[Ed. – Unrest has been plaguing Central and South America, but Chile’s case is remarkable because it’s about an increase in mass-transit fares. That usually doesn’t provoke days of rioting by the vast working class. But James Taylor suggests the reason it did. Chileans aren’t stupid; their government can tell them fare increases are due to the cost of fossil fuels, but they’re well able to see through that smokescreen and correctly identify the culprit as the national carbon tax, and the associated requirement to move public infrastructure to uneconomic “renewable” power. As in France, they have to bear the cost of that.]

From the unintended consequences department. The COP25 climate conference in Santiago Chile was cancelled, and now moved at the last minute to Madrid, Spain. …

On Oct. 25, protestors took to the streets throughout Santiago in response to Metro fare hikes. The protests soon spread to other cities and led to rioting and at least five reported deaths. The Chilean government and the legacy media blamed the fare hikes on rising oil prices. But that isn’t true.

Oil prices aren’t rising. Global oil prices are currently 25 percent lower than they were a year ago and 37 percent lower than they were five years ago. …

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Santiago Metro fares are rising, amid falling oil and gasoline prices, because government officials in 2018 traded out most of the Metro’s energy sources to wind and solar power from conventional sources. The Chilean government also hit the portion of conventional power that remains with new carbon dioxide taxes.