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

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.”

🇳🇱 When asked if this Dutch farmer believed he would be able to pass on his farm to his children, he couldn’t hold back his tears.

This is the heartbreaking reality of the #DutchFarmers in 2023. All because of Mark Rutte and his totalitarian land grab policies.

©@ongehoordnedtv pic.twitter.com/yS8Y757XiT

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) May 10, 2023

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:

Plans to put sharp new restrictions on the use of pesticides.

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.

Related Topics:#LifeSiteNews #NetZero Agriculture Energy feature GreenEconomyRetreat JonMiltimore

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Agriculture

How USAID Assisted the Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture

Published on February 24, 2025

Todayville

From the Brownstone Institute

By John Klar

A recent essay titled “The Real Purpose of Net Zero” by Jefferey Jaxon posited that Europe’s current war against farmers in the name of preventing climate change is ultimately designed to inflict famine. Jaxon is not speculating on globalist motives; he is warning humanity of a rapidly unfolding reality that is observable in the perverse lies against cows, denigration of European farmers as enemies of the Earth, and calls by the WHO, WEF, and UN for a plant-based diet dependent entirely on GMOs, synthetic fertilizers, and agrichemicals.

Revelations about the evil doings of the Orwellian-monikered “United States Agency of International Development” (USAID) reveal a roadmap to totalitarian control unwittingly funded by America’s taxpaying proles. USAID’s clandestine machinations have long focused on controlling local and global food supplies as “soft colonization” by multinational chemical, agricultural, and financial corporations. European farmers revolting against climate, wildlife, and animal rights policies are harbingers of this tightening globalist noose.

The roots of the current globalist plan to “save humanity from climate change” link directly to the infamous Kissinger Report, which called to control world food supplies and agriculture as part of a globalist collaboration between nation-states and NGOs to advance US national security interests and “save the world” from human overpopulation using “fertility reduction technologies.” Kissinger’s 1974 Report was created by USAID, the CIA, and various federal agencies, including the USDA.

Fast forward to 2003, the Iraq War justified using fear-mongering propaganda about weapons of mass destruction and neo-conservative malarky about rescuing the Iraqi people. The US-led occupation of Iraq became a rapacious profiteering smorgasbord for colonizing corporations husbanded by USAID. Iraq is heir to the birthplace of human civilization, made possible by early Mesopotamian agriculture: many of the grains, fruits, and vegetables that now feed the world were developed there. Iraq’s farmers saved back 97% of their seed stocks from their own harvests before the US invasion. Under Paul Bremer, Rule 81 (never fully implemented) sought to institute GMO cropping and patented seed varieties, as Cargill, Monsanto, and other corporations descended upon the war-ravaged nation using American tax dollars and USAID.

That playbook was more quietly implemented during the Ukraine War, once again orchestrated by USAID. Before the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, prohibiting GMO technologies and restricting land ownership to Ukrainians. Within months of US intervention, USAID assisted in the dismantling of these protections in the name of “land reforms,” free markets, financial support, improved agricultural efficiency, and rescuing the Ukrainian people. In just two years, over half of Ukraine’s farmland became the property of foreign investors. GMO seeds and drone technology were “donated” by Bayer Corporation, and companies such as GMO seed-seller Syngenta and German chemical manufacturer BASF became the dominant agricultural “stakeholders” in war-torn Ukraine. Russia may withdraw, but Ukraine’s foreign debts, soil degradation, and soft colonization will remain.

The UN, WTO, WHO, and WEF all conspire to peddle a false narrative that cows and peasant farmers are destroying the planet, and that chemical-dependent GMO monocropping, synthetic fertilizers, and patented fake meats and bug burgers must be implemented post haste (by force if necessary) to rescue humanity. The argument that pesticides and synthetic fertilizers (manufactured from natural gas, aka methane) are salvific is patently false. They are, however, highly profitable for chemical companies like Bayer, Dow, and BASF.

