Tag: travel

Germany Says It Will Have To BAN DRIVING At Weekends To Meet Net Zero Targets

The German transport minister has declared that he will have to enforce a complete ban on driving at weekends throughout the country in order to comply with current climate ‘net zero’ laws.

Yes, really.

Volker Wissing has suggested changing the law to exclude the transport sector from carbon emissions reduction targets for now, because it is basically impossible without outlawing people getting in their cars.

Wissing has stated that the law needs to be changed before mid-July, otherwise he has no choice but to take the drastic action.

In a letter to coalition parliamentary group leaders, Wissing wrote “A corresponding reduction in traffic performance would only be possible through restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the population, such as nationwide and indefinite driving bans on Saturdays and Sundays.”

Keep reading

All UK Airports will close by 2029 & Beef and Lamb will be banned for Human Consumption to meet Climate Scam Targets according to UK Gov. Report

A report produced by Oxford University and Imperial College London for the UK Government reveals that all airports will be ordered to close, eating beef and lamb will be made illegal, and construction of new buildings will not be permitted to meet the legal commitment of zero emissions by 2050.

The report states that all airports must close between 2020 and 2029 excluding Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast airports, which can only stay open on the condition that transfers to and from the airport are done via rail.

All remaining airports must then close between 2030 and 2049 because to meet the legal commitment of zero emissions by 2050 every citizen of the United Kingdom must “stop using aeroplanes” for a significant period of time.

In addition, the report states that to obey the law of the Climate Change Act the public will be required to stop doing anything that causes emissions regardless of its energy source. According to the report, this will require the public to never eat beef or lamb ever again.

To do this national consumption of beef and lamb will drop by 50% between 2020 and 2029. Then between 2030 and 2049 beef and lamb will be “phased out”.

Keep reading

CNN Calls for Limits on How Often Americans Can Travel Abroad: “Carbon Passports May be the Answer”

Ordinary folks like you and I are still doing too many things and going to too many places for the globalists’ liking, so CNN‘s Ross Bennett-Cook, a lecturer at the School of Architecture + Cities at the University of Westminster in London, has a solution: “carbon passports” that limit each person to no more than X-amount of travel in a given year.

According to Bennett-Cook, the end of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “pandemic” has brought with it a resurgence in public travel that he feels is generating too many so-called greenhouse gases, which he believes “are driving the climate crisis.”

Tourism, Bennett-Cook insists, “is part of the problem” because of all those jet fumes that allegedly “warm” the planet and create fictitious problems like “boiling oceans.” The only apparent solution, he says, is carbon passports that restrict travel for the world’s non-elite.

Taylor Swift and other celebrities will still be allowed to travel on their multiple private jets everywhere they go, but middle-class families will have to stay home for the rest of the year once they reach their carbon limit.

(Related: This is not the first time that CNN has called for implementing “carbon passports” to stop Americans from traveling.)

Keep reading

Do Not Under Any Circumstances Nationalize Greyhound

America has an extensive network of private, for-profit (and profitable) intercity bus services primarily serving lower-income people. It’s a great example of how the free market can provide an essential service without public subsidies.

Naturally, the socialists want to shut it all down.

In response to recent news reports about Greyhound closing bus stations (in favor of curbside pick up) and shutting down service to some midsized cities entirely, Jacobin columnist and Rutgers philosophy professor Ben Burgis advocates for nationalizing the company and running its buses on dedicated interstate lanes.

“A publicly owned intercity bus service with dedicated highway lanes could do for travelers what the US Postal Service does for letters and packages,” writes Burgis.

Travelers, like Postal Service packages, would “criss-cross the country cheaply and quickly,” says Burgis. This new government-run bus company would extend service to everywhere, he writes, and “like the USPS,” this government-run bus company would be “financially self-sufficient.”

That the Postal Service is “financially self-sufficient” would be news to USPS, which reported a $6.5 billion net loss this past fiscal year. Indeed, the Postal Service is currently shuttering facilities and raising prices as part of a 10-year restructuring plan meant to get it out of the red.

