Biden and environmentalist policies would destroy agriculture, habitats, products and nutrition
Paul Driessen
Many eco-activists (and too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists) have trouble thinking beyond slogans. They apparently believe declaring ecological emergencies, repeating clever mantras, and issuing proclamations and mandates will create a fossil-fuel-free, organic farming utopia. In their dreams.
Since 1950, American farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – and other crop yields by smaller but still amazing amounts, while using less land, water, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides. Their exports helped slash global hunger and malnutrition. Farmers in Brazil, India and other countries worldwide have likewise enjoyed record harvests in recent years. Their success has many “roots.”
Hybrid seeds combine valuable traits from different plants. Biotech seeds protect crops against insects and viruses and reduce water and pesticide demand. Nitrogen fertilizers (synthesized from natural gas) join phosphorus and potassium in supercharging soils. School and online programs offer libraries of agricultural success tools. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) further spurs plant growth.
Long-lasting herbicides control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from crops, while enabling farmers to utilize no-till farming that avoids breaking up soils, reduces erosion, further retains soil moisture and preserves vital soil organisms. Israeli-developed drip irrigation delivers water without the evaporation characteristic of other irrigation methods.
Modern high-tech tractors use GPS systems, sensors, cameras and other equipment to steer precise courses across fields, while constantly measuring soil composition, and injecting just the right kinds and amounts of fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, along with seeds, to ensure optimal harvests.
Imagine the bounteous crops for humanity if all these technologies could spread across the globe.
Instead, this planet-saving, life-saving progress is under assault – by well-meaning or ideologically driven, ill-advised or ill-intended … but all well-funded … organizations that demand natural gas bans, “more Earth friendly” agriculture and a return to “traditional farming lifestyles.”
Their hatred of biotech crops is intense and well-documented, but they also despise hybrid seeds. They want modern herbicides and insecticides banned, in favor of “natural” alternatives that are often toxic to bees, animals and people; may actually be synthetic (eg, neurotoxic pyrethrins); and are rarely tested for residues on produce or long-term toxicity to humans. They demand “natural” fertilizers, which often provide a tiny fraction of nutrients that modern synthetic fertilizers do.
They want to teach only “traditional” (ie, subsistence) farming, especially in Africa. They prefer to call it “food sovereignty” – which they claim is the “right” to “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods,” in accord with AgroEcology policies. In other words, millions more people (ruling elites and their kids?) doing back-breaking stoop labor, dawn to dusk.
Tractors? Why not horses, oxen or human labor, they ask? At least get rid of gasoline and diesel tractors and trucks, in favor of electric models. Never mind that EV tractors and combines would require several tons of battery modules, and still wouldn’t be able to do a full day’s work without hours-long recharges.
They want oil and gas locked in the ground. “We don’t need petrochemical products, especially synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.” Or tractor tires, paint, windows, GPS/computer housings, and more.
Have these illiterati looked at their own clothing, food, homes, offices or world? Synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, cell phone and computer housings, pharmaceuticals, tapes and adhesives, protective gear, eyeglasses, car bodies, detergents, wind turbine nacelle covers and blades, medical devices, car bodies – practically everything around them and in their lives exists because of oil, gas and petrochemicals.
But we can just use biofuels to replace feed stocks for products we really need, they proclaim. Right.
Banishing oil, gas, petrochemicals and internal-combustion engines would certainly mean no more ethanol as a gasoline additive. That would eliminate the need to grow corn on 36,000,000 acres (equivalent to Iowa), and that land could be used for food crops or wildlife habitat. Except it won’t be.
Organic farms have significantly lower crop yields per acre and require far more land than conventional agriculture. Worse, ending oil and gas production means tens of millions of acres would have to be planted with biofuel crops, to provide feed stocks for thousands of now-petrochemical products.
