With the news that the Netherlands is shutting down 3,000 farms to stop global warming, John Hinderaker has thoughts
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Western nations’ commitment to “net zero” CO2 emissions is one of the greatest follies in world history. It is not just the fossil fuel industries that are under attack by liberals–although that would be bad enough, since it is fossil fuels that have created the modern world. They are the reason we are not going around in donkey carts. But it gets worse: agriculture is in the crosshairs, too.
We have seen it in Sri Lanka, where the government mandated “organic” farming and as a result, the Prime Minister’s residence was stormed by a mob and he was forced to flee the country. We have seen it in Canada and in the Netherlands, where the government is making war on that country’s highly successful ag industry. In fact, the Netherlands is second only to the U.S. in the value of food exports. But not for long: its government is moving to shut down farms.
The Dutch government is planning to buy and close down up to 3,000 farms near environmentally sensitive areas to be in compliance with EU environmental rules. [11,200, ultimately — Ed]
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The government will conduct a “compulsory purchase” of large nitrogen emitters as part of a voluntary, one-time offer, announced Nitrogen Minister Christianne van der Wal….In response to the decision, Executive Director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild told the Daily Caller “The Netherland’s war on farmers to pursue their ESG agenda serves as a stark warning. Americans should be vigilant against efforts by both governments and big Wall Street firms like BlackRock pushing these same dangerous ‘net zero’ carbon emissions targets here in the US. It is difficult to overstate the recklessness of undermining farmers during the greatest global food crisis in decades.
The international war on agriculture, which focuses mostly on the use of synthetic fertilizers, without which the productivity of modern agriculture is impossible, and on animal husbandry, is of course driving up the cost of food world-wide. If the war on agriculture continues, residents of wealthy countries will be impoverished by higher food prices while many residents of poor countries will starve.
Of course, liberals think there is an alternative: we should all eat insects instead of meat. Does that sound crazy? Well, it is. But nevertheless, that is their endgame. Just imagine how many CO2 emissions we would save if we didn’t use many millions of acres, augmented with synthetic fertilizers, to grow field corn for cows, pigs and other animals to consume! Not to mention the emissions for which the animals themselves are responsible.
Eating bugs is the liberals’ plan, to which I can only respond: you go first.
But that isn’t how liberals behave, is it? When the time comes, they will have special stores to which only those with high social credit scores can be admitted. They will eat meat, while you eat crickets.
Meanwhile, a rare voice of sanity asks, is there any reason to think that destroying the industries that made the modern world what it is will actually “save the planet” by staving off global warming? To which the answer is, No, there isn’t. Apart from the fact that the “science” of global warming is so deeply flawed that it is really a cult, not a science, fossil fuels–the best energy source that we have on planet Earth–will continue to be produced and used by countries that decline to drink the environmentalists’ Kool-Aid.
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So far, “green” hysteria has been mostly talk and wasted money. The reality is that Western countries rely almost not at all on expensive, inefficient and unreliable wind and solar energy to power their economies. But the Left expects that to change. If it does, the international balance of power will shift rapidly. Standards of living in formerly-rich countries like the U.S. and most of Western Europe will rapidly decline, while, in relative terms, countries like Russia, China and Iran that continue to exploit far more reliable, efficient and affordable fossil fuels will come to dominate economically. To me, this seems like a dystopian outcome, but Western liberals are trying hard to bring it about.
If you have time, I recommend Edward Ring’s article in American Greatness, Climate Change Skeptics Have Ready Allies in Africa:
"So when you say stop to your fossil fuel, what’s the alternative? "
— Fortune Charumbira, president of the Pan-African Parliament, November 2022
It’s a thoughtful lengthy article, well worth reading in its entirety, but here’s the conclusion:
The Rest of the World Rejects Western Energy Denialism
The established policy of wealthy European nations and the United States is to impoverish their citizens in order to develop “renewables.” At the same time, these nations will pressure Africans to renounce rapid economic development, triggering a massive diaspora, one that will make current migration pressures appear trivial by comparison. It will be interesting, to put it mildly, to wonder how long the citizens of either sphere will tolerate this. But meanwhile, the rest of the world is not going to stop developing nuclear power, gas, oil, or coal.
The biggest consumer of coal in the world, by far, is China. Consuming an estimated 86 exajoules of coal last year, the Chinese accounted for 54 percent of all coal consumption worldwide. In second place was India, at 13 percent of all global consumption of coal. The entire rest of the world only accounted for a third of all coal consumption. But why would nations like Pakistan, whose per capita energy consumption is only 1/16th as much as the average American, choose not to burn coal, the cheapest and most abundant fossil fuel?
When examining patterns of energy use by nation, it is obvious that renewables can’t possibly deliver the amount of energy nations are demanding. They cost too much, and the environmental penalty for digging up all the required minerals is far greater than simply developing more fossil fuels.
Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, is so energy poor that the BP Statistical Review of Global Energydoesn’t even track it individually. The only nations in Africa for which there is enough of an energy economy to track individually are South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, and Algeria. For the remaining nations in Africa, BP estimates the per capita energy consumption at 2.42 gigajoules, compared to 279.89 for the United States. This is an incredible disparity. In 2021, the average American consumed 115 times as much energy as the average African.
The geniuses of COP27 want Africans to shut up, build windmills, stay poor, have lots of babies, and migrate to Western nations. That’s their solution to the very real challenge of energy, and the very overstated and exploited problem of climate change.
To quote out of context a famous Democratic politician known for his climate conformity, the Western elites who think Africans are going to accept energy poverty are going to “reap the whirlwind.” A productive strategy for anyone committed to energy sanity in the West is to recognize that Africans are also rejecting the COP27 narrative. Climate skeptics may rest assured that “allyship” with Africans like Fortune Charumbira will be of mutual benefit.