Keep reading

Achtung! US Travel To Europe Will Require Prior Approval, Biometric Scanning

Traveling to most European countries is about to get more complicated and invasive for American citizens: In spring 2025, you’ll have to first request permission.  And you’ll be saying adieu to passport stamps and ciao to facial and fingerprint scans — and having your biometric data stored in an enormous government database. 

On Friday, an agency of the European Union announced the updated timing for the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), which has first set to roll out in 2024. It applies to travelers from more than 60 countries that are currently exempt from visa requirements. Those countries have an aggregate population of 1.4 billion. 

As is the case today, Americans won’t need a visa, but they will need to apply in advance for permission to visit any of 30 EU countries for stays lasting up to 90 days. It will cost about $8 to apply, with requests submitted via the official ETIAS website or ETIAS mobile app. With activation of the process more than a year away, neither is yet configured to collect applications. ETIAS assures the public that most applications will be processed in minutes. 

The approval will be tied to your passport, and will be valid for up to three years or until your passport expires, whichever comes earlier. Once you have it, you’ll be able to visit as much as you want, so long as it’s a “short-term stay,” which generally means up to 90 days in a 180-day period. 

ETIAS recommends applying for permission “well in advance” of your trip, but doesn’t specify what that means. The agency does caution that the approval period “could be extended by up to 14 days if you are requested to provide additional information or documentation, or up to 30 days if you are invited to an interview.” There’s no indication where such interviews would be conducted or by whom. 

Keep reading

Carbon Passports Are The Next Dystopian Surveillance Threat

The digital ID agenda is already on the horizon. But it doesn’t stop there. Digital carbon passports are the next big proposal. Travel enthusiasts worldwide might soon face a drastic change in exploring international borders, with global warming triggering the implementation of carbon passports that could limit their wanderlust, asserts Intrepid Travel in a recently published report.

Dubbing these restrictions as “personal carbon allowances,” the report portends they would serve as determinants compelling individuals to conform to the global carbon budget.

With imposed limitations on yearly travel anticipated by as soon as 2040, travelers might be forced to relinquish the horizon-expansion privileges, usually afforded by contemporary tourism.

Crafted in collaboration with forecasting agency The Future Laboratory, the report highlights the alleged repercussions of climate change on popular summer destinations like Greece and Majorca, supposedly deemed too hot for humans.

The introduction of carbon passports could raise serious privacy concerns about the level of surveillance exercised over individuals’ movements and behavior.

Could these measures act as precursors to overreaching surveillance, tracking individuals’ carbon footprints?

Keep reading

Holidays could be restricted if personal carbon allowances are introduced, warns travel firm

International travel could be restricted by carbon passports as global temperatures rise, a holiday company has warned.

A report by Intrepid Travel claimed drastic measures could be introduced as many popular destinations face “extinction”.

It predicted that “personal carbon allowances” may be introduced to reduce emissions.

The report stated: “These allowances will manifest as passports that force people to ration their carbon in line with the global carbon budget, which is 750 billion tonnes until 2050.

“By 2040, we can expect to see limitations imposed on the amount of travel that is permitted each year.”

It added that travellers will be “forced to forgo the horizon-expanding experiences so readily embraced by today’s tourists”.

The report, produced in partnership with foresight agency, The Future Laboratory, warned that climate change means destinations such as Greece and Majorca may become too hot for many people to enjoy summer holidays, causing a switch to cooler locations such as Belgium, Slovenia and Poland.

It stated: “At this pivotal moment in climate history, lack of action from the travel industry will see catastrophic and fatal trends continue to develop.”

Keep reading

California Looking To Restrict Travel For Classic Cars

The state of California is looking seriously at instituting or allowing local governments to institute zero-emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) reportedly is gathering information about classic cars and how their owners use them. We knew something like this was coming to the US and California would likely be first, but this is still concerning.

According to a Daily Caller report, on August 2 CARB sent a survey to owners of classic cars from model year 1978 or earlier. The questions were aimed at ascertaining how those classics are used and store, as well as where they’re driven. It even asks about how many miles show on owners’ odometers. Knowing how increasingly authoritarian many government agencies seems to be trending, this is concerning to many car enthusiasts who still live in the Golden State.