Jefferey Jaxon is exactly correct. The Netherlands committed to robust agricultural development following a Nazi embargo that deliberately inflicted mass famine following their collaboration with Allied Forces in Operation Market Garden. France boasts the highest cow population in all of Europe. Ireland’s culture is tightly linked to farming as part of its trauma during the (British-assisted) Irish Potato Famine. The corporate/NGO cabal now uprooting and targeting farmers in these nations and across the EU in the name of staving off climate change and preserving wildlife is a direct outcropping of Kissinger’s grand dystopian scheme launched through USAID in 1974.

Americans watch European farmer protests from afar, largely oblivious that most all of US agriculture was absorbed by the Big Ag Borg generations ago. Currency control linked to a (political, environmental, and economic) social credit scorecard promises the fruition of Kissinger’s demonic plan: “Control the food, control the people.”

Modern humans suffer a double hubris that blinds them to the contemplation of the truth of Jaxon’s hypothesis: a cultish trust in technology, coupled with an irrational faith in their self-perceived moral superiority to past civilizations (Wendell Berry calls this “historical pride”). Yet, as long as mankind has had the capacity to harm another for personal gain, humans have devised ways to control food for power or profit. Siege warfare generally depended on starving defenders of castle walls into submission.

Even if globalist food control proposals are well-intentioned, a monolithic, monocultured, industrial-dependent worldwide food system is a lurking humanitarian disaster. Berry observed:

In a highly centralized and industrialized food-supply system there can be no small disaster. Whether it be a production “error” or a corn blight, the disaster is not foreseen until it exists; it is not recognized until it is widespread.

The current push to dominate global food production using industrial systems is the cornerstone of complete globalist dominion over all of humanity. The “Mark of the Beast” without which no American will buy or sell goods – including guns, bullets, or factory-grown hamburgers and cricket patties – is mere steps away. Mr. Jaxon is correct that these leaders “know these basic historical and current facts,” and that “[f]armers are becoming endangered because of government [climate] policy … and it’s being allowed to happen.” USAID has been actively seeding and watering this dystopia for decades.

Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates are as fully cognizant of this fundamental truth as Henry Kissinger was in 1974. USAID has aided all three. Having lost almost all of their small farms over the last century, Americans are well ahead of Europeans in their near-complete dependence on industrial food.

That’s the plan.

Author

John Klar

John Klar is an attorney, farmer, food rights activist, and author from Vermont. John is a staff writer for Liberty Nation News and Door to Freedom. His substack is Small Farm Republic.

Agriculture

Restoring balance between renewable energy, agricultural land and Alberta’s iconic viewscapes

Published on December 6, 2024

Government of Alberta

Alberta is known around the world for many things – some of the most breathtaking and iconic scenery on earth, a world-class agricultural industry that puts high-quality food on tables across the globe and a rich history of responsible energy development. Alberta is a destination of choice for millions of visitors, newcomers and investors each year.

To ensure Alberta’s continued prosperity, it is imperative that future energy development is balanced with environmental stewardship, protecting Albertans’ ability to use and enjoy their property, and safeguarding agriculture for continued food security.

Alberta’s renewable energy sector has grown rapidly over the past decade, yet the rules to ensure responsible development have not kept up. As a result, municipalities, agricultural producers and landowners across the province raised concerns. Alberta’s government is fulfilling its duty to put Albertans first and restore the balance needed for long-term success by setting a clear path forward for responsible renewable energy development.

“We are doing the hard work necessary to ensure future generations can continue to enjoy the same Alberta that we know and love. By conserving our environment, agricultural lands and beautiful viewscapes, our government is protecting and balancing Alberta’s long-term economic prosperity. Our government will not apologize for putting Albertans ahead of corporate interests.”

Nathan Neudorf, Minister of Affordability and Utilities

Amendments to the Activities Designation Regulation and Conservation and Reclamation Regulation provide clarity for renewable energy developers on new and existing environmental protections.

These changes will create consistent reclamation requirements across all forms of renewable energy operations, including a mandatory reclamation security requirement. Albertans expect renewable power generation projects to be responsibly decommissioned and reclaimed for future generations. Alberta’s government stands firm in its commitment to protect landowners and taxpayers from being burdened with reclamation costs.

