Reports of unrest over environmental policies from the Netherlands and Sri Lanka are much more than novelty news. What is happening in both spots is a lesson that has to be learned quickly. If not, there’s deep trouble ahead.
Dutch farmers, whose history of crop yields puts them among the most productive in the world, continue to protest rules that limit their use of nitrogen, a nutrient in commercial fertilizers that converts to nitrous oxide, which is feared as a greenhouse gas. Officials expected them to cut use 50% nationally, which means in some regions, the reductions will be as high as 95%.
The crippled farmers, their survival under attack, are, as they should be, revolting.
“Imagine if you’re a fifth-generation farmer, living on your land, making a living, being part of the local community,” and suddenly there is “basically no future, no future for farming, but also no future for the economic, social, cultural fabric of the countryside,” Wytse Sonnema of the Netherlands Agriculture and Horticulture Organization told the Australian media.
“There’s a broad sense of frustration, of anger, even despair amongst farmers at the moment.”
But political officials don’t care about the effects of their tyranny. They’re too dedicated to demonstrating before the world their great green cred.
Don’t think that it can’t happen here. Canada, which exports tens of billions of dollars of agricultural products to the U.S. every year and is, unfortunately, “led” by boy Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, plans to force nitrogen cuts that will “decimate Canadian farming.” And also don’t think such a truly rancid idea won’t easily make it across the border to Washington and blue state capitals itching to put more restrictions on an ostensibly free people to carry out their eco-madness.
Meanwhile, a year after announcing the country would become the world’s first 100% organic nation, Sri Lanka is a “nation wrecked by green agricultural policies.” Its agriculture sector is in such ruins that the country is begging Russia and India for fuel, the economy has collapsed, and there’s not enough money to buy food. The Sri Lankan president, whose palace was stormed, will leave office Wednesday, and the outgoing prime minister, as well as dozens of other politicians, have nowhere to live because hungry and desperate protesters have burned down their houses.
Imagine this country had Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal become law. Its fanatical emissions cuts would have caused energy costs to soar, choked economic growth (it would be worse than it is now), and cost from $51 trillion to $93 trillion over its first decade. The Green New Deal was in fact initially conceived not as an environmental protection policy but rather as a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing,” according to the New York congresswoman’s former chief of staff.
So far, we’ve avoided Ocasio-Cortez’s reign of terror. But in California, the petty environmental tyrannies, centered on the wars on greenhouse gas emissions and plastics, continue to accumulate – and spread. California residents don’t even have the freedom to throw away their food scraps as they see fit. They now must conform to the way government says it has to be done.
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