The European Parliament votes in Strasbourg, October 24, 2018 (European Parliament)
The European Parliament narrowly approved a new nature-restoration law on Wednesday. 336 lawmakers, mostly from the center-left, supported a European Commission proposal to restore 20 percent of Europe’s degraded ecosystems by 2030 and all areas deemed in need of restoration by 2050. 300 lawmakers from the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) and Euroskeptic right voted against it.
But to make the proposal palatable to the centrist Renew group, the obligations for member states were watered down and farm land was excluded from the restoration goals.
Liberals from Finland, Germany and the Netherlands still voted against the bill, fearing a repetition of the situation in the Netherlands, where a strict interpretation of existing EU conservation law has slowed construction and thrown thousands of livestock farmers into uncertainty.
In a lesser-noticed vote, the center-right also excluded most livestock farmers from stricter EU targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. (more…)
German finance minister and Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner boards a government plane to Washington DC, April 22, 2022 (Bundesfinanzministerium)
Germany’s Free Democrats are turning their backs on climate and sustainability. Across the border in the Netherlands, by contrast, a liberal-led government has accelerated its program to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
The Dutch coalition — which includes two Christian democratic and a left-liberal party in addition to the Free Democrats’ ally VVD — is raising taxes on coal use and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in order to pay for subsidies on green hydrogen, solar panels and secondhand electric cars. It is also banning most gas-powered boilers in favor of electric heat pumps by 2027.
The German liberals resist a similar ban. They nearly torpedoed an EU phaseout of diesel and petrol cars. (more…)
Grey deer in the Veluwe National Park of the Netherlands, November 30, 2020 (Unsplash/Dylan Leagh)
EU proposals to protect wildlife and reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture have run into opposition from businesses, farmers and their allies in the European Parliament.
Embarrassingly for European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, those allies are in her own conservative European People’s Party (EPP). They fear a repetition of the Dutch farm crisis, where strict enforcement of environmental regulations has brought a halt to many construction projects and could drive one in three livestock farmers out of business.
The far right are also against the Commission’s plans. The liberals, led by French president Emmanuel Macron’s party, are divided. Even the Greens are unhappy. Their commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, is responsible for wildlife protection, but they don’t believe his proposals go far enough. (more…)
American president Ronald Reagan at Rancho Del Cielo in California, August 31, 1985 (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
Ronald Reagan once quipped about government’s view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
For the American president, it was a cautionary tale. In the newspaper Trouw, I argue the Dutch government seems to have mistaken it for advice. (more…)
Farmers prune vines in Renmark, Australia, July 8, 2021 (Unsplash/Zac Edmonds)
Animal farming causes around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all airplanes, cars, trains and trucks combined. It is responsible for a third of biodiversity losses around the world.
Yet consumption of dairy, eggs and meat is rising. Americans and Europeans already eat more than 1,000 animals in their lifetime. There may be two billion more mouths to feed by the middle of this century. If populations in Africa and Asia adopt a “Western” diet — high on animal proteins — we would need to double the crops we grow by 2050.
How? Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, argues the debate has become polarized:
Those who favor conventional agriculture talk about how modern mechanization, irrigation, fertilizers and improved genetics can increase yields to help meet demand. And they’re right. Meanwhile proponents of local and organic farms counter that the world’s small farmers could increase yields plenty — and help themselves out of poverty — by adopting techniques that improve fertility without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. They’re right too.
High tech is the answer in some places and sectors. Organic and regenerative farming is better in others.
The one thing we should stop everywhere is factory farming. In addition to the harm it causes to the climate and our natural world, it is cruel to the animals who are reared in it.
Male baby chicks are ground up alive, because they won’t produce eggs. Cows are forcibly inseminated and kept perpetually pregnant to produce milk. Calves are separated from their mothers after birth. Most bulls are slaughtered after fifteen to eighteen months when their natural life expectancy is 18 to 22 years. Chickens and pigs live their entire lives in cages that are barely largely enough for them to turn around in. Many don’t see daylight until they are transported to slaughter.