That means vastly more tractors or human labor – and more water, fertilizers and pesticides – to cultivate and harvest sugar and oilseed crops (and algae). And then all those simple biofuel molecules would have to be transformed into much more complex hydrocarbons to provide the necessary feed stocks. That would require even more energy, from even more wind turbines and solar panels – on top of doubling or tripling our existing electricity needs, to transform the U.S. and global economies to all-electric systems, and repeatedly recharge the grid-balancing and power backup batteries those systems would require.
Or perhaps Team Biden plans to simply import all those petrochemicals and/or products – as it seems to be planning with regard to wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers and other “green” energy equipment. America will not be able to produce any of it, because Team Biden and its allies oppose mining and drilling in the USA (even for raw materials essential for their utopian “renewable” energy transformation – and we won’t even have affordable, reliable electricity to operate factories.
How can these “best and brightest” decision-makers and advisors be so ignorant, inept and clueless – so unable to connect even two or three dots? They’re destroying our planet, habitats and wildlife, to “Save the Earth” from a computer-modeled “climate crisis” that President Biden absurdly insists is “a greater threat than nuclear war.”
They base critical policies that deeply affect lives and livelihoods everywhere on childish beliefs in Santa Claus and Harry Potter. They think we can banish today’s energy and agricultural resources and technologies – and amazing replacements will just be there … via some mystical, mythical process called Materials Acquisition for Government-mandated Infrastructure Change (MAGIC).
Some of them know this cannot possibly happen, but promote the policies anyway. They seem to believe they can mandate that “common folks” will just have to live austerely, under nineteenth or early twentieth century living standards, in 700-square-foot apartments, using electricity when it’s available (not when they need it), and subsisting on bug burgers and larvae milk.
They think Africa would be “the perfect laboratory” for testing new foods, like “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages” made from lake flies. If all that fails, they’ll just impose forced rationing.
Others would go even further. Obama science advisor John Holdren advocated “de-development of the [United States and other over-developed countries] and semi-development of the under-developed countries, to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.”
Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau once said, “in order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.” Environmental Defense scientist Charles Wurster said “People are the cause of all the problems…. We need to get rid of some of them, and [banning DDT] is as good a way as any.”
Environmental and racial justice? Campaigns, policies government actions to eradicate fossil fuels and modern agricultural practices and technologies go well beyond callous and imperious. They go well beyond eco-imperialism, eco-colonialism and eco-Apartheid. They drive eco-manslaughter on a global scale via energy, farming and climate policy. They impose systemic, systematic racism.
These ideas, and these policy proponents, are what should be banished from government, media and academic institutions. Not the wondrous technologies that make modern life possible.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.
One way to fix the mess being created by career politicians and advisors is to limit tenure. There should be no such role for an entire working life. It guarantees embedding incompetence and corruption. No individual should work within government for more than 8 years. If a position cannot be filled from an individual from the private sector than eliminate it.
Companies have learnt that is far more rewarding to have big lobbying budgets rather than advertising. It is far more profitable for companies to have big governments making markets than trying to create a market. Lobbying is corruption with a different label.
NetZero is government endorsed theft. It does not make any economic sense but those willing to play the game do better than those who resist.
There is literally no scientist being funded to find a null result for the connection between fossil fuels and climate change. And yet that is the clear evidence from all climate models. The models have all parts of the globe warming at similar rates while reality shows that there are long term cooling trend in some regions and others have no trend. Completely contradicting models.
The major concern of global government is to support the population, de population, depopulation.
and the mandatory jabs are doing just that – the life expectancy in the US has declined an unprecedented 3 years since the jabs came in – all because young people are dying at unheard of rates – and don’t blame the virus as those dying from C-19 on average are years older than the previous life expectancy
i got vaccinated. it killed me
i got better
Come back in five years to see if you really got better.
I hope you do, you provide a lot of laughs.
