the best kind of virtue signaling is phony virtue signaling

france edition

the funny thing about virtue signaling is that the best kind is also the worst kind.

• it’s best for populists and demagogues because it looks like strong action and sacrifice.

• it’s worst from a practical and ethical standpoint because it exhibits no virtue whatsoever.

it’s just a sham, a cheap fugazi meant to dazzle the undiscerning and make images of grand diamonds dance in their heads.

you get all the glory for none of the sacrifice.

no wonder it’s so popular with the current crop of mendacious miscreants.

here is a master class:

sounds impressive. look how committed we are, how bold! allons y de la future! admire our leadership and our sacrifice.

this one goes up to 11!

leaving aside the energy and scientific illiteracy implicit in macron’s statement, there is only one teensy little problem with his grand posturing:

it’s meaningless.

this is the equivalent of greenland claiming it’s going to stop producing pineapples.

because france does not produce any meaningful amount of oil.

their reserves are tiny and their production (1st column, 2nd is per capita) is laughably small.

france produces about 13,000 barrels of oil a day. that’s less than noted oil baron state illinois. by a wide margin. (IL produces about 50% more than france)

compared to a real oil producing nation, it’s not even a rounding error.

it’s 1/10th of 1% of US production.

meanwhile, france consumes about 1.7 million barrels per day.

oops.

so, they do not even produce 1% of what they use.

99.2% of their oil must be imported.

and their per capita use is high.

(and note that nowhere in this agenda is any sort of promise to reduce consumption which is, of course, the only thing that could plausibly make a difference. shifting to imports does nothing apart from political grandstanding.)

france is the number 13 consumer of oil globally. (1.8% on 0.8% of population)

so this “radical oil ban” of theirs is like a fat kid that eats 3 chocolate cakes a day cutting out celery to lose some weight.

it’s performative nonsense.

these are the global leaders, the WEF patrons and proteges who seek to dictate to you how you must consume energy and food and healthcare. they are the ones seeking to control information and censor speech.

and yet you cannot trust them any further than you can throw them, and honestly, probably not even that far.

their claims are false and their promises vapid.

they are not signaling virtue, they are signaling disingenuousness.

and so the answer is always easy and always the same.

learn it. love it. live it.

you have no obligation to follow these people or to care what they want.

“because i don’t want to” is always a good enough answer.

it is time we turned out backs on these tiresome tin-hat tyrants and their monotonous machinations of global ruin.

these are not honest people.

and they are not on your side.