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Agriculture

The ‘green economy’ is suddenly in retreat in the US and Europe. Why?

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BERLIN, GERMANY – JANUARY 08: Tractors of protesting farmers line Strasse des 17. Juni street in front of the Brandenburg Gate on the first day of a week of protests on January 08, 2024 in Berlin, Germany

From LifeSiteNews

By Jon Miltimore

Pundits across the world are still trying to figure out why Green parties crashed so hard, which leads one to wonder if they were paying attention.

In February, a stream of tractors driven by Italian farmers arrived at the outskirts of Rome, horns blaring. The scene, which was captured by the Agence France-Presse, was just one of dozens of protests across Europe against EU regulations that farmers said threatened to put them out of work.

“They’re drowning us with all these regulations,” one farmer at a protest in Pamplona, Spain, told The Guardian. “They need to ease up on all the directives and bureaucracy.”

The protests were nothing new. They began in 2019 when Dutch farmers, for the first time, drove some 2,000 tractors to The Hague to protest radical legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions, which disproportionately impacted farmers.

Dutch lawmakers responded in 2022 by passing legislation that required farms near nature reserves to slash nitrogen emissions by 70 percent.

“About 30 percent of the country’s cows and pigs will have to go,” The Economist noted.

The policy was part of the government’s plan to sharply reduce livestock farming in Europe. The thinking was that since the livestock sector contributes to about a third of all nitrogen emissions globally, the government would have to target farmers to meet its goal to cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030.

So Dutch farmers were given a bleak choice: give a portion of their land to the government or have it taken away. By 2023, some 750 Dutch farmers had reportedly sold their land as part of the state’s buy-out scheme. Others were still trying to find a way to preserve their livelihoods.

When asked by a reporter in 2023 whether he thought he would be able to pass his farm on to his children, one Dutch farmer struggled to speak.

“No,” he said tearfully. “No.”

The ‘Great Green Retreat’?

Farmers are not the only ones unhappy with Brussels’s aggressive war on climate change.

The European Union’s effort to reach “net zero” CO2 emissions by 2050 has rankled voters across the continent, something political leaders seem to have realized. Earlier this year, The Guardian lamented the EU’s “great green retreat,” which included a pullback on a bevy of “Green New Deal” regulations, including:

  • Bans on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), man-made chemicals that are used in countless everyday products.
  • Rules restricting new industrial emission, which were relaxed on industries and tweaked to exclude cattle farms altogether.
  • Calls to relax a pending anti-deforestation law, which, according to Reuters, officials believe could hurt European farmers.

Whether this retreat stemmed from concerns that these environmental regulations would cause serious harm to the economy (and European farmers), or from concern that the Green agenda would lead to a bloodbath at the ballot box, is unclear.

Whatever the case, the reversal didn’t prevent a historic defeat for Green parties in June’s European Parliament elections, which saw them lose a third of their seats.

“There is no sugarcoating it,” the New York Times lamented following the June elections, “the Greens tanked.”

Political scientist Ruy Teixeira described the event as a “Greenlash.”

“In Germany, the core country of the European green movement, support for the Greens plunged from 20.5 percent in 2019 to 12 percent,” Teixeira, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, noted.

He continued:

Shockingly, among voters under 25, the German Greens actually did worse than the hard right Alternative for Germany (AfD). That contrasts with the 2019 elections, when the Greens did seven times better than the AfD among these young voters.

And in France, Green support crashed from 13.5 percent to 5.5 percent. The latter figure is barely above the required threshold for party representation in the French delegation.

Bans against hot showers and swimming pools?

Pundits across the world are still trying to figure out why Green parties crashed so hard, which leads one to wonder if they were paying attention.

It wasn’t just crackdowns on farming. Facing an energy crisis, governments across Europe began to roll out regulations forcing Europeans to adopt, shall we say, more spartan lifestyles.

“Cold swimming pools, chillier offices, and shorter showers are the new normal for Europeans,” Business Insider reported, “as governments crack down on energy use ahead of winter to prevent shortages.”

In other words, instead of producing or purchasing more energy, governments began to crack down on energy consumption.

It didn’t stop there.

In May 2023, months after Germany shut down its last three remaining nuclear power plants, the Financial Times reported that many Germans were “outraged and furious” at a law that forced them to install heating systems that run on renewable fuels, which are far more expensive than gas-powered boilers.

The action was even more invasive than the European Union’s sprawling ban on gas-powered vehicles that was finalized just months before.

“[The EU] has taken an important step towards zero-emission mobility,” EU environment commissioner Frans Timmermans said on Twitter. “The direction is clear: in 2035 new cars and vans must have zero emissions.”

Wall Street’s $14 trillion exit

The Green policies emerging from Europe did little to alleviate Americans’ concerns that the climate policies of central planners are not driven by sound economics. Yet many similar policies have taken root in the U.S.