8 years?
so Schwarzkopf would have been kicked out before desert storm
There is literally no scientist being funded to find a null result for the connection between cigarettes and cancer. no scientists funded to prove the earth is flat
Hello Mr. Moser, nice to see you again. I missed your drive-bys.
“career politicians and advisors” –
Which one is Schwarzkopf?? An advisor? Rick is clearly talking about politics not the military. Oh and I’m pretty sure the US army had more than one general at the time.
“connection between cigarettes and cancer.”
I’m guessing you’re talking about the “Exxon knew” garbage. The difference is that Exxon had no secret data. They used the same as everyone else (and did a better job predicting than the rest of the world combined). How ironic.
And since all those public scientists said we only had 20 years. Well we are 10 years past that now.
What an incredibly POINTLESS and IRRELEVANT comment from Smosh.
Seems to be all he is capable of nowadays !
Lookup Trofim Lysenko to see what happens when political correctness takes the place of scientific agriculture – millions starve to death. Ditto the Pol Pot regime that tried to turn Cambodia into a “Modern Agrarian Society” at the cost of millions of lives or the Chinese “Great Leap Forward which is estimated to have cost 56 million lives are all examples of political meddling in agriculture – every such effort has been an absolute disaster.
Leave farming to farmers keep politicians well clear – it’s dangerous !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Even more recently the destruction of the SriLankan agriculture and economy by trying to move to a green utopian and “organic” form of agriculture – a complete fiasco. This foisted on them by the unelected World Economic Forum – a thinly disguised Socialist / Globalist organisation under Klaus (you will own nothing and be happy) Schwab.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/21/bbc-ignore-the-real-reason-for-sri-lankas-problems/
And throughout Europe ever more ludicrous restrictions are being placed on farmers and farming – such as CO2 reduction targets, Methane reduction targets and the psychotically mad idea of reducing Nitrogen – these idiots will create a modern famine if they don’t stop it.
President Ronald Reagan said this while addressing a crowd of farmers…
“The eight words you never want to hear are – “I’m from the government, I’m here to help.””
“Organic farms have significantly lower crop yields per acre and require far more land than conventional agriculture. Worse, ending oil and gas production means tens of millions of acres would have to be planted with biofuel crops, to provide feed stocks for thousands of now-petrochemical products.”
Don’t forget the area for draught animal fodder – probably means we’d be worse off than say about 1850?
The world will never go back to draught animals .
I was born on a farm in 1943 that had a draught horse that pulled a sledge to carry fencing materials,fire wood and bags of super phosphate weighing 84 kilograms ,12 to the ton
which was spread by hand onto the hill sides.
my father shifted to another farm to be close to a school for me and my brothers and sister’s education.
He brought a Fordson Major on steel wheels with a 27 horse power engine .
This was used to break in former swamp country pushing up stumps and rushers into piles and cultivating with giant discs .
These tractors are now collectors items .
It was not untill hydraulic excavators came into general use that real progress could be mane clearing this land .
In 1959 my father brought a Massey Ferguson 28hp fitted with a mid mounted sickle bar mower about 6 feet long for hay and silage mowing and a buckrake on the back hydraulics to sweep up the silage and stack it in a pit .
You can see how agriculture has evolved when there are now 500 hp tractors and most small to medium farms have tractors over 100 horse power .
Without large tractors and harvesting machinery the world will starve .
Without nitrogenous fertilizer the world will starve .
If these politicians have there way the world will starve .
Just remember in 1950 the worlds population was 2.5 billion and it is now 8 billion .
Farmers right around the world have responded to the challenge of providing food for the worlds population .
The Paris Agreement on Climate change states quite clearly in Artical 2 b “That no country should take action to restrict emissions that will effect food supply “.
These politicians who are pushing this stupidity should be reminded of this at every opportunity .
They will lead the world down a hole and millions will die if they are allowed to pursue these crazy ideas .
I can’t see why people keep repeating logical arguments against the Environmentalists.
