Will Zagreb residents be put on a scoring system that will evaluate their CO₂ emissions and determine what food they can buy after a carbon currency system is put in place? No, that's not true: There is no mention of such a plan on the official website of the City of Zagreb, Croatia, and no credible media organization has reported on it. In addition, the TikTok profile that published the claim is known for promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories.
The claim originated in a video (archived here) on TikTok by katarina4618 on November 14, 2023. It began (translated to English from Croatian by Lead Stories staff):
Your dear mayor and warm brother signed a decision on the 15-minute city, for your good, so that you don't pollute the environment by producing CO₂. You will, once they implement the 15-minute cities or 'camps,' have to give up your car, and even breathing because you release too much CO₂ ... If you breathe too much then you will have to eat less ... You will have to eat the food that, when they implement the carbon currency, they decide you can eat ... All food will be evaluated based on a scoring system and if you want to eat meat today, you won't be able to eat anything else for the following week or two, because you will exceed that carbon quota of CO₂ pollution according to the Green Agenda ...
("Warm brother" is a derogatory Croatian expression that refers to gay men.)
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Nov 15 15:30:28 2023 UTC)
The 15-minute city model cited in the video doesn't aim to impose authoritarian control on people, but to reduce car traffic and carbon dioxide emissions, as well as increase sustainability and well-being. The term was coined by Sorbonne Professor Carlos Moreno, an urbanist who received the 2021 OBEL AWARD for his urban theory and model.
The video seems to refer to the 2021 Complete Renovation Program Of Zagreb's Historical Core signed by Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomašević. The first of the basic principles of the 15-minute city model listed in the program states that residents of each neighborhood should have easy access to goods and services, especially groceries and fresh food, contradicting the claim that food will be limited.
The Zagreb Renovation Program does not mention carbon currencies. Lead Stories searched the official webpage of the City of Zagreb (archived here) on November 16, 2023, using the keywords "carbon currency" in Croatian "karbonska valuta," and the search produced no results. A Google News search conducted by Lead Stories on December 5, 2023, using the following keywords: "Zagreb carbon currency system implementation food restriction" (archived here) also did not yield any results to corroborate the claim.
The TikTok account katarina4618 has posted other conspiracy theories in the past, such as that the Pfizer vaccine contains graphene oxide (archived here), that global warming is a lie (archived here) and that 5g activates pathogens from the COVID-19 vaccines in the human body (archived here). Lead Stories debunked another claim made by the same user here.
