The Idiot Parade

It’s not often that I write about developments in Bulgaria but this week I got about 70% of my laughs from local news so I thought I’d share the entertainment.

It all started with Sofia’s new mayor and city council, elected less than a year ago. The new mayor, a young former businessman, came into office with a lot of ambitions and a solid backing in the council, notably from an organisation that calls itself Save Sofia, which is exactly what it sounds like — Greens.

Those boys and girls have had some brilliant ideas over the years, most of them for some reason having to do with trams. Their most recent contribution to the public transport conundrum of the city authorities was the proposal for a new tram route along a stretch that already has a tram line plus underground. They just like trams.

Anyway, mayor and councilors got elected and at the time, Cassander Slav predicted a meltdown within the year. After the elections, they spent several months trying to elect a chairperson. Then they raised their salaries, cutting funding for kindergartens (of which there is a severe shortage). People grumbled but stayed put. And then they reorganised traffic on two of the busiest streets in town. Locals promptly took to those same streets demanding resignations.

This tells you a lot about Sofians’ priorities but that’s the depressing part and we’re not here on Friday to get depressed. The fun part is how completely the new city council bungled the changes.

They added new bicycle lanes, meaning they took away one traffic lane and one parking lane from cars. This already means heavier traffic but enthusiasm carried the councilors further and they changed the parking system, too, for what parking spaces remained. This is where it got interesting. Because local drivers don’t want to reverse park. Not on these streets anyway. On these streets, you see a space, you get in, fast.

The law says reverse parking is the safer way to park. Practice proves it. There is just one detail that’s rather relevant for the streets that got blessed with the reorganisation first: reverse parking would stop traffic twice (first to back up into the space and then to pull out) while head-first parking would only stop it once (while pulling out). And that’s on top of having to slow down to be able to spot a free space.

That’s not an issue on streets with moderate traffic. It is, however, very much an issue on the busiest ones — which is why Stara Zagora’s busiest street has no such problems. It’s enter-as-convenient parking there and the traffic flows, dangerous as pulling out may be.

Backers claim people will just have to get used to it. Opponents threaten daily protests until the changes are dropped. Cyclists are happy, so there’s that. I myself am firmly in the reverse-parking camp.

I used to get palpitations when trying to park head-first, so I stopped trying. Reverse parking is a breeze in most places. But if I’m ever crazy enough to drive in downtown Sofia, I’ll be parking head-first in those giant new spaces. It’s either that or a honk symphony followed by sedatives. I would, however, appreciate a lively discussion on the topic.

Anyway, the story is a glowing lesson in how to mess up by acting on enthusiasm and applying the letter of the law a bit too literally to the detriment of everyone concerned. Except cyclists. But it’s not the only story with a moral this week.

In other news, California’s hugest pension fund threatened Exxon it would vote against the re-election of CEO Darren Woods to the board unless Exxon dropped its lawsuit against the two activist investors that wanted the company to start tracking and reporting its Scope 3 emissions.

It’s an adorable case of “Nice board you got there. You don’t want anything to happen to it, do you?” Calpers has 0.2% in Exxon. Apparently, it keeps these 0.2% grudgingly, despite its High Climate Principles, to try and influence Exxon to move in the right direction, that is, away from its business.

Also apparently, it’s not working very well, so the fund is resorting to threats and accusations of “shutting down shareholders’ ability to speak their mind”. Nothing says “I speak my shareholder mind” like tabling resolutions demanding Scope 3 tracking and reporting that would hurt a dividend-carrying shareholding.

Meanwhile in India, the brewing war between conservation and transition is coming to a head — or it would have been coming to a head, had there been such a war. Unfortunately for many species, conservationists have mostly morphed into transitionists, so help’s not coming.

India, I learned today, is home to the Great Indian Bustard — one of the world’s heaviest birds and one that has been hunted and pesticides-ed into near extinction. Solar power could be the last nail in its coffin as the government and the energy industry plan to utilise the sunshine potential of one of the bird’s last remaining habitats.

This utilisation would require the installation of transmission lines and the Great Indian Bustard happens to have rather poor sight, meaning these would be dangerous for it, according to conservationists. It’s bird versus gigawatts of intermittent electricity.

Chances are, the gigawatts will win, as they did with offshore wind, which totally doesn’t kill whales and onshore wind, which kills some birds but they are a necessary sacrifice. Or something.

Moving to Europe, we learn that the EU’s Greens are in the grip of fear because they might lose as much as a third of their seats in the European Parliament in June. It’s that infuriating “populist wave” rising from the right that’s threatening the Greens’ legislative comfort — and the Green Deal.

Bloomberg detailed the drama this week, noting that “The question is whether Europe can maintain its ambitious green targets without losing competitiveness.” The obvious answer is “No” but Greens don’t like obvious answers, so they’re doubling down, by adding climate radicals to their candidate lineup.

It’s happening in Germany, where some climate activists are considering a political career at the EU’s legislative body. Smart career choice, I suppose, given the soaring cost of living across the bloc and especially in Germany. Climate legislation seems to pay better than activism.

So we might get to see a Letzte Generation member or two as MEP in a month. You know Letzte Generation? It’s the German version of Extinction Rebellion. It means the Last Generation, which means that they’re exactly as stupid as Extinction Rebellion members. With all the projected right-wing climate sceptic additions to the mix this will be an EP term to remember. I can’t wait.