Last weekend, the Sri Lanka president and prime minister resigned in wake of protesters storming their residences, and the president has since fled the country. It was an instance of so-called "green" policies gone terribly wrong, as Bob Barr laid out in a column for Townhall, which involved a catastrophic fertilizer ban.
As an editorial from National Review on Tuesday that highlighted the "Collapse of Sri Lanka Is a Failure of Leftism," pointed out, what happened "are the real-world consequences of government central planning."
"Sri Lanka, under the leadership of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, decided in April 2021 to become the world’s first all-organic country," the editors wrote. "The government banned the use of chemical fertilizers and banned their importation. The move was pitched as creating a self-reliant economy on the island nation and hailed as a great experiment in green policy-making."
With such an embarrassing failure that Sri Lanka turned out to be, it looks like the World Economic Forum (WEF) is trying to cover its tracks. Tucker Carlson, who discussed the turmoil on his Monday night episode of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," shared that the WEF appears to have deleted an article dated August 29, 2018 from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, "This is how I will make my country rich by 2025."
As of Wednesday morning, the link is still broken, but archives show the link was working as recently as Monday morning.
There is only the briefest of mentions about the policies that drove the Sri Lankan people to revolt, with added emphasis:
We have also played a constructive role in promoting international and regional initiatives in many areas, ranging from the environment and climate change to maritime security and migration. It is our commitment to use the strategic potential of the country, including its vibrant maritime connectivity, for enhancing friendly cooperation with all partners while reaping the economic benefits for all our peoples.
Stunningly, on Monday, amidst the turmoil in Sri Lanka, WEF published a piece on how "Transitioning to green energy is key to both tackling climate change and creating sustainable economies. Here's why." Recommended reading includes a piece from June 20 about "Why the global energy transition must be just and equitable."
The World Bank has a page up on "Vision 2025: Sri Lanka’s Path to Prosperity," from October 17, 2017. There is no mention of buzz words such as "environment" or "climate change" or "green."
As lengthy and comprehensive as an explainer from Reuters may seem, there is still very little about the disastrous "green" policies, with more of an emphasis on "economic mismanagement" and how leaders stalled talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
"Anti-government protesters angry over power blackouts, shortages of basic goods and rising prices have long demanded that [President Gotabaya] Rajapaksa steps down," the explainer reads at one point. It fails to delve into why such blackouts occurred though, which are already coming to the United States, especially in the case of deeply liberal California, which Gov. Gavin Newsom has sought to turn into a progressive oasis of sorts but has really become more of a wasteland.
As Spencer wrote in a column last month about these coming blackouts:
Across America, millions of citizens facing forecasts of "above-average season temperatures" are at elevated risk of "forced outages for generation and some bulk power system equipment." That means, as the NERC assessment explains, "elevated or high risk of energy shortfalls this summer." Those grim findings on the crisis that looks set to plunge Americans into darkness during the hottest summer months have already been confirmed by power officials in Texas and California, another mismanaged jurisdiction where Golden State residents have been told they'll face "blackouts every summer for another four years."
Californians, plus millions more Americans who find themselves in the elevated risk zone — nearly everyone living west of the Mississippi River — face energy emergencies during what NERC calls "extreme conditions" such as droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires. Americans in the high risk zone — including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and portions of Michigan, Illinois, Arkansas, and Louisiana — face power disruptions during both extreme conditions as well as normal summer conditions. That is, pretty much any time that summer temperatures put a strain on the power grids on which millions of Americans rely.
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But, as with other crises that developed on Biden's watch, many have seen and warned of the threat. Still, the Biden administration has done basically nothing to address the threat of blackouts across the country. Like California's failed Democratic leaders, the Biden administration continues to allow risks to go unmitigated and warnings remain unheeded.
Biden's apparent solution, as seen in his executive orders and dubious use of the Defense Production Act, is to continue down his leftist-inspired "transition" away from reliable fossil fuels to falsely named "green" energy. But NERC's report also contains warnings that such policies and energy sources have already jeopardized America's electrical grid and led to the foreboding predictions for this summer.
It's not just President Joe Biden's policies we have to worry about, as Spencer highlighted in his column. Tucker Carlson also warned that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), pointing out that the turmoil "is what the Green New Deal looks like in Sri Lanka." He also shared he wished he had her cell phone number, so that he could text her footage of the unrest there. "I would text her those videos and say, 'The Green New Deal comes to Sri Lanka. Are you psyched?'"