Keep reading

Say Goodbye to Permissionless Travel

Once upon a time, citizens of the United States could travel to almost every country in the European Union for 90 days without asking any government for permission beyond showing a passport at the initial point of entry. It was—and still is, for a few waning months—a marvelous if underacknowledged achievement for liberty.

Alas, the days of frictionless travel will soon be a memory. Starting at a so-far-unspecified date in early 2024, Americans and residents of 62 other countries that currently enjoy visa-free visitation to the Schengen Area of the E.U. will need to pay a fee and submit an online application (including biometric information, work experience, medical conditions, and initial itinerary), then pass a criminal/security background check, before enjoying that croissant in gay Paree. The grimly named European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) is projected to cost 7 euros per application and take up to 14 days to render a decision.

Before you start shaking your fist at freedom-hating Eurocrats, know that ETIAS is the belated continental answer to a system the U.S. has imposed on residents of friendly countries since 2009, called the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA. Like ETIAS, ESTA is a response to 21st-century terrorist attacks and combines modest fees ($21) with less-than-instantaneous turnaround times (a promised 72 hours). Both either tweak or torpedo (depending on your point of view) the notion of reciprocal “visa waiver” travel between high-trust countries.

U.S. passports have long been given the red carpet treatment worldwide, due to the country’s economic heft and traditional leadership role in negotiating down international barriers to the movement of people (and goods). That latter ethic began to deteriorate after the Cold War, with the rise of bipartisan anti-illegal immigration politics in the early 1990s, and then in earnest after Saudi nationals pulverized the World Trade Center with highjacked planes on September 11, 2001.

Keep reading

Idaho Takes Aim at Interstate Travel for Abortion. Health Care Providers Are Suing.

Two doctors and a Planned Parenthood affiliate are suing Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador after the Gem State’s top cop stated that it’s illegal for doctors to refer residents to out-of-state abortion providers. This would represent a clear violation of numerous constitutional rights, they argue.

Labrador’s assertion is part of a larger attempt by Idaho Republicans to enforce the state’s strict abortion ban even outside of state lines. Abortion is totally banned in Idaho except in cases involving rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s life, and minors in these circumstances can only obtain an abortion with a parent or guardian’s permission.

On Wednesday, Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a law creating the new crime of “abortion trafficking.” The law makes it illegal to help someone under age 18 obtain an abortion “by recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state” without a parent or guardian’s permission, with violations punishable by two to five years in prison.

The new law “is somewhat strangely worded,” Reason‘s Emma Camp noted recently, “as it technically does not criminalize the act of crossing state lines to help a minor obtain an abortion without parental consent, which is what would practically be required in a state where abortion is almost entirely illegal.” But the abortion trafficking law tacitly takes aim at helping minors travel out of state for abortions, stating that the fact that “the abortion provider or the abortion-inducing drug provider is located in another state” cannot be used as an affirmative defense. So it seems an Idaho resident who helped an Idaho teenager arrange an out-of-state abortion, arrange to purchase abortion pills in another state, or travel at all within the state on the way out of state could still be charged with abortion trafficking even if the abortion itself doesn’t take place in Idaho. The law also “allows the filing of lawsuits against doctors who perform such abortions, even if the doctors live outside the state,” notes The New York Times.

That the abortion trafficking statute is meant to prevent out-of-state travel is made clear in a Wednesday letter from Little. The measure seeks “to prevent unemancipated minor girls from being taken across state lines for an abortion without the knowledge or consent of her parent or guardian,” he wrote.

And the state isn’t stopping at trying to prevent girls from going out of state for abortions.

In a March 27 letter to Idaho Rep. Brent Crane (R–Nampa), Labrador wrote that Idaho’s criminal prohibitions on abortion “preclude 1) the provision of abortion bills, 2) the promotion of abortion bills, and 3) referring women across state lines to obtain abortion services or prescribing abortion pills that will be picked up across state lines.”

Keep reading