Making Farming More Climate-Friendly Is Hard. Just Ask Europe's Politicians.
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Making Farming More Climate-Friendly Is Hard. Just Ask Europe's Politicians.
The farmers' protests in Europe are a harbinger of the next big political challenge in global climate action: How to grow food without further damaging Earth's climate and biodiversity. From a report: On Tuesday, after weeks of intense protests in several cities across the continent, came the most explicit sign of that difficulty. The European Union's top official, Ursula von der Leyen, abandoned an ambitious bill to reduce the use of chemical pesticides and softened the European Commission's next raft of recommendations on cutting agricultural pollution. "We want to make sure that in this process, the farmers remain in the driving seat," she said at the European Parliament. "Only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together will farmers be able to continue to make a living." The farmers argue they're being hit from all sides: high fuel costs, green regulations, unfair competition from producers in countries with fewer environmental restrictions. Nonetheless, agriculture accounts for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it's impossible for the European Union to meet its ambitious climate targets, enshrined in law, without making dramatic changes to its agricultural system, including how farmers use chemical pesticides and fertilizers, as well as its vast livestock industry. It also matters politically. Changing Europe's farming practices is proving to be extremely difficult, particularly as parliamentary elections approach in June. Farmers are a potent political force, and food and farming are potent markers of European identity. Agriculture accounts for just over 1 percent of the European economy and employs 4 percent of its population. But it gets one-third of the E.U. budget, mostly as subsidies.
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So if you kill your local farmers you'll have to import food from the cheap questionable sources that could have a worse environmental impact.
People also make the decision with their wallets.
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So if you kill your local farmers you'll have to import food from the cheap questionable sources that could have a worse environmental impact.
People also make the decision with their wallets.
Where the hell does the EU Parliament think that their food is going to come from if you run the farmer's out of business?
If the EU thinks that the farmer protests are nasty, wait until the grocery store shelves are empty. Hunger has a way of focusing you, most rikki-tik. Maybe what Brussels needs is a Peasants with Pitchforks moment.
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Expect the bullshit to continue until the elites hear the singing of guillotines. And if history is any guide, they still won't knock it off until the last head is chopped.
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Even then, I expect that the European Commission will continue to convene and issue directives for a few years following that.
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Who said "kill"?
Ultimately, _everything_ hurts the environment. It depends upon definitions and what the desired outcome is. The problem with humans is that we do far more damage than other species to the surrounding environment: to plants, animals, atmosphere, and even geography. Rather than a slow amount of change over centuries or millenia, we are creating rapid change. But if all life does damage, then so why is it important? It's important because humans are changing the environment in ways that harm
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Humans aren't the only species that modifies its environment for its own benefit. Can you name another one? (I think there's only one, but I'd be pleased to be proven wrong on that.)
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My first thought is beavers but I can't think of another example. There are likely more though. That's what animals (like us!) do. We alter our surrounding environment for our benefit.
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Very good! Yes, the one species I know of that modifies its environment for its own benefit is the beaver.
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Ants, termites and other social insects.
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Thing is we are very efficient at it and that efficiency is going to be our downfall.
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Ants and termites:-) There are species of moths that will kill off trees.
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But do the moths benefit from killing off the trees? And I'm not that sure about the ants and termites.
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Coral. Beavers.
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Farming in Europe is so heavily subsidizes, it's hard to find cheaper sources of food.
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I think it's reasonable and appropriate to level the playing field by putting a tariff on any product that hasn't already been taxed by the originating country for the environmental damage created by its production.
Sure, make it too expensive for poorer people to buy. They can just eat cake, right?
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As an American, I'm reminded of all the tariff talk when Trump was running for president. It was true then, and it is still true now, that the citizens of your country are the ones who pay for tariffs. Not the foreign countries.
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Well by this logic what we are doing currently is subsidizing poorer people by artificially lowering prices by letting companies shift their negative externalities instead of incorporating them into the price.
If carbon is taxed into costs and food becomes too expensive we may as well just subsidize poor people directly instead of subsidizing the offending business instead.
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Messing with peoples food will definitely engender voter backlash. One can see the anger now at current food prices due to inflation. Now make that a policy on purpose and you won't be well received.
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Agreed but at the same time a check in the mail goes a long way to being popular as well, but you are right, "price go up" is an instinctual negative reaction.
I don't think we will see that happen so we are where we are but the point stands, a subsidy is a subsidy, the people are paying the price regardless it's just moved somewhere else.
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Remind me, who voted for Ursula?
Oh wait, I forgot. NOBODY.
