Time to Start Eating Bugs?

Western nations’ commitment to “net zero” CO2 emissions is one of the greatest follies in world history. It is not just the fossil fuel industries that are under attack by liberals–although that would be bad enough, since it is fossil fuels that have created the modern world. They are the reason we are not going around in donkey carts. But it gets worse: agriculture is in the crosshairs, too.

We have seen it in Sri Lanka, where the government mandated “organic” farming and as a result, the Prime Minister’s residence was stormed by a mob and he was forced to flee the country. We have seen it in Canada and in the Netherlands, where the government is making war on that country’s highly successful ag industry. In fact, the Netherlands is second only to the U.S. in the value of food exports. But not for long: its government is moving to shut down farms.

The Dutch government is planning to buy and close down up to 3,000 farms near environmentally sensitive areas to be in compliance with EU environmental rules.
***
The government will conduct a “compulsory purchase” of large nitrogen emitters as part of a voluntary, one-time offer, announced Nitrogen Minister Christianne van der Wal….

The fact that the Netherlands has a “Nitrogen Minister” is a sign of how far off the rails liberals have gone. And oh, by the way, I will hazard a wild guess that the “Nitrogen Minister” is not a chemist or any sort of scientist.

In response to the decision, Executive Director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild told the Daily Caller “The Netherland’s war on farmers to pursue their ESG agenda serves as a stark warning. Americans should be vigilant against efforts by both governments and big Wall Street firms like BlackRock pushing these same dangerous ‘net zero’ carbon emissions targets here in the US. It is difficult to overstate the recklessness of undermining farmers during the greatest global food crisis in decades.

The international war on agriculture, which focuses mostly on the use of synthetic fertilizers, without which the productivity of modern agriculture is impossible, and on animal husbandry, is of course driving up the cost of food world-wide. If the war on agriculture continues, residents of wealthy countries will be impoverished by higher food prices while many residents of poor countries will starve.

Of course, liberals think there is an alternative: we should all eat insects instead of meat. Does that sound crazy? Well, it is. But nevertheless, that is their endgame. Just imagine how many CO2 emissions we would save if we didn’t use many millions of acres, augmented with synthetic fertilizers, to grow field corn for cows, pigs and other animals to consume! Not to mention the emissions for which the animals themselves are responsible.

Eating bugs is the liberals’ plan, to which I can only respond: you go first.

But that isn’t how liberals behave, is it? When the time comes, they will have special stores to which only those with high social credit scores can be admitted. They will eat meat, while you eat crickets.

Meanwhile, a rare voice of sanity asks, is there any reason to think that destroying the industries that made the modern world what it is will actually “save the planet” by staving off global warming? To which the answer is, No, there isn’t. Apart from the fact that the “science” of global warming is so deeply flawed that it is really a cult, not a science, fossil fuels–the best energy source that we have on planet Earth–will continue to be produced and used by countries that decline to drink the environmentalists’ Kool-Aid.

Thus we see headlines like this: UAE Plans $150 Billion Spending Spree To Boost Oil Output To 5MM Barrels By 2027.

Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., also known as Adnoc, will invest $150 billion in the five years through 2027, it said in a statement Monday. That’s an increase on the previous spending plan of $127 billion over five years that was announced a year ago.

The spending spree will try to raise crude output capacity to 5 million barrels a day by 2027, earlier than the previous target of 2030 and comes at a time when Saudi oil giant Aramco is also planning to expand its output by 12 million by 2027.

It would be nice if that $150 billion were being invested in the U.S. to produce American oil and gas, but that won’t happen under the brain-dead Biden administration.

So far, “green” hysteria has been mostly talk and wasted money. The reality is that Western countries rely almost not at all on expensive, inefficient and unreliable wind and solar energy to power their economies. But the Left expects that to change. If it does, the international balance of power will shift rapidly. Standards of living in formerly-rich countries like the U.S. and most of Western Europe will rapidly decline, while, in relative terms, countries like Russia, China and Iran that continue to exploit far more reliable, efficient and affordable fossil fuels will come to dominate economically. To me, this seems like a dystopian outcome, but Western liberals are trying hard to bring it about.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses