How the ‘green’ EU starves the world
There’s a food crisis brewing, but you wouldn’t know it with the way the European bureaucracy is behaving.
Dutch farmers – who sit as the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world and largest meat exporter in Europe – have brought the Netherlands to a standstill, protesting against Climate Change regulations.
The newly elected government has set up a 55-60 per cent emissions goal by 2030, 70 per cent by 2035, and 80 per cent at 2040. To meet these arbitrary climate targets, they have created a self-inflicted disaster that will see the government drag its agricultural sector up the temple stairs, tear it to bits, and let whatever bloody stumps are left to tumble down the steps for the pleasure of the United Nations climate gods.
Farms which have been feeding the world for hundreds of years are going to be unceremoniously shut and their owners ruined because a couple of bureaucrats decided they didn’t like the nitrogen and ammonia emissions produced by growing food. Their assumption is based on the idea that every country has to present equal emissions to prove they are ‘saving the planet’. It only takes a few moments to realise that the underlying premise is false. A net food producer must have higher nitrogen and ammonia outputs than a nation that doesn’t grow anything. While the Netherlands makes more nitrogen, it’ll create significantly less of something else.
Nations are not equal, and neither are their emissions. The Netherlands and Australia are both criticised by the United Nations for ‘higher than average emissions per capita’ when the calculation (if you are going to do it) should be based on how many people are being fed. Attempting to homogenise environmental targets will achieve only one thing: global starvation.
Despite what politicians have been telling us for years, cutting emissions by 55-60 per cent means closing private farms and drastically cutting food supplies. In the Netherlands, the decision is tied to both the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (which Australia supports) and the EU’s Natura 2000 conservation plan which effectively targets and destroys private property rights for farms that live near freshly designated ‘protected’ areas – areas that never seem to be anywhere near the cities or towns inhabited by EU bureaucrats. Curiously, although they are desperately worried about native birds, the government is calling for a rapid expansion in bird-mincing wind turbines.
Also on the chopping board is one-third of all livestock, which the Dutch government has earmarked for slaughter. To compensate for the shortfall of protein, the government has ridiculously and unrealistically floated the thought bubble that the missing third of the meat market could be replaced with synthetic meat. And no, despite the government suggesting that farms that have been raising cattle could suddenly transition themselves into a chemical lab, this meat production will be gifted to the billion-dollar chemical companies who can’t wait to cash in on the dismantling of the fresh food market.
As written in Fairr:
‘The private sector in the Netherlands has been at the forefront of alternative proteins. The first-ever cultivated meat burger was created by Dutch Professor, Mark Post, in 2013. The country has since gone on to create several leading alternative protein companies, including cultivated meat company Mosa Meat (founded by Mark Post and in receipt of investments from Bell Food Group and Merck) and plant-based meat company Vivera (acquired by JBS in 2021 for €341 million).’
It will surprise no one to discover that JBS is a World Economic Forum partner with revenues of over $50 billion.
You will own nothing, and you will be happy.
What chance do inter-generational farmers stand against corporate giants? All they can do is burn hay bales in the street and empty supermarket shelves, making their point that without them – no one eats. Instead of complaining about the inconvenience, tens of thousands of citizens are standing with their neighbours in support. Unions have joined the protest, with freight truckers and dock workers helping to paralyse every corner of the Netherlands in a well-deserved wake-up call.
The press have attempted to demonise farmers for defying the EU’s virtuous green push – but the Dutch people aren’t listening, with support for farmers still over 75 per cent.
‘[This] will have an enormous impact on farmers. This sector will change, but unfortunately there’s no choice, we have to bring down nitrogen emissions,’ said Prime Minister Mark Rutte, forgetting that as Prime Minister he absolutely does have a choice.
Seeing the nation clogged with 40,000 farmers wielding tractors and heavy equipment, the Prime Minister added:
‘Freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate are a vital part of our democratic society, and I will always defend them. But … it is not acceptable to create dangerous situations, it is not acceptable to intimidate officials, we will never accept that.’
It’s the old Canadian line from last year. ‘We respect your right to protest – unless we don’t like what you’re protesting about…’
‘The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business.’
There’s a name for the State deciding to pick and choose winners in the private market – Climate Fascism.
The European Union is playing the same game with Australia at a time when we no longer have a leader with enough intelligence or backbone to say ‘no’ to their outrageous list of demands.
Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU trade commissioner, is hopeful that Australia is going to finally submit to a trade deal – one that will involve exposing Australia to sanctions tied to Net Zero emissions targets.
In what world is ‘we’ll only trade with you if you let us meddle in your nation’ acceptable? Would Germany, France, or any other EU nation allow Australia to boss them around on energy? Or course not, and Australia should get up off its knees and tell them to take a hike.
Dombrovskis acts as if the EU is terrified of superior Australian produce entering the market, describing it as a ‘sensitive question’.
Who would have thought that with empty shelves and food shortages that EU representatives would be so reluctant to allow high-quality meat and produce into Europe from a nation that stood shoulder to shoulder with them in the mud during two world wars.
‘One needs to approach this question with a sense of realism,’ Dombrovskis added, without the slightest clue what ‘realism’ looks like from deep within his nest of EU regulation. His attempt to tie the submarine debacle into a food negotiation is equally childish. It’s the sort of trade negotiation where the EU seeks to fold Australia under absolute, totalitarian control like it treats its member states.
Instead of walking away and offering our produce to larger, more profitable, and less restrictive markets like a sensible country, Prime Minister Albanese – in his desperate bid to ‘fit in’ with European leaders – will bow right down low, fumble with their robes, and gladly offer up Australian sovereignty just so that he can say that he ‘made a trade deal with the EU’.
The press will never question him on whether it is a good idea.
Tying emissions targets to food production and the export market is exactly what commentators have been trying to warn Australians about for years. Telling a food producer that their produce won’t be accepted unless they dismantle their energy sector and enforce expensive green tape on farmers is anti-competitive behaviour. Plain and simple.
The EU doesn’t care about Australia’s emissions, they want to make sure our cheap and superior produce becomes too expensive for us to make – forcing us out of the European market forever. Then those same EU leaders can insist that they took measures to ‘protect the domestic market from foreign imports’ with their paws clean.
Is Albanese smart enough to see that he is being manipulated for a foreign market? Does he care? Signing a trade deal with the EU under these conditions doesn’t help Australia, it destroys agriculture for the entire Australian export market, making our product more expensive for all customers.
On top of an energy crisis, if Albanese submits to the EU’s trade demands, he’ll cause a food crisis too – one he’ll probably blame on ‘Climate Change’.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/how-the-green-eu-starves-the-world/
*********************************************************Lawsuit Alleges White House Collusion With Green Activists to Silence Critics of Climate Agenda
Climate activists are working in coordination with the Biden White House and Democrat-dominated congressional committees to silence political opponents under the guise of “disinformation,” legal and energy policy analysts say.
Under President Joe Biden, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has kept a tight lid on how the administration advances its climate agenda, Chris Horner, an attorney representing a government transparency group, told The Daily Signal.
Horner said the White House science office refuses to respond forthrightly to related open records requests from his nonprofit group, Energy Policy Advocates. Such answers, he said, would enlighten Americans on the White House’s recruitment of outside activists and academics to discredit dissenters on climate change.
“It’s sort of like paying someone else to take your LSAT test,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow with the Washington-based nonprofit Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Signal.
Horner’s Energy Policy Advocates has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the White House science office after it declined to release records detailing some of the correspondence of two of its staffers.
The lawsuit, filed in May, cites a “virtual roundtable” on climate change that the science office hosted Feb. 25 for the stated purpose of confronting “climate delayism.” A White House press release describing the roundtable identifies 17 outside participants, including communication strategists, professors, and researchers associated with universities across the country.
