February 9, 2024 - 4:00pm
There are three criteria which, above all, define a country’s sovereignty. One is the ability to protect national borders, another the capacity to feed its people, the third the provision of affordable and reliable energy for households and industries.
If people sense that politicians are undermining any of these three points, they tend to become anxious. This has been evidenced by the ongoing farmer protests in Europe, which have now spread to Spain, and which are currently enjoying significant popular support. There is no unifying theme motivating the protests. In the Netherlands it was about fertiliser, in France it is about the use of pesticides, in Germany it is about tax exemptions on agricultural diesel, and in Poland it is about cheaper agricultural imports from Ukraine.
What they do share, however, is their effect as a catalyst for revealing the general dissatisfaction Europeans are feeling with their national and supranational (read EU) leadership. The attempts to denounce the protesters as far-Right rabble rousers have so far failed, forcing the European Commission to begin a process of giving in to the farmers’ demands.
Under the European Green Deal, the EU aimed to achieve a 50% reduction in the overall use of pesticides and hazardous substances by 2030. However, this proposal faced criticism from both environmentalists, who deemed it insufficient to reach sustainability targets, and agriculture groups, who argued it would be unworkable and detrimental to farmers’ livelihoods. For now, the farmers have won this battle, as the EU Commission has this week decided to abandon the pesticide goal.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for one, has realised that the previous approach of running roughshod over both farmers and the electorate with ambitious environmental goals is no longer working. Last week she acknowledged the need for a different approach and more dialogue. She emphasised the importance of providing farmers with a worthwhile business case for nature-enhancing measures, admitting that previous proposals had been made without sufficient consideration for their views.
Not everyone, however, is trusting the new tune from Brussels, and there is some confusion about the EU’s mixed messaging on climate targets. There is still a plan for a 90% cut to net emissions by 2040 — but given the significant role of agriculture in the production of emissions, it is not clear how easing restrictions on farmers can be balanced with the ambition to accelerate decarbonisation across multiple economic sectors.
It is presently unclear whether these concessions will quell the spread of the protests. Suspicions remain that this U-turn is not attributable to a new respect for farmers, but instead has been made in anticipation of a potential shellacking of centre-left parties in the EU elections this June. The European People’s Party (an alliance of conservative parties in the European Parliament) already moved on the issue a year ago, and von der Leyen is eyeing a second term as Commission president, for which she will need the EPP’s support. Mistrust will therefore be hard to overcome, since it is entirely possible that, after the election, the environmental agenda will be quietly reinstated.
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SubscribeNet zero won’t work because it impoverishes people. That political leaders ever thought it could work – and most still do – speaks to the incompetence and disconnection of the political and technocratic elite. It’s farmers today. It will be homeowners tomorrow when they are forced to buy electric furnaces. It will be the auto industry next week when they are forced to produce EVs that no one wants. And it will be manufacturers next month when they can’t afford to buy energy inputs.
In Canada, there are MPs who want to ban advertising of fossil fuels. People only want oil and gas because they are victims of disinformation.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/adam-pankratz-the-ndps-loathsome-pitch-to-criminalize-climate-dissent
Most of these protests are nothing to do with net zero, I guess it’s easier to conflate the issue with right wing dogma.
I find it very curious that people want a pollution-free environment, clean rivers, more bird life, protected habitats, yet seem to be entirely blase about a dirty polluting industry that clearly needs reform.
I’ll agree with you on this – the protests are not exclusively about net zero. People no longer trust the competency of govt leaders, which has been fed by a variety of issues, immigration, net zero, the covid response etc.
People do want a clean environment, but it is a second tier desire. People want prosperity first and foremost. Everything else is secondary, even freedom. It also ignores the reality that the environment is much cleaner than it was even 30 years ago. And that it only happens in wealthy nations, which can afford to clean up the environment. The real environmental nightmares are in less developed nations.
That may well be the case, but it doesn’t mean first world countries should carry on regardless.
It’s also well within our grasp to have prosperity and decent environmental standards, it’s not one or the other.
CO2 is not a pollutant. But if you want to see some appalling examples of pollution I suggest you mosey on down to the Congo where the raw materials for the EV revolution are being mined.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara
Precisely why the west needs to set good examples.
Cobalt goes to China. They don’t actually care.
Canada is a strange place thanks to the genetic heritage of Fidel Castro expressed in his love child.
Disappearing posts yet again. This site is net zero on moderation.
Everyone in America LOVES their Eco-Toilets that “save water”. Who doesn’t like flushing it 11 times instead of one? Have those been installed over there as well?
-Flushing, Queens, NYC
Two points:
1. “The” science: its never settled, there is always a debate, about fundamentals, interpretations, details. That is the nature of science
2.Politics: is everywhere, except perhaps in the minds off young researchers doing their PhDs. As soon as they enter a lab, politics kicks off. Who does what? gets what? Makes the decisions? Why, Really? Then you leave the lab for the big bad world, and you sell “net zero”. Your name is T.May. WTF does T.May know about net zero? B…all. So what’s in it for her? Alliances, coalitions, glitter. How long is she going to be around for? Not nearly long enough to feel any cost. In fact, she reaps all the rewards. We are in the world of “real politics”. Study it. Its founder is called Machiavelli.
Wouldn’t a great way of cutting European emissions be simply to export all our heavy industry to China?
There can’t possibly be any downsides to this surely?
Too many factories on one side of the planet will lead to wobbly orbits!
It’s annoying when the C02 con gets conflated with pollution.
CO2Conservatives? Is this another new party involving Liz Truss?
There is 1 thing that progressives: Cutting greenhouses gases.
There is 1 thing that everyone wants: To eat well and not expensively.
If progressives have their wish, no one else gets their wish.
The 90% cut is utterly disconnected from reality.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1990..latest&country=OWID_EU27~USA~OECD+%28GCP%29~CHN
Since 1990, US emissions are flat, China has skyrocketed, and the EU has declined by 30%. That was the easy 30% and spread over 35 years. Declaring that they’re to cut another 60% in the next 16 years is beyond absurd.
And if you did it, your population would starve (https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/) which is exactly what the farmers are saying.
The EU has a death wish. This is a good thing.
The farmer’s protests were about “fertilizers”, “pesticides”, agricultural diesel”, and “agricultural imports”.
Small point, but why say there was “no unifying theme motivating the protests”? They were about growing food.
The point of the column was to identify that theme, which is, to paraphrase a turn of phrase from criticisms of monetary policy in the EU and elsewhere during the past decade +: agricultural repression. That was the unifying theme.