There has to be a better way to feed the world. (more…)
Dutch fishing boat trawling for mussels in the North Sea, April 20, 2020 (Unsplash/Paul Einerhand)
The European Commission is advising member states to tap into EU innovation and rural development funds to compensate fishers who will lose out if bottom trawling is banned.
Virginijus Sinkevičius, the Lithuanian commissioner for oceans and fisheries, has proposed to phase out bottom trawling, also known as dragging, in 30 percent of EU waters.
The better policy would be to reverse a ban on electric pulse fishing, which allows fishers to catch sole and other flatfish without ploughing the seafloor. (more…)
Wind turbines near Mölsheim, Germany (Unsplash/Karsten Würth)
EU countries have agreed to increase their share of renewable energy. The European Commission has proposed to fund green hydrogen and set goals for clean tech as well as the mining of rare earth materials needed to make electric cars and solar panels.
The proposals fall under the European Green Deal, which aims to cut the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050.
Critics worry the sustainability push will come at the expense of competition, nature conservation and free trade.
Here is an overview of what has been agreed, what has been proposed, the costs and the tradeoffs. (more…)
Jan Huitema, a member of the European Parliament for the Dutch liberal party, answers questions from reporters in Brussels, October 28, 2022 (European Parliament/Philippe Buissin)
German liberals have thrown a wrench in the EU’s plan to phase out diesel and petrol cars, arguing a 2035 deadline is too strict.
“It is contradictory when the EU Commission calls for high climate protection targets on the one hand, but on the other hand makes it more difficult to achieve these targets through overambitious regulation,” transport minister Volker Wissing told the Bundestag on Friday.
A vote of EU transport ministers planned for Tuesday has been postponed. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is attending a German cabinet meeting on Sunday to discuss their about-face.
Wissing’s change of heart is a stab in the back of fellow liberal Jan Huitema, who steered the car legislation through the European Parliament. Wissing’s FDP and Huitema’s VVD are the fourth- and fifth-largest parties in the Renew group. (more…)
Dairy cows in the Netherlands, September 28, 2016 (Sebastiaan ter Burg)
Dutch agriculture minister Piet Adema is spending €26 million in 2023 and 2024 to speed up the transition to organic farming.
The money falls short of the €35 million per year Dutch farm lobby LTO had asked for. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the €1 billion in national and EU subsidies Dutch farmers receive each year, half of which goes to the production of dairy and meat.
Adema would funnel 6 percent of EU subsidies into organic farming. Its share is meant to rise from 4 to 15 percent by 2030, when the European Commission’s goal is to have 25 percent organic farming EU-wide. (more…)
Wind turbines in the dunes of Holland (Vattenfall)
Should we sacrifice wildlife to fight climate change? Whether it’s toads being uprooted by geothermal plants or birds being killed by wind turbines, the question vexes politicians in America and the Netherlands.
So far, the Americans have been more likely to answer “no”.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has angered many in his Democratic Party with a plan to speed up energy permits. He would set a two-year target for environmental reviews and a 150-day statute of limitations on court challenges. (The average review takes four-and-a-half years, costs $4.2 million and is 600 pages long. I’ve argued the reforms don’t go far enough, and the two-year “target” should be made into a deadline.)
In the Netherlands, the left-liberal climate and energy minister, Rob Jetten, has licensed the construction of 1,700 wind turbines in the North Sea, which would increase Dutch offshore energy generation by a factor of eight. Environmentalists warn the impact of this expansion on birds and marine life is understudied. (more…)
American president Joe Biden and Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Capitol in Washington DC, October 28, 2021 (White House/Adam Schultz)
Ronald Reagan summarized government’s view of the economy: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Economists now call this cost-disease socialism: first restrict supply, then subsidize the costs. The United States does this with everything from health care (examples here) to housing (although Joe Biden’s reforms go in the right direction).
Democrats are making the same mistake with their technology and climate laws.
There is plenty to like about the CHIPS and Science Act and the (albeit misleadingly-named) Inflation Reduction Act. The first doubles government funding of research into 6G communications, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence and other breakthrough technologies; the latter creates a 15-percent minimum tax on the largest corporations, lowers annual out-of-pocket drug payments for Medicare patients from $7,050 to $2,000 beginning in 2025 and will allow Medicare to negotiate some drug prices starting in 2026.