It must be obvious by no that they don’t care about whether their proposals make any sense or not. They are in a Purity Spiral, and loving every minute of the power it gives them.
All they have to do is say that “You are racist”, or “You must stop using cars” and people listen to them and obey. What fun! Of course these rules do not apply to them – they can fly on jets and buy houses on the waterfront…
When everyone is caught in a Purity Spiral / fashion like this there is a lot of money to be made for doing useless things. Think diversity consultants and sensitivity readers. And there is always a chance to pull some senior figure down and make room for one of your own….
So it is pointless to wield logical argument against a mixture of fashion, social pressure and human greed. I don’t know why we keep doing it….
“I don’t know why we keep doing it…”
with all due respect,
we keep doing it because we the thinking are at war with the climate jackals.
at times during ww2 after some key battles were lost by the allied forces, solders were not sure if the war was winnable. you can here their words in the many documentary’s produced. the out come of this war for freedom is uncertain. but there will be victors. and the victors will have the task of rebuilding civilization from the ashes and carnage caused by the climate jackals.
at some point the useful idiots must be marched through the battle fields and forced to look at the damage they allowed right under their noses.
jackals?
try hyenas
look in the mirror… you will see a climate jackal / jackass. !
lemme know when you start, all i see here is appeals to fear and emotion
“is appeals to fear and emotion
Ahh… smosh nails the AGW agenda in 5 words.. !
Only solution is at the ballot box. Just vote for someone who do not want shut down fossil fuels.
This should be compulsory reading for every student at every university in every country .
As I have written here before 4 billion people in the world rely on food extra food produced using nitrogenous fertilizer .
Greenpeace is actively seeking signatures for a petition to our parliament to ban nitrogenous fertilizer and I believe that they are doing the same in many countries .
I walked past a middle aged woman sitting at a desk asking passerby’s to sign the petition .
I told her that without nitrogen half of the worlds population would die of starvation .
She did not want to know ,exactly the same as these politicians and their advisors who want to do the same world wide without any idea of the consequences .
That is a fact that has to be put in front of every decision maker.
We have been bombarded with nonsense from an overseas professor who believes that all farm animals should go and the crop land that is used to feed these animals could feed the world .
In New Zealand and a lot of other countries all sheep and beef cattle , over 90% of their diet is grass on country that is not suitable for long term cultivation or even non till.
Our dairy herds are at least 80% grass fed with up to 5% of their diet could be Palm kernel extract which is a waste product from Indonesian palm oil plantations but it is turned into milk and meat around the world . Maize silage and some cereal mixes are also fed to milking cows but the land used for these crops is 10% to 15% of the total dairy farm land .
Grass land is a carbon sink as I know from my own experience as I have bulldozed tracks around hill sides for access and within three years these red clay tracks are covered with pasture on 3 inches of black top soil which has been deposited there by the cattle and sheep .
New Zealand with a population of 5 million grows and exports food to over 35 million people but our stupid politicians state that our emissions are some of the highest in the world because of our so called agricultural emissions .
WHY ARE THESE EMISSIONS NOT EXPORTED WITH THE FOOD AND COUNTED IN THE COUNTRIES WHERE THE FOOD IS CONSUMED ?
There’s severe geomagnetic storm underway in the last few hours
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/aphisto.png
Thank Fugg, I need to something/anything to clear the migraine I got from reading this intolerant dross. It always strikes as odd that Virtue Signallers are such an intolerant lot
I suppose it’s nice that there’s an unlimted amount of fossils to sustain such insane levels of minutia creation, lack of knowledge, magical thinking and OlympianFeatsOfConclusionJumping
In fairness, many have done just that. We call them crusties.
One suspects they are not hoping to do stoop labour on a farm though.
Good report, Paul. This slogan-driven woke nonsense has gotten so bad that the CAGW Greenies won’t even acknowledge the NASA report that the earth is 10% greener, which they attribute to the atmospheric increase of CO2 from 300 ppm to 400 ppm. The fact that slogans have replace facts and reality is very disturbing.
