Is Mayor Kate Gallego leading Phoenix to a meatless, dairy-free future?

Emperor Joseph II: “My dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: “Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?”

— From the motion picture “Amadeus”

Would it be impudent of me to ask the mayor of Phoenix which neckties — not “notes” — I should be cutting from my snappy ensemble so the Earth will spin perfectly on its axis?

I’ve got 40 years of neckties, alone, to sort through and eliminate from my closet.

I’m fretting because I read in my Wall Street Journal this morning that Phoenix is one of 14 American cities that has signed up to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

In a column headlined “The Climate-Change ‘Emergency’ Is Coming for You,” The Journal’s Andy Kessler writes that the C40 Cities have set an “‘ambitious target in 2030’ of no meat, no dairy, no private vehicles and only ‘three new clothing items per year.’ ”

This can’t be true, I thought. By my detailed calculations, 2030 is only seven years away.

C40 envisions a world without hamburgers

Helpfully, the Wall Street Journal provided a link to the “C40 Cities Headline Report” entitled “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5C World.”

There on page 78 is a chart labeled “Food: Consumption interventions” that provides both “progressive” and “ambitious” targets “in 2030.”

Under ambitious targets, C40 cities would consume:

• 0 kg of meat.

• 0 kg of dairy.

• 2,500 kcal per person.

• (and produce) 0% household food waste.

On page 80, in a chart labeled “Clothing and Textiles” the ambitious target is:

• 3 new clothing items per person per year.

Did Mayor Gallego really sign up for this?

And that’s why I was up before 7 a.m. looking at my neckties. Even though the benchmarks are “new clothing items,” I can’t in good conscience keep five dozen neckties in my closet while somewhere Greta Thunberg is scowling.

I’ve got knit ties from the 1950s I inherited from my father. I’ve got silk ties from the ’70s as wide as a bib. I’ve got pencil thin ties from the Brat Pack Eighties, including one with too many notes — yes, a musical tie with treble clefs and quarter-notes (what the hell was I thinking?).

Surely, the city of Phoenix isn’t going to make me, in a spasm of guilt, throw out my musical tie?

Please, Mr. Google, tell me Phoenix didn’t sign up for this climate insanity.

Oh contraire, Mr. Google responds in a lilting female English accent, along with a link to the C40 Cities “Steering Committee.”

There on the top line of leader photos along with the mayors of London, Paris and Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, is the beaming Kate Gallego.

Dang.

This won't go over well in Phoenix

I wonder, to myself, has Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego ever talked to our governor, Katie Hobbs?

Because Hobbs could tell her about the time she stuck it to the taco vendors in this city and nearly started World War III.

What happens when the taco vendors read that the mayor of Phoenix is contemplating a zero-meat future by 2030, along with the rest of the C40 Leadership Group?

Even more disconcerting, what are we going to do with all the vacant lots created once we disgorge all the McDonald’s and Chick-fil-As, and Whataburgers and In-and-Outs and Taco Bells and ... well, we’ve got an urban development crisis brewing.

Or maybe not.

People are going to have to eat something, right? Crickets, perhaps.

“Chirp-fil-A” kind of rolls off the tongue.

Climate ideas have backfired before

Now there is quite a bit of noise about all this C40 nonsense on the internet with various so-called fact checks from mainstream sources reassuring that the C40 group isn’t going to impose these “ambitious targets” on us rabble.

Calm down. Chill out. They’re not coming for our cheeseburgers and musical ties.

This is all a lark.

If I’ve learned anything about our global climate masters it’s this. One day you’re looking at a warbling lark. The next, you’re turning around to see a screaming pterodactyl.

The internationalists who preach the climate gospel persuaded the president of Sri Lanka to cut out chemical fertilizers to lead us to climate Nirvana.

After climate ruling: Arizonans push for a clean environment

After he destroyed the economy and nearly started a famine, his people marched on the presidential palace and toppled him and his government.

In the Netherlands, the national government is working to cut nitrogen emissions by 50% by 2030.

Because agriculture is responsible for the largest share of nitrogen emissions, Dutch farmers are being forced to make large cuts in livestock and farming operations, The New York Times reports.

“If they cannot meet the cuts the government demands of them, they may be forced to close their operations altogether.”

Today the Dutch farmers are in rebellion, blockading food production facilities with their tractors and burning hay and manure along highways, The Times reports.

What happens in Phoenix could hurt us all

And that stern-faced mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who shares a place on the C40 steering committee with Gallego is busy expanding the “ultra low emission zone” or ULEZ that requires drivers in high-emissions cars to pay nearly $16 to drive into downtown London.

Cameras have been set up to detect violators by capturing their license numbers and comparing them to lists of cars out of compliance.

The British people are rebelling against the new requirements by destroying ULEZ cameras as fast as the government can put them up.

This ULEZ initiative is very much endorsed by — you guessed it — the C40.

So, I’m going through my neckties deciding which ones I’ll keep and which one’s I’ll toss so I, too can be a responsible citizen of the planet working for that new world in which Greta Thunberg can smile.

Then it dawns on me. Hey, I don’t live in Phoenix. I live in Gilbert.

The euphoria lasts just a moment, however, as I remember the old saying, “Every time Phoenix sneezes, Gilbert gets gangrene,” or something like that.

Thus, resigned to my fate, I toss my musical tie.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Did Phoenix just sign up for a meatless, dairy-free future?