“We have filed numerous open records suits pertaining to ‘climate,’ seeking records from local, state, or federal bodies known to be working with what we view as a climate industry, or otherwise pursuing the agenda,” Horner said in an email to The Daily Signal.
He said Energy Policy Advocates, which is based in Washington state, went to court after the White House science office “failed to move” on one request under the Freedom of Information Act, or to determine that it would comply with that request. The office also “attempted to deny another request on what appear to be specious grounds that the material was ‘deliberative’ in nature,” Horner said.
Horner is one of two lawyers representing Energy Policy Advocates in the litigation.
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Biden’s Solar Power Scam: How Phony Emergency Declaration Will Help China
When it comes to energy policy, President Joe Biden has become a master of doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. His policies on solar panel production and imports are prime examples.
Everyone agrees that we ought to be good stewards of the planet. That’s why it’s critical that we get energy and environmental policies right. Unfortunately, Biden hasn’t.
Instead, Biden is pushing for a rapid, government-mandated transition to a society powered by wind and solar energy that he promises will deliver zero greenhouse gas emissions. That is neither responsible nor reasonable.
Rather, it is a political fantasy agenda that will reduce access to reliable, affordable energy, damage our economy, harm the environment, and undermine our security program.
Striving to satisfy green activists, the White House recently proposed two new initiatives to jump-start solar power adoption.
The first involved a novel application of the Defense Production Act, a law that allows the president to require businesses to accept and prioritize contracts for materials deemed necessary for national defense or to respond to natural or man-made disasters.
Former President Donald Trump invoked the act to provide critical medical supplies and spur domestic manufacturing to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, a real emergency. Now, Biden has invoked the act to force businesses to increase production of solar panel components to avoid “severely impair[ing] national defense capability.” Last we checked, American battle tanks, aircraft, and warships don’t run on solar panels.
Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies have sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing and caused the U.S. to lose its strategic advantage of being a dominant global energy exporter. Those are real national security issues that impair our defense capability. But forced solar panel production will do nothing to meaningfully address those problems. It will also have no noticeable effect on global temperatures, another false pretext for invoking emergency powers.
What we have, instead, is a phony emergency declaration designed to prop up solar energy use that U.S. consumers reject as inferior. That’s not just wasteful and inappropriate; that initiation is harmful to the paychecks and livelihoods of everyday Americans. Biden’s move will add yet more policy distortions to an energy market already twisted beyond recognition by government mandates, protectionism, and cronyism.
In using the Defense Production Act to bail out domestic solar manufacturers, the president clearly abused his limited special authority to pursue a political crusade. But it gets worse.
At the same time Biden invoked that act, he also ordered a two-year pause on new tariffs on solar panels that could be coming from China—ostensibly because U.S. companies won’t be able to keep up with the wholly artificial demand for panels created by his decree.
Tariffs were implemented 10 years ago to protect Americans from China’s malicious efforts to undercut the U.S. solar power industry by flooding the market with cheap products. The Commerce Department is currently investigating complaints that Chinese solar panel producers have evaded the tariffs by shipping effectively completed versions of their panels to third countries, where they are trivially assembled and shipped to America tariff-free—a ruse known as “transshipping.”
But with Biden’s tariff moratorium, even if violations of U.S. trade laws are proved, China won’t have to pay any of the unpaid tariffs.
While being able to shop for goods from companies around the globe can lead to increased consumer options, economic efficiency cannot be the only consideration. There’s no question, for example, that Chinese goods made with slave labor should have no avenue into American markets.
There is also a fairness issue. If the Chinese are dumping goods on the U.S. market in violation of law and wiping out swaths of U.S. industry in the process, they should be held to account, not given the equivalent of a presidential pardon.
Moreover, if solar panel supply is as big a national security risk as Biden says it is, the last country we should be seeking to partner with for our energy needs is our chief global rival and adversary, China.