Whilst these “Green” Idiots carry on they should be forced to understand a few facts, even in the USA.
A Montana farm has two 500 HP tractors. They will work 24 hours a day when needed and cost virtually nothing when they are not needed. To replace them at least 3,000 draft horses would be needed, but they also need to be fed, so something like 10,000 tons of high energy feed, hay and grass.
Please explain how this would work, be economic, or even possible, remembering that 3,000 horses need 500 people at least to look after them, not the 4 people who farm thousands of acres?
Remember an important fact, farm work needs to be carried out at exactly the right time, crops and weather wait for no man. (Retired Farmer).
Retired Farmer, thanks for your hard work – I bet I ate something from your farm!
(story tip) Sabine on YouTube has gone all in on CO2 plus has added excess heat produced by man. She says the excess heat is like 10% of the problem and will have to be addressed one day.
Article says:”…by well-meaning…”
Sir, you are being far too generous, They are malevolent not well-meaning.
As the old National Lampoon poem, Deteriorata, said:
You are a fluke of the Universe
You have no right to be here.
Many believe this.
Well, if Progressivism has been good for anything, it’s been for making people lose weight.
But Greta the windmills are to save the reindeer and the Sami from the dooming too dearie-
Thunberg, other protesters block Norway energy ministry over wind farms (msn.com)
Beliefs like these?
New Model Suggests Major Ice Sheet Collapse Will Happen Before Paris Climate Agreement Temperatures Are Reached | Watch (msn.com)
Over the last couple days the Greenland Ice sheet has accumulated about 16 billion tons of snow.
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_curves_LA_EN_20230225.png
“Save the <strike>whales</strike> windmills!”
I apologize for this being somewhat off-topic, but it cannot wait an ‘Open Thread’. It’s a great article about the exploitation of ‘persons of limited means’ in cobalt mining. Please share with everyone you know, especially those empty-headed virtue signallers who consider themselves to be so morally superior to us poor peons … … …
https://www.insider.com/photos-terrible-conditions-cobalt-mining-industry-to-meet-battery-demands-2023-2
think it is about time to stop making gasoline (ethanol) out of food – an earlier report in WUWT notes that the cost of corn in some parts of the world has increased 70% and naturally ethanol accomplishes none of the supposed benefits
“traditional farming lifestyles.”
Friends and family owned such farms into the 1950s.
There were some good times.
Mostly, it was just hot or cold and dirty work.
Thanksgiving Dinners were great.
Other than that, I’ll pass.
Biden and environmentalist policies would destroy agriculture, habitats, products and nutrition
fear mongering doomsayers are dominating the opinion sections of skeptical sites now.
There is Mosher , and then there is reality. I paid $4.99 per gallon for 89 octane (middle grade) at a BP in Dalton, GA on the way down here.
Went grocery shopping at a Publix here at Daytona Beach and paid $4.99 for a loaf of regular white bread! Spent $387.00 for a single full grocery cart. There were 4 Ribeyes and a medium sized serloin tip roast in the cart. No other meats and no seafood.
It costs over $1,000 to fill up the tanks on the big truck with #2 low sulfur diesel.
Etc, etc,
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNrseBCscg&w=618&h=340%5D
You mistake “fearmongering” for REALITY !
Everything the left is now trying to implement, will have the effect of lowering standards of living…. . even yours.
So why do you DENY it and in fact condone it !
“How can these ‘best and brightest’ decision-makers and advisors be so ignorant, inept and clueless?”
They aren’t. They know exactly what they’re doing. Mistakes of that size are not made innocently. The whole point of the exercise is to make it impossible for human beings to live on earth.
It’s all rather depressing at times so what I really need is some optionality to do other things-
U.S. to loan Li-Cycle $375 million for New York recycling plant (msn.com)