The EUSSR is not a democracy. They're the opposite.-
To be fair the EU parliament is elected, and many European countries do not elect leaders directly either (nor do we here in Canada).
The US does, but the electoral college makes that not exactly democracy either.-
Only by the very narrowest of definitions of democracy. Technically the US is a federal republic and we are exactly that. But way to pay attention in political science class for what little that is worth.
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Once again, this time louder: "Democracy" and "Republic" are not different types of government. Pretty much all forms of republic are democracies.
The US can be a federal republic and a democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Sure, make it too expensive for poorer people to buy.
I would take the revenue and redistribute it equally to everyone. [wikipedia.org] People who buy the least and lowest priced food (poor people) would come out ahead.
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So communism?
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Norwich countries with high tax and a high degree of wealth redistribution. Still capitalism, just high taxes. And we are still some of the richest countries in the world. And happiest.
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Because all the people who actually want to earn a living left.
If you're gonna tell me I have to put in a 50 hour work week, but you're going to steal 25 hours of my time to give to someone else, I'm just going to quit working so you can force someone else to subsidize my lifestyle. When enough people say "fuck it, I'm not working anymore", then your shitty idea of a utopia will collapse.-
It's easy to keep your population happy with bread and circuses when you have an extractive economy. Lets see how they do when North Sea fossil fuel is stopped. And the third world (those at most risk from climate change) come after the funds that they have accrued asking for justice.
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How does the North Sea oil affect Sweden and Denmark? Could throw in Finland too as while not officially Nordic, they're similar.
Alberta has extracted more worth out of its oil then Norway and blown a trillion dollars while being in deficit much of the time and fighting with their fellow Canadians about their right to give the oil away and pollute as much as they like. More pure capitalism hasn't seemed to have helped all the people living in tents there in temperatures as cold as the Nordic countries exper
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And all you have to do is have a tiny population and strike a huge amount of oil.
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Is that how Sweden and Denmark had success? Wonder why Alberta, with more oil and less people has done so much worse.
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> Sure, make it too expensive for poorer people to buy. They can just eat cake, right?
Nordhaus one a Nobel Memorial Prize for figuring this out. You need three pieces: tax, tariff & rebate. You put a tax on your own carbon, you put a tariff on untaxed imported induced carbon and you give out a per capita rebate with all the rest.
Canada has 2 pieces of the puzzle, but is missing the tariff part. In Canada there's a carbon tax of 14 cents a litre on gasoline, and then everybody gets a few hund
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Canadians are not happy as their lives have become increasingly unaffordable. That tax won't be around in a few years after the current government falls.
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It may compensate you for the tax you pay directly. It most certainly does not compensate you for the hidden costs of the tax that is passed on in everything you buy. - the tax on the farmers and manufacturers, the tax on the shippers, and the tax on the wholesalers and retailers. None of those people get any rebates, and they pass those costs along to you. Government hopes that keeps it out of sight and out of mind, but many consumers seem to have figured it out.
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Yep. There is an argument whether it is 0.2% or 0.4% that the carbon tax has raised prices while the bull shitters claim it has raised prices worldwide and is the sole reason that the world has inflation.
People are going to be disappointed when they get the new government and things get worse, along with changes in the election laws to make sure the people no longer have a choice.-
There are many causes for inflation. And many ways our government hinders rather than helps.
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'tis true. OTOH, there are ways the governments help.
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If poor people can't afford basic food then address that by supporting the poor people, not by letting everyone including the rich fuck the world over through ignored externalities of their actions.
Incidentally since you care about the poor people so much it's worth noting that the poor are disproportionately affected by climate change https://www.weforum.org/agenda... [weforum.org]
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You gonna support the middle class too? Because they won't be happy at you making food less affordable any more than the poor people do.
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That's the problem in a nutshell. If the people don't have cheap food the government risks a revolution. If you want to pile on regulations the food will not be cheap unless you use fossil fueled large scale agriculture with economies of scale. If you don't want that (which means you do want organic local agriculture) then you need either serfs/slaves that you are willing to keep at bare subsistence, or you can provide subsidies to the farmers to make up the difference between the cost of production at dece
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That's not because of government. That's because a 45-cow farm can't compete against highly-mechanized agribusiness. Same reason shoes are made in factories, instead of by shoemakers. Economy of scale.
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It's not like that will stop the farmers in other countries from producing green house gases it will just hurt the wallet of their domestic consumers more. I'm not sure how having more food transported from vast distances and making the domestic populace poorer is going to affect climate change?
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