Before he capitulated on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron had declared he would never give in to the demands of the so-called Yellow Vest protestors.

By law in France, all motorists must carry such a yellow vest in case of car trouble, but the car trouble they are rioting about for the past two weekends is not about their vehicles, but about the 5 percent hike in fuel costs that Macron had decreed as a means of combating global warming. The protests had become increasingly violent in a classic countryside versus the Capital confrontation, and had Macron not raised a white flag and rolled back the new tax, another weekend of violence was expected. He did though, and the message is clear.

As the Wall Street Journal put it: “Voters don’t believe that climate change justifies policy that would raise their cost of living and hurt the economy.” Climate change, my friends, is not an excuse to gouge tax hikes out of citizens.