by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Yes, I asked who and not what...
What we are seeing here, in my opinion, is nothing but a repeat of the Oil Crisis in the 1970's, the one that never was, only with different means.
This is another way for the governments continue the anti-car agenda?
While I cannot prove this, obviously, for even the powers that be do not leave a trail of evidence in this matter, it has, however, all the hallmarks of yet, like the Oil Crisis of the 1970's, another attempt of people control.
The “Oil Crisis” in the 1970's, the one that was about as real as Alice in Wonderland, happened just a very short time, something like a week or so, after the great speech by Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State of the USA, in which he stated, and I paraphrase “if you want to control nations you have to (be able to) control fuel, and if you want to (be able to) control people you have to control food (and water)”.
If you want to be able to control, however, where people live and work you have to control fuel and have to get them off their personal means of transport, namely the motorcar.
Enter the global warming myth.
The fact is that the powers that be have been trying to get us out of cars – and I am saying this while I am not even a car owner and/or driver but a cyclist. First they try to scare us with “global warming” being the result, so they claim, and they use all manner of science and scientists to back this up, of car emissions primarily and, as this does not seem to work we now – surprise – have oil prices going through the roof.
High prices may just be one way that might stop people using their cars (as much) and where the global warming threat has not worked the bite in the pocketbook will more likely work.
In addition the fuel costs are driving up the other household costs, be this energy or food and this has a knock-on effect on how much people can spend on fuel.
I know that I am a cynic when it comes to this getting people out of cars agenda of the governments, not only that of the UK. This seems to be leading all the way back to whoever really runs the (Western) world.
Personally, I do think that we do use cars far too much and far too unnecessarily for does one really have to jump into the car to go to the newsagents for a paper – then again do you really have to buy a paper still? - or to the shops, which are less that five or ten minutes walk away? I do not think so.
Does little Johnny or little Jenny, whose school is only a few minutes walk away from their homes, have to be driven to school by Mom (or Dad) and that, more often than not, in a gas-guzzling SUV? Certainly not and it is also no wonder that little Johnny and little Jenny look like little beaches whales. Thinking of that: I have to apologize as that is an insult – to whales.
There are so many other example of unnecessary car use that could be given, where walking, cycling or the use of mass transit of one way or the other would be the answer and often also much cheaper (though with the costs of British rail fares this is not so in many cases).
However, while I am all for getting out of the car (more) I am against forcing people out of their cars by such covert backhanded operations, such as fuel price hikes or supposed oil shortages as the earlier cited “Oil Crisis” in the 1970's or the claim that the climate change that our Planet is experiencing is the result of car emissions.
What this appears to me is nothing but yet another blatant attempt of people control. An attempt to see what it will take for people to “abandon” the use of their cars. It is obvious that the threat of global warming, now rephrased to “climate change”, a much more correct term than “global warming”, as the actual warming of the Earth has stopped and even the head of the IPCC has to admit that this is so and that the temperature has not risen since about the year 2000 and is on a plateau currently without any signs of rising, not even fractionally, has not – at least not as yet – worked people away from their car use.
As, as it would appear there is a timetable to the “getting people out of their personal cars” agenda, the time seems to be getting close and a new set of guns had to be rolled out; enter “oil shortage” and “fuel price hike”.
Now let's see what is next?
I shall keep watching and analyzing and reporting.
© M Smith (Veshengro), May 2008