In the midst of an existential climate crisis, Barbara Baarsma, a progressive banker, member of D66 [D pour “Démocrates”, parti fondé en 1966]one of the coalition parties of the center and the right in power, proposes to fix a carbon dioxide budget (CO2) per person. A budget that everyone could put up for sale on a stock exchange which, by the greatest chance, would be managed by a bank. We would thus be happily privatizing the responsibility for the climate crisis, while offloading it onto the citizens. It’s hard to give the fossil industry a bigger gift.
The icing on the cake: people like this D66 banker could quietly continue their castle life. They would just have to buy CO credits2 to a parcel delivery man who, even if he works hard, can no longer pay his rent, in the same way that, around 1780, the French aristocracy of the Ancien Régime increased the tax paid to poor peasants to continue to lead his sumptuous existence.
At the time of a huge inflationary crisis, in a country where the poor are bearing most of the brunt, finance minister, progressive and D66 member Sigrid Kaag, says nothing about how she intends to help her people. Instead, she tweets to let the world know that she hopes Beirut, Lebanon, will recover. A message accompanied by a