But both laws also spend billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits to prop up technologies and industries that could have been deregulated instead. (more…)
I debunked four misconceptions about the Dutch farm crisis here a month ago: that reducing Dutch farming will lead to food shortages; that the Dutch government prioritizes an elite green agenda over the livelihoods of its people; that farmers are being chased off their land to build homes; and that the media weren’t covering the story.
That’s certainly changed, but with all the media attention there have also been more mistakes and a few outright fabrications.
Before I debunk those, let me recommend better sources. AFP and Time have excellent stories. I wrote an explainer about the farm crisis in June and have an article in World Politics Review about what it portends for food producers elsewhere.
One in three Dutch farms may need to close. It’s the most painful consequence of the government’s plan to cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030.
The farmers’ lobby is furious, calling the plan “unrealistic” and an attack on the countryside. Pro-farmer parties have gained in the polls at the expense of the ruling Christian Democrats and liberals.
Provincial deputies, who would need to decide on a case-by-case basis which farms can stay and which need to go, fear a backlash in regional elections in March. That would also put Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s majority at risk. Provincial deputies elect the Senate in May.
Rutte’s center-right VVD (of which I am a member), is split down the middle. 51 percent of members who attended the annual party congress on Saturday voted for a motion to soften the farm policy.
The cabinet minister responsible for it, Christianne van der Wal — who is of our party, but who answers to parliament, not the party — told a reporter on Sunday she has little wiggle room. “I’m always open to good ideas,” she said. “But the targets are crystal clear.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Rutte — who has been in power for twelve years — called the nitrogen crisis the biggest of his political career. Yet there has been little coverage of it internationally. I suspect the reason is that Dutch media tend to emphasize reduction targets that are the result of judicial rulings, which gives foreign correspondents the impression that this is a Netherlands-only problem. But when you take a step back from nitrogen pollution and look at the impact of agriculture altogether, the Dutch is not an isolated case at all. It looks more like a preview of the future of intensive animal farming globally, if intensive animal farming has a future at all.
I’ll do my best to explain both the narrow issue of nitrogen pollution and the broader story of animal farming. Along the way, I’ll review the arguments farmers have made against reductions and I’ll end with the political implications for Rutte’s coalition. (more…)
German chancellor Olaf Scholz arrives in Rome, Italy, December 20, 2021 (Bundesregierung)
The Netherlands is forced to drill for almost twice as much natural gas this year as it intended to, partly as a result of higher-than-expected demand from Germany.
Germany requires an additional 1.1 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas, and the Netherlands is contractually obliged to provide it.
The Dutch need 2 bcm more for their own consumption plus 1.6 bcm to fill depleted stores for next winter.
Altogether production must rise from 3.9 to 7.6 bcm — still a fraction of the 72 bcm of gas the Netherlands produced as recently as 2013.
The Netherlands has small gas fields in the North Sea. The bulk of its gas is extracted from the northeastern region of Groningen. Or was, because the government had promised to shut down production there entirely.
Years of drilling have caused increasingly violent earthquakes. The government has so far paid €220 million in compensation to owners of damaged homes. Another €250 million may be needed. A parliamentary inquiry into the government’s handling of the damage is due to begin next week.
Which makes Germany’s request especially awkward for the Netherlands’ prime minister, Mark Rutte. He has asked the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, for alternatives. (more…)
Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency visits the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, November 26, 2020 (TVO/Tapani Karjanlahti)
The European Commission has proposed to label nuclear power “green” in order to meet the bloc’s ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.
The EU taxonomy still needs to be approved by the European Parliament and member states, but it seems unlikely they will want to unwind a hard-won compromise.
Once approved, it should unleash private-sector investment in green industries.
In a concession to coal-dependent Germany, which is phasing out nuclear power, the taxonomy would also consider natural gas “green” until 2030.
Ten member states, including Belgium, Finland and France, had argued for including nuclear power. An eleventh, the Netherlands, just announced plans to phase out natural gas and build two more nuclear plants. (more…)