As of March 2024, no fewer than nine U.S. states had passed laws to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. Meanwhile, the Biden administration recently doubled down on an EPA policy to begin a coerced phase-out of gas-powered vehicles — even though the federal effort to build out the charging stations to support EVs has flopped spectacularly (despite $7.5 billion in funding).

Despite federal subsidies for EVs, a majority of Americans remain unsold on them, and the sputtering EV market has left a wake of carnage. In June, the EV automaker Fisker Inc., which in 2011 received half a billion dollars in guaranteed loans from the US Department of Energy, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware. (Fisker had long drawn comparisons to Solyndra, the solar panel company that went belly up in 2011 just two years after receiving $535 million from the US government.)

Fisker’s bankruptcy came just months after the New York Times reported on a massive exodus of capital from Climate Action 100+, the world’s largest investor initiative on climate change. JPMorgan Chase and State Street pulled all funds, while BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, reduced its holdings and “scaled back its ties to the group.”

“All told, the moves amount to a nearly $14 trillion exit from an organization meant to marshal Wall Street’s clout to expand the climate agenda,” the Times reported.

Days after the Times report, PIMCO also announced it was leaving Climate Action 100+. Invesco, which manages $1.6 trillion in assets, made its exit just two weeks later.

‘You cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality’

There’s no doubt that the Green economy is in retreat, but the question is, Why?

First, it’s becoming apparent — especially in Europe where energy is more scarce and expensive — that people are souring on Green policies.

As Teixera noted, voters don’t actually like being told what car they must drive and how to cook their food and heat their homes. If you own a swimming pool, you probably want to be able to heat it.

Policymakers talk about “quitting” fossil fuels, but in recent years Europeans got to experience an actual fossil-fuel shortage following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted fossil fuel imports. The result was energy rationing, something Europeans don’t seem to care for.

This brings me to my second point. Green parties and environmentalists have had success largely by getting people to focus on the desired effect of their policies (saving people from climate change) and to ignore the costs of their policies.

Politicians seem to grasp that their policies come with trade-offs, which is why their bans and climate targets tend to be 10, 15, or 30 years into the future. This allows them to bask in the glow of their climate altruism without dealing with the economic consequences of their policies.

This is one of the most salient differences between economics and politics. Economics is all about understanding the reality of trade-offs, but politics is primarily about ignoring or concealing these realities.

Few understood this better than the economist Henry Hazlitt, the author of Economics in One Lesson, who wrote time and again about the tendency of politicians to overlook the secondary consequences of their policies, which were responsible for “nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today.”

For a time, politicians were able to ignore the secondary consequences of their policies. But voters are finally getting a taste of the costs of Green policies, and they don’t like it.

“You can avoid reality,” Ayn Rand once noted, “but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

An ‘iron’ law

Fear of climate change has helped progressives and Greens gain more economic control in recent decades, but even fear has its limits.

Teixera points to Roger Pielke, Jr., a University of Colorado Boulder professor who in 2009 wrote about the “iron law of climate policy.”

“Climate policy, they say, requires sacrifice, as economic growth and environmental progress are necessarily incompatible with one another,” he wrote. “This perspective has even been built into the scenarios of the IPCC.”

Whether one accepts this premise — that economic growth and environmental progress are necessarily incompatible — doesn’t matter. What matters is that when economic growth policies collide with emission reduction targets, economics wins.

It’s one thing to say that gas prices should be $9 a gallon, as physicist Steven Chu once did, because climate change is a dire threat. It’s another thing to say this while trying to become Energy Secretary, as Chu was while testifying before the Senate in 2012:

Sen. Mike Lee: ‘So are you saying you no longer share the view that we need to figure out how to boost gasoline prices in America?’

Chu: ‘I no longer share that view… Of course we don’t want the price of gasoline to go up; we want it to go down.’

You can call this the “iron law of climate policy,” or you can call it common sense. (Who wants gas to go to $9 a gallon?)  Essentially, it’s lofty environmental goals colliding with economic and political reality.

This phenomenon is also conspicuous in Joe Biden’s presidency. On day one, the president nixed the Keystone XL Pipeline (for inexplicable reasons), and would go on to declare global warming a greater existential threat than a nuclear war.

Yet he would later boast that his policies were lowering gasoline prices, and that he oversaw record-high U.S. oil production.

This is the iron law of climate policy, and it explains why the Green economy is suddenly in retreat all over the world.

Not-so-‘green’ policies

The reality is that the Green agenda comes with steep trade-offs, something Europeans, Americans, and Wall Street are finally beginning to admit.

But Europe’s energy policies haven’t just been unpopular; many of them haven’t even been “Green.”

