Dutch and Canadian Farmers Fight Against Absurd Climate Policies

Thousands of farmers demonstrated in The Hague on Saturday against government plans to limit nitrogen emissions, which they say will put many farms out of business and harm food production.

During the demonstration, many people held the national flag upside down as a symbol of the upcoming March 15 regional elections, which followed similar protests by farmers in Belgium earlier this month over nitrogen emission rules.

Thousands of environmentalists also blocked a major thoroughfare in an unauthorized protest against tax rules encouraging fossil fuel use. Late in the afternoon, police used water cannons to disperse a group of about 100 activists.

The pro-farm protesters carried banners reading “No farmers, no food” and “There is no nitrogen ‘problem'” during the peaceful demonstration organized by the Farmers’ Defence Force group.

Because of the relatively large number of livestock and the heavy use of fertilizers, nitrogen oxide levels in the soil and water in the Netherlands and Belgium are higher than European Union regulations allow.

Farm organizations claim that the problem has been exaggerated and that the proposed solutions are unfair and ineffective.

Next week’s regional elections are significant because they will determine the composition of the Dutch Senate and because regional governments are in charge of translating national government goals, such as nitrogen caps, into concrete plans.

Environmentalists led by the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion scaled a wall next to the road they had blocked to hang a banner reading “Stop fossil subsidies”.

Reuters reports protesters are calling for an end to fuel tax exemptions for oil refineries and coal plants and exemptions for the aviation and shipping industries agreed upon at the EU level.

Farmers hammered by Trudeau’s climate alarmist policies

Meanwhile, while farm groups are “making nice” with the federal government on climate change policies, some outspoken academics and scientists argue that Canadian agriculture will suffer.

Ross McKitrick, an environmental economics professor at the University of Guelph, is one of the most vocal critics of the federal government’s “destructive agenda of removing fertilizer use.”

The federal government has called for net-zero production of some greenhouse gas emissions (excluding the most common: water vapor) by 2050 and has recast agricultural scientists’ roles to prioritize climate change.

“I believe it is completely inappropriate for Agriculture Canada to shift its focus away from assisting farmers in increasing productivity,” McKitrick said. “We already have controls on nitrogen emissions, and most conservation areas have long been working with farmers with nutrient flows into rivers, so it’s not like this work wasn’t happening.

But this new push to eliminate fertilizer use is frightening, as is the lack of analysis, which is typical of the federal government right now.”

He noted that previous administrations had all collaborated with independent modeling groups within the government to determine the effects of policy and economic analysts outside the government. “And now it’s all gone. “None of that happens anymore,” he lamented.

“I’ve heard this over and over again in a variety of policy settings. The government is simply winging it. They are motivated by ideology and do not consider the costs of these policies.

They will not release any results as long as people in the government are still doing them. There is nothing in the regulatory impact analysis statements that are issued. They are empty assertions that this will cause no harm and that they will impose policies” that disproportionately harm agriculture.

He warned farm groups to bolster their message and push back, or they would be burned.

“If they believe that making nice with the government over the net-zero agenda will make them friends with environmental groups or get the government to leave them alone, they are sadly mistaken,” he said.

“Canada’s energy sector did that for years. They stated that they fully support your climate agenda. ‘We’d rather be at the table than the meal on the table,’ they used to say, and guess what happened? If you endorse the government’s alarmist rhetoric and agenda, they will turn on you and say, ‘now that you agree that you are the problem, we must eliminate your nitrogen fertilizers.

Now farmers must phase out the fossil fuels we use on our farms.

“At that point, you could argue, we’re going to fight against that agenda. But you can’t because you’ve already agreed to all of the agenda’s thinking. So, I would advise farm groups not to make the same mistake as the energy sector. Consider how that worked in the energy sector.”

He agreed that many people would remain silent about the drastic changes in government policy. “I can stand up and say it, but there are many people in government and other areas of academia who would like to say it but don’t because of the risk of repercussions.”

McKitrick also told Farmers Forum that some global warming benefits Canada, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concurs.

“Most studies — Canadian academic studies and IPCC reports — have concluded that if climate change occurs as predicted by models, regions such as Canada will benefit from it. It will benefit agriculture in the long run.

Farmers must adapt to changing expectations in crop management and everything else they do to deal with weather patterns from year to year.

Small changes that may trend over 50 or 100 years cannot be expected to be a major issue for farmers dealing with natural weather variability.”

McKitrick also stated that Canada is working from a worst-case scenario of the future based on one of the IPCC’s models, which it admits is too extreme to be considered realistic.

“The IPCC has a long history of using very extreme emissions scenarios to project exceptionally high amounts of warming,” McKitrick said, adding that hundreds of studies now show that the extreme temperature scenarios will not occur.