“We want to protect landowners, municipalities and taxpayers from unfairly having to cover the costs of renewable energy reclamations in the future. These changes will help make sure that all renewable energy projects provide reasonable security up front and that land will be reclaimed for future generations.”

Rebecca Schulz, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas

Alberta’s government committed to an ‘agriculture first’ approach for future development, safeguarding the province’s native grasslands, irrigable and productive lands. The protection of agricultural land is not only essential to food production, but to environmental stewardship and local wildlife protection.

The Electric Energy Land Use and Visual Assessment Regulation follows this ‘agriculture first’ approach and enhances protections for municipalities’ most productive lands, establishing the need to consider potential irrigability and whether projects can co-exist with agricultural operations. These changes are critical to minimizing the impacts of energy development on agricultural lands, protecting local ecosystems and global food security. With these new rules, Alberta’s farmers and ranchers can continue to produce the high-quality products that they are renowned for.

“Our province accounts for nearly 50 per cent of Canada’s cattle, produces the most potatoes in the country, and is the sugar beet capital of Canada. None of this would be possible without the valuable, productive farmland that these new rules protect. Understanding the need for an ‘agriculture first’ approach for energy development is as simple as no farms, no food.”

RJ Sigurdson, Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation

The new Electric Energy Land Use and Visual Assessment Regulation also establishes specific guidelines to prevent projects from impacting pristine viewscapes. By establishing buffer zones and visual impact assessment zones, Alberta’s government is ensuring that industrial power projects the size of the Calgary Tower cannot be built in front of UNESCO World Heritage sites and other specified viewscapes, which will support the continued growth and success of Alberta’s tourism sector.

As Alberta’s population and economy grows, it is critical that the province has the additional power generation needed to meet increasing demand. Power generation must be developed in a balanced and responsible manner that promotes environmental stewardship, ensures the continued enjoyment of Alberta’s beautiful landscapes, and safeguards food security by protecting Alberta’s valuable agricultural lands. By encouraging the responsible development of additional power generation with these new regulations, Alberta’s government is listening to Albertans and ensuring the electricity grid is affordable, reliable and sustainable for generations to come.

Summary of Policy Changes

Following the policy direction established on February 28, 2024, Alberta’s government is now implementing the following policy and regulatory changes for renewable power development:

Agricultural lands

The new Electric Energy Land Use and Visual Assessment Regulation takes an “agriculture first” approach.
• Renewable energy developments will no longer be permitted on Land Suitability Rating System (LSRS) Class 1 and 2 lands unless the proponent can demonstrate the ability for both crops and/or livestock to coexist with the renewable generation project,

• In municipalities without Class 1 or 2 lands, Class 3 lands will be treated as Class 1 and 2.

• An irrigability assessment must be conducted by proponents and considered by the AUC.

Reclamation security

Amendments to the Activities Designation Regulation and Conservation and Reclamation Regulation create consistent reclamation requirements across all forms of renewable energy operations, including a mandatory reclamation security requirement. There will be a mandatory security requirement for projects located on private lands.

• Developers will be responsible for reclamation costs via a mandatory security or bond.

• The reclamation security will either be provided directly to the province or may be negotiated with landowners if sufficient evidence is provided to the AUC.

Viewscapes

The Electric Energy Land Use and Visual Assessment Regulation ensures pristine viewscapes are conserved through the establishment of buffer zones and visual impact assessment zones as designated by the province.

• New wind projects will no longer be permitted within specified buffer zones.

o Other proposed electricity developments located within the buffer zones will be required to submit a
visual impact assessment before approval.

• All proposed electricity developments located within visual impact assessment zones will be required to submit a visual impact assessment before approval.

Municipalities

The AUC is implementing rule changes to:

• Automatically grant municipalities the right to participate in AUC hearings.

• Enable municipalities to be eligible to request cost recovery for participation and review.

• Allow municipalities to review rules related to municipal submission requirements while clarifying consultation requirements.