For starters, electrical vehicles are hardly the environmental panacea many claim them to be. In fact, EVs require much more energy to produce on average than gas-powered vehicles, and also often run on electricity generated by fossil fuels. This means that EVs come with their own carbon footprints, and they tend to be much larger than most realize.

An analysis by the Wall Street Journal found that shifting all personal vehicles in the U.S to EVs would reduce global CO2 emissions by only 0.18 percent. This would do virtually nothing to change global CO2 emission trends, which data show are rising not because of European or US personal vehicles, but from emerging economies like China.

And then there’s Germany’s bizarre decision to abandon nuclear power. Despite an eleventh-hour plea from a group of scientists (including two Nobel laureates) who urged lawmakers not to do so because it would exacerbate climate change, Germany closed its last three nuclear power plants — Emsland in Lower Saxony, Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg, and Isar 2 in Bavaria — in the middle of an energy crisis.

The move puzzled many around the world. After all, nuclear energy is cleaner and safer than any other energy source with the exception of solar, according to estimates from Our World in Data. Even more bizarre, Germany’s phaseout of nuclear power, which began in 2011, coincided with a return to coal.

Germany’s decision to ramp up coal production and shutter its last nuclear plants is hardly consistent with the EU’s view that climate change is a dire threat to human kind, many noted.

“No less a climate-change evangelist than Greta Thunberg has argued publicly that, for the planet’s sake, Germany should prioritize the use of its existing nuclear facilities over burning coal,” journalist Markham Heid pointed out at Vox.

Meanwhile, in the US, where nuclear power has been steadily attacked for decades by politicians and environmentalists, the Senate quietly passed (by a vote of 80–2!) a bill to support the deployment of nuclear facilities.

These anecdotes illustrate an important point: Green policies are not just unpopular and uneconomical; they are often senseless.

Few understand this better than Dutch farmers, who are being forced to sell off their farms by politicians who have little understanding of economics trade offs.

Reprinted with permission from American Institute for Economic Research.

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Agriculture

Sweeping ‘pandemic prevention’ bill would give Trudeau government ability to regulate meat production

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Bill C-293, ‘An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,’ gives sweeping powers to the federal government in the event of a crisis, including the ability to regulate meat production.

The Trudeau Liberals’ “pandemic prevention and preparedness” bill is set to become law despite concerns raised by Conservative senators that the sweeping powers it gives government, particularly over agriculture, have many concerned.

Bill C-293, or An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, is soon to pass its second reading in the Senate, which all but guarantees it will become law. Last Tuesday in the Senate, Conservative senators’ calls for caution on the bill seemed to fall on deaf ears. 

“Being from Saskatchewan I have heard from many farmers who are very concerned about this bill. Now we hear quite a short second reading speech that doesn’t really address some of those major concerns they have about the promotion of alternative proteins and about the phase-out, as Senator Plett was saying, of some of their very livelihoods,” said Conservative Senator Denise Batters during debate of the bill. 

Batters asked one of the bill’s proponents, Senator Marie-Françoise Mégie, how they will “alleviate those concerns for them other than telling them that they can come to committee, perhaps — if the committee invites them — and have their say there so that they don’t have to worry about their livelihoods being threatened?” 

In response, Mégie replied, “We have to invite the right witnesses and those who will speak about their industry, what they are doing and their concerns. Then we can find solutions with them, and we will do a thorough analysis of the issue. This was done intentionally, and I can provide all these details later. If I shared these details now, I would have to propose solutions myself and I do not have those solutions. I purposely did not present them.” 

Bill C-293 was introduced to the House of Commons in the summer of 2022 by Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. The House later passed the bill in June of 2024 with support from the Liberals and NDP (New Democratic Party), with the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois opposing it.   

Bill C-293 would amend the Department of Health Act to allow the minister of health to appoint a “National pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act.”  

It would also, as reported by LifeSiteNews, allow the government to mandate industry help it in procuring products relevant to “pandemic preparedness, including vaccines, testing equipment and personal protective equipment, and the measures that the Minister of Industry intends to take to address any supply chain gaps identified.”

A close look at this bill shows that, if it becomes law, it would allow the government via officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada, after consulting the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and of Industry and provincial governments, to “regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture.”  

The bill has been blasted by the Alberta government, who warned that it could “mandate the consumption of vegetable proteins by Canadians” as well as allow the “the federal government to tell Canadians what they can eat.” 

As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Trudeau government has funded companies that produce food made from bugs. The World Economic Forum, a globalist group with links to the Trudeau government, has as part of its Great Reset agenda the promotion of “alternative” proteins such as insects to replace or minimize the consumption of beef, pork, and other meats that they say have high “carbon” footprints.  

Trudeau’s current environmental goals are in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” and include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades, as well as curbing red meat and dairy consumption. 

