By It often seems like environmentalists love to target things that people enjoy. Whether they’re attacking art museums, banning good lightbulbs, or even going after gas stoves, “green” regulators seem to start all policy by asking themselves how they can take away things that make us happy.
In 2019, film critic Sonny Bunch explained that “Environmentalists make good movie villains because they want to make your real life worse.” He wrote, “Radical environmentalists have really been taking it on the chin at the multiplex. They are perfect villains for our times: well-intended enough to often seem somewhat reasonable, but meddlesome busybodies whose hopes and dreams are to radically reduce standards of living in order to effect some utopian scheme or another that will return the world — or worlds — to an unsullied Eden.
Thanos, the villain (and protagonist, really) of the $2 billion-grossing megahit, “Avengers: Infinity War,” was basically an omni-powered Paul Ehrlich. Whereas the comic book version of Thanos sought to kill half of the universe in order to prove his love for an anthropomorphized Death, the film version was driven insane by his home planet’s self-immolation after a series of resource wars. Determined to eliminate suffering over food and land, over clean water and clean air, Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet not to create abundance of each but to kill half of all living things.
Again, this is Ehrlichian in its madness: The author of ‘The Population Bomb’ argued for years that the planet is overpopulated and that famines will wipe out a significant portion of humanity. It could still happen, I suppose — global warming could inspire an ‘Interstellar’-style blight; the skies could go dry — but, frustratingly for the doomsayers, life on Earth keeps getting better despite the ‘overpopulation’ our precious blue orb continues to shoulder.”
Maybe Thanos would have succeeded had he gotten a job at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which recently crossed a line that no one should stand for. They now want to ban pizza.
The New York Post writes, “The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has drafted new rules that would order eateries using the decades-old baking method to slice carbon emissions by up to 75%.
“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said in a statement Sunday. “This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible.”
The rule could require pizzerias with such ovens installed prior to May 2016 to buy pricey emission-control devices — with the owner of one Brooklyn joint saying he’s already tossed $20,000 on an air filter system in anticipation of the new mandate.
Some crusty customers also told city officials not to tamper with their slice.
“I’m all for responsible environmental practice but tell Al Gore to take one less private jet or something. Give me a break!” said Brooklyn Heights resident Saavi Sharma, 32, a financier who brought her parents and cousin visiting from India for their first slice at Grimaldi’s, referring to the former vice president and climate change activist.
Under the proposed mandate, pizza parlors with coal-and-wood-fired ovens would be required to “hire an architect or engineer to look at the feasibility of installing emission controls devices to achieve a 75 percent decrease in particulate emissions.
If the report finds that a reduction of 75 percent or more is not possible it must identify any emission controls able to provide a reduction of at least 25 per cent or an explanation of why emission controls cannot be installed.
Restaurants will have the option to apply for a variance or waiver, but would have to provide evidence to prove a hardship,” wrote The Daily Mail.
New York has recently been on a tear to undermine talking points from national Democrats who claim that “no one wants to take [fill in the blank, pizzas, stoves, etc].”
New Conservative Post wrote in May, “No one, they insist, wants to ban gas stoves. Well, no one except the State of New York, where both congressional leaders of the Democratic Party hail from.
The Washington Post noted, “Late Tuesday, the New York legislature approved a $229 billion state budget that will prohibit natural gas hookups and other fossil fuels in most new homes and other construction, a major victory for climate activists. The move, which will likely face a court challenge from the fossil fuel industry, will serve as a test of states’ power to ban fossil fuels outright, rather than simply encouraging developers to build low-carbon buildings.
The law effectively requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and in 2029 for taller buildings. And although it allows exemptions for manufacturing facilities, restaurants, hospitals and even carwashes, the measure does not do what some climate activists had feared: give cities and counties license to override the ban.”
New York City has seen its population plummet over the past few years amidst a skyrocketing cost of living. From 2020 to 2023, the city has lost nearly half a million people, or roughly 5 percent of its population.
In potentially-related news, city officials reported that more than half of students in third through eighth grades can’t read at proficient levels.
New York City officials say more than half of students in third through eighth grades can’t read at proficient levels – so schools are getting ready to overhaul how they teach reading starting next year. Athena Jones has more. pic.twitter.com/oJ9DuLQOqi
— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) June 26, 2023
But at least they won’t have to worry about wood-fired pizzas soon.
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