The administration is trying to frame these initiatives as a way to address high energy prices and the rising risk of blackouts, but it will do nothing to alleviate those problems. Rather, it will unnecessarily restrict access to reliable energy sources, increase the costs of energy, strain the U.S. electrical grid, and potentially leave our nation more vulnerable to China.
Biden may think his moves make for good liberal politics, but the reality is, he is squeezing American families, fueling price increases, impoverishing the middle class, and, most ironically, risking our national security.
By refusing to change course on energy policy, he seems intent on burning the village to save it.
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Confirmed Again: The Green Agenda Is Taking Us Backward
All the cool kids say humanity has to abandon fossil fuels and rely on wind and solar for our electricity and battery-operated cars (which remind us of the toys we played with as kids) to get around. It’s the future, they say. So why does it seem more like the past?
Let’s begin with a fascinating “fer instance”:
“Classic Cars,” says a Motorious headline from late last month, “Are Greener Than Electric Vehicles.” The story below the headline refers to a study from British insurance company Footman James, which is “refreshing,” says the article’s author, “because it doesn’t talk emotional rage, sticking instead to the inconvenient facts.”
And what are those facts?
“A classic car notching up the national average of 1,200 miles emits 563kg of CO2 a year. By comparison, a new Volkswagen Golf has a carbon footprint of 6.8 tonnes of CO2 the day it leaves the factory, a figure it would take our average classic 12 years to match.”
“For an electric vehicle, the footprint is even greater. A battery-powered Polestar 2 creates 26 tonnes of CO2 during its production, emissions that would take a typical classic more than 46 years to achieve. By which time, the EV’s cutting-edge lithium-ion battery would have long since lost its ability to hold a charge and been consigned to the nearest recycling facility.”
“Footman James rightly points out that within that 46-year period, the Polestar 2’s battery will need to be replaced, maybe even swapped for a new one twice or more,” writes Steven Symes for Motorious. “And what happens to the battery? Can it really be recycled? The answer for now is no. Meanwhile, the classic car keeps running without contributing significantly to a landfill. But you should feel bad for driving such an awful pollution machine, or so we’re told.”
The narrative says EVs are greener but that’s because the true-believers “just look at tailpipe emissions, behaving as if that’s everything in the equation. They don’t consider pollution generated by the manufacturing process,” says Symes.
That’s not something Symes has made up. It’s the reality. EVs are dirty … and racist.
So what else have the Green Shirts given us?
Blackouts. “Rush toward green energy has left U.S. ‘incredibly’ vulnerable to summer blackouts, expert warns,” says a Fox News headline from Monday. “I think the entire country is incredibly vulnerable, because the entire country is facing a huge energy shortage and I don’t think there is any place that is truly safe,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director at Power the Future, told the network.
Power rationing. Things are so bleak in Great Britain due to high energy costs (always a hallmark of renewables) and the war in Ukraine, that the government might have no choice but to ration electricity “in a manner similar to Edward Heath’s three-day week in the 1970s,” reports the Daily Mail. The scenario could have been avoided, says Watts Up With That, “if Britain maintained coal capacity and developed shale gas reserves.”
Famine. A presidential ban on chemical fertilizers last year wrecked Sri Lanka’s harvest. Even though the ban was lifted “after widespread protests,” says Reuters, “only a trickle of chemical fertilizers made it to farms, which will likely lead to an annual drop of at least 30% in paddy yields nationwide.” Other media reports indicate that a “spiraling food crisis looms,” in the country. Similar environmental nincompoopery is threatening food production in the agriculturally rich Netherlands, where the government has proposed cutting nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions by half by 2030.
While the political-activist-media industrial complex continually promises a grand future of green energy powering a clean planet, our world is becoming more primitive. This is a rotten tradeoff, but it’s how things are and will be until more of us realize the “cool kids” aren’t so cool after all.
https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/05/confirmed-again-the-green-agenda-is-taking-us-backward/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