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Agriculture

Time to End Supply Management

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Marco Navarro-Génie

According to a 2021 report from the Montreal Economic Institute, Canadian families pay up to $600 more per year on dairy products alone due to supply management.

The New Democrats and the Liberals have pledged to tackle inflation, curb price gouging, and address child poverty. Leaders like Jagmeet Singh have railed against corporate greed while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has introduced programs claiming to feed your children.

But despite these announcements, food affordability remains a serious problem in Canada. If our political leaders are truly committed to making nutritious food accessible for all Canadians, they must confront the largely ignored factor: Canada’s supply management system.

Supply Management Hurts Families

Supply management, which governs the production and pricing of dairy, eggs, and poultry in Canada, was designed  to stabilize farmers’ incomes. However, it now acts as an unnecessary burden on consumers, artificially inflating the cost of essential food items. Farmers are given strict quotas on how much they can produce, and sky-high tariffs—often more than 200%—are imposed on imports.

This creates a closed market that keeps prices far higher than in a free-market system. According to a 2021 report from the Montreal Economic Institute, Canadian families pay up to $600 more per year on dairy products alone due to supply management. This is no small sum to households already feeling the pinch.

To put it in perspective, a litre of milk in Canada costs between $1.50-$2.50, compared to USD 1.00 (around $1.35 CAD) in the United States, where such market controls don’t exist. The cost of other staples, such as eggs and chicken, follows the same pattern, with Canadians paying significantly more than their American counterparts.

These artificially high prices disproportionately affect families struggling. As inflation continues to drive up the cost of housing, fuel, and other essentials, paying extra for basic food becomes the tipping point between having three meals a day or skipping meals to cover rent or bills.

The Conservative Opportunity: Free Markets and Family Values

The Conservative Party has historically championed free markets and policies promoting family well-being, but they also support the food cartels.

In a genuinely free market, prices are determined by supply and demand, leading to lower consumer costs and more production efficiency. Ending supply management would achieve both goals.

While Conservatives have long supported free markets, they have been reluctant to challenge supply management, largely due to political concerns in Quebec, where the system is popular among producers. Being pro-trade and supporting supply management are incongruous political positions.

However, with the Conservatives drawing closer to forming government, potentially without significant electoral support from Quebec, now is the time for a strategic shift. Shedding the protectionist policies would be a bold and forward-thinking move to distinguish the party as serious about free markets and family welfare.

It would also send a powerful message to voters across the country, particularly in regions where food insecurity is rising. Conservatives could frame the policy change as a direct effort to reduce food prices, ease the burden on low-income families, and protect Canadian consumers from the high costs supply management imposes.

The Ethical Case: Dumping Food While Canadians Go Hungry

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of supply management is the appalling waste it produces. To keep prices high, in 2023 alone, tens of millions of litres of milk were discarded—wasted food that could have gone to Canadians in need. This is an unconscionable practice in a country where nearly 2 million people rely on food banks to survive. How can wasting food while so many families struggle to afford basic groceries be justified?

This waste flies in the face of compassion and fairness, and contradicts the principles of a free market.

The Bloc Quebecois’ Game

Given that the significant dairy industry in Quebec benefits immensely from supply management, the Bloc Quebecois is seeking to leverage the weakness of the Trudeau minority in exchange for a Bloc bill, Bill C-282, that would shield supply management from future changes.  The Bloc Québécois Bill C-282 wants to amend the Trade and Development Act. Reportedly, it has support from all parties in Parliament.

One of the key setbacks is the restriction supply management places on open market access. It hinders the ability to fully embrace free trade agreements. A primary objectives of Bill C-282 is to prevent the Canadian government from making concessions in international trade agreements that could undermine the supply management system. This is particularly relevant in trade negotiations where foreign countries often seek increased access to Canada’s agricultural markets.

Consequently, this limits the potential for growth in agricultural exports. Central Canada benefits the most from supply management, and although its trade reverberations hurt everyone, they seem to hurt Western producers the most.

A Call to Action for All Parties

For New Democrats and Liberals, the solution to supporting families and children through food affordability lies  in targeting alleged corporate greed and expanding social programs. But if they are serious about addressing child poverty and food insecurity, they would confront supply management. Likewise, for Conservatives, ending supply management is a natural extension of their free-market impetus and commitment to family values.

The time for change is now. Regardless of party, all political leaders should recognize that dismantling supply management would be a direct, meaningful step toward making food more affordable for all Canadians, as well as maximizing agricultural chances to expand Canada’s exports. With the rising cost of living pushing more families into food insecurity, we cannot afford to let outdated policies continue to inflate prices, immorally perpetuate waste, and curtail chances for greater growth in Agrifoods.

Dismantling supply management would offer tangible relief to millions of Canadian consumers, particularly low-income families.  All other parties should start by killing Bill C-282.

Marco Navarro-Génie is the Vice President of Research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

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