Fill-er- Up on Carburants
Tears flowed onto the streets of the Champs Elisee yesterday, as they have been so often in French history; so often in France the weeping came, the elder cobblestones were being excavated, recruited to act as projectiles aimed at the police. Now did the batons fly, finding bones and flash cracked and crumbled.
It was not the first time the French people had thrown rocks and invectives at each other. The vast social revolution of 1968 comes immediately to mind; there was that matter in 1870 when the Kaiser and his hungry Prussian troops entered Paris and ended up dining on rats and other available proteins. The culprit this time? You guessed it---taxes. That little five-letter word so often at the root of social unrest. This time, it was a proposal to raise taxes on carburants--those ranting, carbon-based fuels no one really likes; the ones that eventually spell doom for the planet.
Thinking he could do something crazy (like planing for the future by learning from the past) French president Macron did what many French rulers have tried before him---slip a fastball passed the French taxpayer, The story was part of a plan that Macron ran on: acting responsibly to the reality of climate change by including a realist tax structure and handing it to the taxpayer. It was a case of repeating the rejected past policies and expecting that would speed the transition to a non-carbon based world. Faced with the financial dilmna, the Macron administration would begin by boosting the taxes paid at the gas pump. They did just what their predecessors did; they yelled "merdre" and poured into the street. They donned French economy to toradically change the economy to one that would transition to one that was less carbon so our grand children would have something to come home to.
It was not the first time the French people had thrown rocks and invectives at each other. The vast social revolution of 1968 comes immediately to mind; there was that matter in 1870 when the Kaiser and his hungry Prussian troops entered Paris and ended up dining on rats and other available proteins. The culprit this time? You guessed it---taxes. That little five-letter word so often at the root of social unrest. This time, it was a proposal to raise taxes on carburants--those ranting, carbon-based fuels no one really likes; the ones that eventually spell doom for the planet.
Thinking he could do something crazy (like planing for the future by learning from the past) French president Macron did what many French rulers have tried before him---slip a fastball passed the French taxpayer, The story was part of a plan that Macron ran on: acting responsibly to the reality of climate change by including a realist tax structure and handing it to the taxpayer. It was a case of repeating the rejected past policies and expecting that would speed the transition to a non-carbon based world. Faced with the financial dilmna, the Macron administration would begin by boosting the taxes paid at the gas pump. They did just what their predecessors did; they yelled "merdre" and poured into the street. They donned French economy to toradically change the economy to one that would transition to one that was less carbon so our grand children would have something to come home to.
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