Reality has a way of slapping doomsday cults in the face. Whether it’s a bunch of castrato Star Trek fans thinking they’re about to ascend to the Great Federation in the Sky, or demented doctor-doom Paul Ehrlich predicting mass famine in the West in the 1980s (to the surprise of most of us who actually lived in the ’80s).
You’ve got to hand it to the Climate Cult, though, they’re even more determined to ignore brutal reality than even Ehrlich’s legion of dedicated doom goblins. Still, you’ve got to wonder how long they can keep it up when even the Pakistanis are arcing up.
Protests over skyrocketing power bills shut down a major road into Pakistan’s capital on Monday as some 3,000 supporters of a major Islamist party continued a sit-in despite pouring monsoon rains.
While the protests are undoubtedly reflecting local politics to some degree – the protesters flew the flag of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party – the core issue is the same grim reality facing voters from Australia to Britain: surging electricity prices.
The government raised power prices 26% during the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, before tacking on another 20% increase on July 13. Officials say the increases were needed to meet conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for a $7 billion loan deal made earlier this month.
The seven billion dollars from the IMF was the lion’s share of the nine billion dollars in “climate-related pledges” made to Pakistan after the devastating 2022 floods.
Now, Pakistanis are joining the long list of voters discovering the hard way that Climate Cultism invariably comes with a very hefty price tag.
The government has also added a confusing bevy of taxes on top of the base price, adding up to a bill that has more than doubled for some Pakistanis.
“This month I paid 22,000 rupees ($80) for my electricity bill, while in May I only paid 10,000 rupees ($36),” said Asma Humayon, who teaches at a private school in the city of Lahore. “I don’t know how to run the kitchen; now half of my salary is going to energy bill."
Welcome to the club. Britain’s energy regulator estimates that thousands of Britons die every winter due to ‘energy poverty’. Australians are finding, too, that someone has to pay for all those subsidised solar panels for the middle class – the taxpayers.
In Baluchistan province in Pakistan’s southwest, meanwhile, thousands protested against police violence, an internet shutdown and highway closures, community leaders said Monday.
People had been heading across Baluchistan province a day earlier to take part in a mass gathering when security forces reportedly opened fire to disperse the crowds, according to a statement from the event organizers.
At least one person was killed and seven were injured, they said, while Amnesty International put the death toll at three […]
It’s the latest unrest to strike the country’s largest and poorest province. Armed groups have waged an insurgency against the state for decades, demanding independence.
There are also deep grievances about enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and the exploitation of Baluchistan’s abundant natural resources at the expense of people in the province.
The dragon in the room in all this is China.
Via Xi Jinping’s notorious Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested heavily in Pakistan’s power infrastructure, as well as the derelict port of Gwadar – one of the provinces experiencing violent unrest. China already has small-scale “security teams” protecting its citizens and assets in Pakistan.
How long before that – purely in the interest of protection, of course, because China utterly respects sovereignty – becomes a full-scale, permanent, armed presence?
