Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Farmers in the Netherlands have reacted with fury to government demands they cull their herds to help Holland meet their nitrogen emission targets.
Incredible Pictures: Thousands of Tractors Shut Down Highways in Farmer’s Anti-Green Madness Protest
Thousands of farmers shut down highways in a go-slow protest converging on the Dutch capital Monday, as they protested being victimised by a government trying to meet European Union emissions laws by cracking down on agriculture.
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The day of protest is the thirds of its kind and follows another at the start of October. At the time, Dutch media reported the protests were against a call by the government that herds of animals reared for food should be culled so the nation could meet its European Union-imposed nitrogen emission targets.
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The Dutch police and army, on the instructions of the centrist-globalist prime minister Mark Rutte, attempted to shut down the main roads leading into the capital Wednesday, but using the off-road capabilities afforded by driving a tractor, the protestors simply drove around the blockades, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports. Rutte called on farmers to “keep the peace” and follow the instructions of police.
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Read more (Lots of pictures): https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/10/16/incredible-pictures-thousands-of-tractors-shut-down-highways-in-farmers-anti-green-madness-protest/
Telling farmers to cull herds built up over generations, destroy their own livelihoods, just to please some bureaucrats in the EU and meet absurd nitrogen emission targets. Yep, that was always going to work.
The EU nitrogen targets are a heavy handed out of touch bureaucratic effort to tell farmers how to manage their fields. Just as it was in Soviet times, city based EUSSR bureaucrats believe they have a much better understanding of farming than the people who actually work the land, and have no qualms about setting unrealisable targets and making unreasonable demands.
By the way, it’s not really about Nitrogen emissions, although that’s how they call it (‘stikstof probleem’ = nitrogen ‘problem’ …).
When I first heard that I was a bit perplexed. I mean nitrogen is the major component of air, so how can that be an issue? But it is about emissions of Nitrogen-based substances, one of which is ammonia (NH3). That’s what the farmers’ demonstrations were about.
The other is NOx emissions from combustion processes.
And that is related to ‘fijnstof'(fine dust) which are small particle by-products of combustion engines, such as soot, NOx and SOx (etc).
That has to do with the simple fact that we’re the most densely populated country in EU (together with BE and NRW part of DE). And NL compounds the issue due to our BPM tax on cars, which means cars cost about 75% (or so) more than in other EU countries. The result is that many people buy cheaper and second hand-cars (relative to BE or DE), and the average age of cars in NL is more than 10 years old. We have about as many new cars (age 0-1) as we have cars older than 20 years … And after 10 years the engine will produce more exhaust waste by-products, will leak a bit, use more oil (etc). And the catalyst in the car is out of warranty by that time and is much less effective.
Our real science deniers deny this, of course, and claim that we do test the exhaust of old cars, but of course, the norms are a joke.
Same for safety, let’s see how quickly a typical 10+-year-old car can stop when it travels 50 kmh, against a 1-year-old German car while driving 100. It is not even a competition.
Yep, penalising the hand that feeds. Makes perfect sense. Sarc.
According to NASA, the gases in Earth’s atmosphere include:
Nitrogen — 78 percent
Oxygen — 21 percent
Argon — 0.93 percent
Carbon dioxide — 0.04 percent
Trace amounts of neon, helium, methane, krypton and hydrogen, as well as water vapor.
Methane (CH4) is a Greenhouse Gas, but, as shown above, only trace amounts. What should ALSO should be noted is Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is 0.04%. Wetlands, ruminants, and rice paddies are all contributors to methane (CH4), producing microbe and are some of the major sources of biogenic methane.
You will hear many climate protesters demanding people stop eating Beef to help reduce the trace amounts of CH4 in the atmosphere BUT how many protesters have you heard demanding that a much bigger polluter than Beef production, RICE (grown in paddy-fields), be stopped or curtailed? Let me have a guess …ZERO! Why? Because it doesn’t suit their modus operandi in recruiting many Vegans and Vegetarians to their ranks.
Scientists need to understand they help create these situations when they choose activism over science.
You can’t serve two masters.
In the end it won’t work out for those of you scientists who think they can manipulate the Machine. It won’t work. Either you’ll be forced out by rising populism as they ignore your falsehoods, or else if the Marxists temporarily win you’ll only be around until you’re no longer politically convenient.
Either way you’re just scapegoats. You’re enjoying the celebrity now but you don’t even realize you’re being fattened up like pigs for the slaughter.
You better wise up.
Indeed, you can either be an activist or a scientist, you can’t be both.
It isn’t just farmers who are being hit by all these senseless and unachievable collective limits on emissions like NH3, NOx, SOx and PM2.5, which have been driven by the UN and are being policed by the EU. (National Emission Ceilings directive, of 2016 if I remember rightly). That’s exactly what is behind the UK government’s moves to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2040 – which they’re trying to bring forward to 2030.
What we should be culling is all the politicians that promoted, supported or agreed to these policies.
My definition of centrist and Europe’s definition are very different!
There is humor in this, the farmers simply drove off road and proceeded.
The old saying a liberal is one whose interests are not at stake seems to apply here. Obviously the bureaucrats attempting to destroy farming and livestock are not at risk.
Do I smell a Netherixts blowing in the wind?
Just one small point for those who know little of Farming in the UK. In 1979 bread making wheat sold for £150/tonne. In 2019, the same product sells for the same price – £150/tonne. Can anyone list any products that sell for the same price as 40 years ago? This is a measure of the hard work, investment and increased productivity of our farmers. And we enjoy cheap food in addition, with support from taxation, i.e. by progressive taxing rather than regressive high food prices. Respect to all involved! I write as a former BBC TV farming producer.