This is a teachable moment for climate change activists, but are they listening?

By Kent R. Kroeger (December 5, 2018)

Demonstrators block the Prado’s roundabout, southern France, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018, to protest fuel taxes in Marseille. French interior ministry officials say that one protester has been killed and more than 40 injured as demonstrators block roads around France to protest gas price increases. (CLAUDE PARIS / AP)

Some American climate change activists and progressive journalists are already trying to portray the French anti-carbon tax protests, also known as the Yellow Vest protests, as something unrelated to the actual carbon tax itself.

Don’t blame French President Emmanuel Macron’s climate change policies for the protests — that is merely a convenient excuse — blame Macron’s own political ineptitude, they say.

“What began as an automobile-focused, cost-of-living protest undertaken by a coalition of the white, rural working-class and petite bourgeoisie has evolved into a Hydra-headed autumn of discontent, with many objectives, no leaders, and a base that encompasses a cross-section of French life from engineers to paramedics to Parisian high school students. International coverage has focused on the movement’s opposition to a proposed fuel tax increase that was part of Macron’s plan to combat climate change,” writes Slate’s Henry Grabar. “But that was only the spark. Spurred by everybody’s favorite anti-governmental social network, Facebook, the gilet jaunes crisis is best understood as a revolt against all things Macron.”

That’s like saying about an arson-lit forest fire, “Don’t blame the arsonist…