{"id":1778996,"date":"2022-12-18T06:30:15","date_gmt":"2022-12-18T11:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1778996"},"modified":"2022-12-18T07:48:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T12:48:19","slug":"calvin-beisner-climate-lockdowns-coming-to-a-city-near-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/calvin-beisner-climate-lockdowns-coming-to-a-city-near-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Calvin Beisner: Climate Lockdowns Coming to a City Near You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcalvin-beisner-climate-lockdowns-coming-to-a-city-near-you%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1778996&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/b016c2fd-dd4d-430a-a659-fdd4f8c5623b@news.ap_.org_.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\"   style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" id=\"isPasted\">Recently a claim has gone viral about a decision by the Oxfordshire, England county council to divide the city into sectors that can be traversed by walking in 15 minutes or less, and then restrict residents\u2019 travel from one sector to others to no more than 100 days a year\u2014except by special permit available by application and at a price.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The actual facts of the plan are, frankly, difficult to ascertain. The council has placed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oxford.gov.uk\/download\/downloads\/id\/8144\/bgp_14_15_minute_cities.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a formal document about it online<\/a>. The document is nearly impenetrable. No wonder reports are highly conflicting\u2014and, I\u2019m pleased to say, generally exaggerated.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">There are in fact some problems with the plan, but some reports misrepresent it. The website Joannenova.com.au, generally a reliable site about climate-change-related science, ran <a href=\"https:\/\/joannenova.com.au\/2022\/12\/oxford-2024-climate-lockdowns-start-you-will-be-tracked-and-trapped-in-your-suburb-and-happy-about-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a piece headlined \u201cClimate lockdowns coming? You will be tracked in your suburb and happy about it<\/a>.\u201d WattsUpWithThat.com, another site that runs lots of reliable information about climate science, ran a <a href=\"https:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2022\/12\/04\/oxfordshire-council-to-trial-a-climate-lockdown-starting-2024\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">piece by Eric Worrall<\/a> quoting Nova\u2019s report at length. Those sources said the plan would \u201clock residents into one of six zones to \u2018save the planet\u2019 from global warming,\u201d adding that this \u201clatest stage in the \u201815 minute city\u2019 agenda\u201d would \u201cplace electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighborhoods.\u201d Residents would \u201cneed permission from the Council\u201d for more travel within the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Now, there really is such a thing as a \u201c15-minute city\u201d concept. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/15-minute_city\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a> describes it as \u201ca residential urban concept\u201d linked with the \u201cnew Urbanism\u201d of the 1980s\u201d \u00a0aimed at making it so \u201cmost daily necessities can be accomplished by either walking or cycling from residents\u2019 homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But, is that what\u2019s really up in Oxford, England\u2014home of the venerable Oxford University? No. (As an aside, it\u2019s not coincidental that this arises in a town dominated by a university. Academia tends to be about as far removed from the real world and its practical problems as can be imagined. I speak from experience after 25 years as a student, Kindergarten through Ph.D., and 16 as a professor.)<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Okay, as best I can understand it, relying on a <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/fact-check-oxford-climate-lockdown-016485612575\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fact check by the Associated Press<\/a>, what Oxford\u2019s council intends to impose, beginning in 2014, is a plan that will limit drivers, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., to 100 trips per year through \u201ctraffic filters\u201d\u2014not \u201cgates,\u201d electronic or otherwise, but license plate recognition cameras\u2014between their own \u201c15-minute\u201d sectors and neighboring sectors. But the sectors are defined not by 15-minute\u00a0walking\u00a0distance (about 6 tenths of a mile to a full mile) but by 15-minute\u00a0driving\u00a0distance (about 7.5 miles assuming an average of 30 miles per hour).<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">By application, drivers will be able to get more trips\u2014at a charge. They can still access any part of the city by car without added charges, or fines, if, instead of going directly from their own sector into another, they can use a different route or first drive out to the \u201cring road\u201d surrounding the city and then back in via another route\u2014thus taking them out of the most heavily congested areas. They can also go through the \u201ctraffic filters\u201d more than their allotted 100 times, though they\u2019ll pay a fine unless they have first filed an application and paid a fee. Further, as one city official put it, contrary to claims that the new plan would confine people to within their sectors, \u201cEveryone can go through all the filters at any time by bus, bike, taxi, scooter or walking\u201d\u2014just not by private car. Oh, and commercial vehicles, vans, motorcycles, disabled drivers, and first responders will be exempt from the rules.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Without excessive length, that\u2019s about as accurate a summary as I can figure for the plan. It isn\u2019t a \u201clockdown,\u201d and it doesn\u2019t appear to built, explicitly or implicitly, on desires to fight climate change by limiting how much people drive\u2014though it\u2019s likely that such desires lurk in the shadows. Instead, the primary aim seems to be traffic management: giving people incentives not to drive during periods of highest congestion, so those who most need to do so are less hindered, and those who don\u2019t need to have an incentive to enter covered areas in times of less congestion.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">That\u2019s no different in principle from what many people already experience in urban areas: HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes and express lanes, some with tolls varying by time of day. In principle, that\u2019s just good economics: prices are higher when products are scarcer and lower when they\u2019re less scarce.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">However, such policies inconvenience poorer people more than richer people. Poorer people can\u2019t afford the tolls, or in the Oxford plan\u2019s case, the fees or fines, as well as richer people can. It\u2019s a bit ironic, then, that such a plan would arise in a city, and country, whose political leanings are considerably more socialist\/egalitarian than capitalist\/meritocratic.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The law of unintended consequences kicks in, too.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Suppose your elderly parent wants to stay in her own home but needs daily assistance with household and hygiene functions. You\u2019re glad to give, but she lives in a different sector. To give her the care she needs every day, you must apply and pay for 265 additional trips per year. What does that do to family ties? It will raise your incentive to hire professional caregivers\u2014care sellers, really\u2014because their vehicles will be defined as \u201ccommercial,\u201d but yours won\u2019t. It will be one more pressure on the God-ordained, natural family. Alternatively, you can walk or ride a bike, both requiring more time than driving\u2014and money is time in foldable form. Or, you can take a taxi\u2014which will cost more than driving your own car. Or ride a bus, taking more time but less money.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Oxford\u2019s congestion-reduction plan is not the draconian \u201cclimate lockdown\u201d plan some people have claimed it is. By raising the cost of driving at times of highest congestion, it will reduce congestion. In principle, there\u2019s nothing wrong with it. Some people will gain, some will lose. That\u2019s not unusual in civil society. What\u2019s irksome is when the gains and losses are determined not by people\u2019s free choices but by largely unaccountable bureaucrats.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">When He started His public ministry, Jesus cited the words of the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah, \u201cThe Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord\u201d (Luke 4:18\u201319). Those words \u201cto proclaim release to the captives\u201d and \u201cto set free those who are oppressed\u201d are relevant here. Christians should seek ways to reduce, not increase, unnecessary restrictions on freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently a claim has gone viral about a decision by the Oxfordshire, England county council to divide the city into sectors that can be traversed by walking in 15 minutes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1778999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[10007,5458,10008,5269,4321,4726,4619,3819,6540],"class_list":["post-1778996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-beisner","tag-bongino","tag-calvin","tag-city","tag-climate","tag-coming","tag-lockdowns","tag-report","tag-you"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1778996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1778999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}