Get the latest tech news
The Mayor of London Fought for Clean Air. Now He’s Battling Conspiracies and Deepfakes
It all started with an asthma attack. Now Sadiq Khan finds himself at the center of a global conspiracy.
Last summer, one of Khan’s flagship policies—a benign pollution reduction measure—was fused with the global conspiracy, sucked into a nightmarish mass delusion about climate authoritarianism, and co-opted by populist culture warriors to justify a rollback of carbon emissions targets. In early 2023, influential alt-media commentators, including the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, boosted a conspiracy about “15-minute cities ”—an innocuous urban planning concept based on providing services to residents close to where they live. In September, Sunak announced he was “slamming the brakes on the war on motorists,” attacking speed limits and traffic reduction measures, before rolling back net-zero emissions targets, including delaying a planned phase-out of new diesel and petrol vehicle sales in the UK.
Or read this on Wired
