In an effort to reduce greenhouse emissions -- something climate alarmists blame for what they call global warming -- London is expanding its "Ultra Low Emission Zone" (ULEZ), where owners of diesel-fuel vehicles and other automobiles that do not meet certain standards are subject to a daily charges.
According to the Transport for London, "To help clear London's air, the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year, except Christmas Day (25 December). The zone operates across all London boroughs, and does not include the M25."
Plans were announced by London Mayor Boris Johnson in March 2015 for the zone to come into operation in September 2020. Days ahead of the controversial expansion of the city's road charging scheme, the area's small business owners voiced concerns about the burden it puts on workers.
"We've been urging the mayor of London to do a lot more so that businesses, particularly small businesses, are not hammered," James Watkins of London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) recently told news outlet AFP.
Government assistance is available for people who want to replace their vehicles with newer, more "environmentally friendly" models, but critics say that government assistance just means more taxpayer funds.
Meanwhile, James Taylor, president of the Illinois-based Heartland Institute, says this has nothing to do with the climate.
"It is just an opportunity and an excuse to punish anything, any vehicle that uses fossil fuels," says Taylor. "It doesn't matter if all the climate change predictions are not coming true; it doesn't matter if the air quality in London and elsewhere is getting better all the time. This is just a knee-jerk attack on fossil fuels."
In the states, Marc Moreno of Climate Depot says most Democrats and the entire GOP establishment seem to be drinking the Kool-Aid.
"They are being led by Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who wants to promote the idea that 'climate change is a problem, and Republicans have solutions,' because they're afraid of losing younger voters," he submits.
Only two Republican candidates -- Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy -- are so far willing to call out the climate alarmists.
When MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell recently asked the latter to "offer a shred of evidence that more than two million people died from converting to clean energy," she did not appear ready for his response.
"I can offer clear evidence that the number of climate disaster-related deaths is down by 98% over the last century," Ramaswamy began. "The right answer to all temperature-related deaths is more plentiful abundant access to fossil fuels."
He went on to offer statistics to debunk the so-called "Green New Deal" as unnecessary and an economy buster. Moreno agrees.
"There's no evidence CO2 is the control knob," he tells AFN. "You can't distinguish what's happening in our climate with anything that's from natural variability to what man-made is."
Moreno echoes Taylor's sentiment that the climate hysteria is not even about the climate.
"This is about redistributing wealth," he summarizes. "It's about essentially centrally planning the economy. They're using the climate scare the way they used the COVID scare -- to affect societal change."
