were crippled. Italy’s civil protection agency even mobilized the army to help clear slush-covered streets as a city used to mild winters was covered by a thick blanket of snow.”
And this is the time Reggi uses to announce a ban on diesel engines – and do it thousands of miles from her shivering city.
That was no small order to spring on a supposedly free people. While diesel passenger vehicles are rare in the United States, about two-thirds of all cars sold in Italy are diesel engines, according to the U.K.
And Rome has an unusually high number of automobiles – about 2.3 million — compared to its population. That works out to just more than 800 for every 1,000 inhabitants, Reggi told the conference.
(In the United States, by contrast, there were just under 450 private vehicles per 1,000 people in 2012, according to The Atlantic.)
One of the reasons the number of vehicles in Rome is so high is a previous, heavy-handed government action to control the population banned only cars with odd-numbered or even-numbered license plate on alternating days, according to the Guardian.
The Roman response?
“To skirt the alternate days regulation, many families buy a used car with a different number plate,” the Guardian reported.
Now, Rome obviously has great number of treasures from antiquity – monuments of marble that are being damaged by air pollution mainly caused by vehicle exhaust. And if Roman authorities wanted to present the fight in that light, they might be on firmer ground. Tourism is a major part of the Roman economy, and everyone can understand that tourists won’t be spending money in Rome if the treasures aren’t protected.
But that kind of dollars-and-euros reasoning wouldn’t satisfy the virtue-signaling ethos of modern environmentalism, which presents its climate change/global warming stance as a measure of moral standing.
So, to fight global warming, in the middle of one of the worst winter storms her city can remember, the mayor of Rome jets to Mexico City to announce a ban on the type of vehicles her people drive the most.
Even after a previous attempt to limit half the vehicles ended up resulting in more of them on the roads.
It was a humiliating moment for Rome.
It was a humiliating moment for the global warming gang, even if they should be getting used to this kind of thing by now.
And it should have been humiliating for Reggi, whether she realizes it yet or not.
Coniglietti no no no.
That is so funny I just had to congratulate you!
“From that secret free power source that we keep getting emails about”
Is that in Nigeria by chance?
That was a ~decade after I graduated from HS...
Sometimes the softball is just there to be belted, right?
FRegards to you!
I ain't buying that, it likely includes children under the driving age......
Grooooaaaaan!
32 degrees now and snowing with 3 - 5 inches predicted overnight.........crap!
Stupida.
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