Agriculture
February 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Farm revolts have spread across Europe, most recently in France where farmers blocked roads leading into Paris. Local grievances vary somewhat, but fundamentally farmers have been rebelling against the environmental insanity that afflicts the EU even more than it does the U.S. So farmers have been rebelling on behalf of the rest of us, since left-wing environmental policies are designed to make food (especially meat) vastly more expensive, so as
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January 29, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Farmers across much of Europe are protesting against their governments’ anti-agriculture policies. In France, farmers are shutting down access to Paris: Farmers set up roadblocks on eight motorways around Paris today as they made good their threat to place a stranglehold on the capital. “The siege of Paris is under way,” said Damien Greffin, vice-chairman of the country’s biggest farming union, the FNSEA. He said the plan was to “encircle”
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December 6, 2023 — John Hinderaker
…now they are coming for your meat. Global warming, the universal excuse for left-wing policies designed to make your life worse, demands that modern agriculture be shut down. If you think that is an exaggeration, talk to anyone in Sri Lanka or the Netherlands. The UN’s COP28 global warming conference in Dubai is turning its attention to agriculture: Climate advocacy groups are pressuring world governments gathered at this year’s United
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July 29, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Politics in the Netherlands have been increasingly contentious of late. The most recent coalition government fell earlier this month, and now Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag has not only resigned her post, but says she might be leaving the country. This article in the London Times illustrates how liberal elites see themselves and their opponents. But if you read between the lines, reality begins to glimmer through. Just two years ago,
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June 16, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Victor Davis Hanson is probably my favorite living historian and observer of the current scene. Peter Robinson caught up with him at his family farm in central California for his most recent installment of Uncommon Knowledge. This installment is the first of two parts: “In part one of this two-part interview, we cover Hanson’s rich and fascinating family history and the sweeping changes he’s lived through in terms of both
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May 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The global liberal movement is trying to destroy modern, scientific agriculture. Liberals want organic farming–no intensive nitrogen fertilization–along with an end to animal husbandry and banning of pretty much all effective herbicides and pesticides. All great ideas, if you don’t care about billions of people dying. Just ask anyone in Sri Lanka or the Netherlands. Chris Morrison writes: The full horror of the ‘nitrogen’ war on agriculture is becoming more
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May 10, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In today’s developed world, average people can achieve a higher standard of living than has ever before been possible. In fact, the difference between an “elite” standard of living and that enjoyed by people of average, or a little more than average, means, has dwindled to near-insignificance. It is fair to say that today, an “elite” American has little more chance of living a satisfying and happy life than the
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May 8, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Left’s campaign to replace meat with insects in our diet–more specifically, your diet, not theirs–continues apace. From the Wall Street Journal: “Switzerland Wants Children to Eat Less Chocolate, More Insects.” Switzerland in 2017 became the first country in Europe to allow insects to be sold as food for humans after a lobbying campaign by edible-insect startups. That was the easy part. Now the companies must overcome what entomologists call
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April 30, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Left has launched a comprehensive war on modern agriculture. One aspect of that war consists of attacks on animal husbandry, which to some degree ties in with longstanding crank theories espoused by vegans and others. However, contemporary attacks on meat are mostly climate-based. As such, they are dangerous to your family’s health. The Telegraph reports: Meat is crucial for human health, scientists have warned, as they called for an
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April 2, 2023 — John Hinderaker
What we call liberalism in America is a global philosophy or movement. Thus, what Janet Daley writes in England’s Telegraph applies equally here, and across the West: “The Left now has a demonic new aim: to make ordinary people poorer.” We are living through the most startling political realignment in more than 100 years. Never since the advent of modern socialism in the early 20th century has the Left openly
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March 28, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Liberals aren’t just coming for our automobiles, gas stoves and air conditioners. They also want to change the way we eat, because of the climate, doncha know. What else? The Telegraph recounts a particularly nasty instance of liberals’ nouveau food: fake woolly mammoth meat. A mammoth meatball has been created using the resurrected flesh of the long-extinct animal. It was produced by a cultivated meat company as part of a
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March 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker
On Saturday evening, Sunday morning in Australia, I did a fun appearance on Outsiders, the excellent Sky News program that I have been on a number of times. Rowan, Rita and James asked me about some of the issues we have been covering here on Power Line: the Left’s insidious effort to make us eat insects, the U.S. government’s insane energy policies, and the three-cornered battle now going on among
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March 17, 2023 — John Hinderaker
We have written (here and here) about the Dutch government’s war on its own people. In service to the mythical god of global warming, the Netherlands is driving its farmers out of business. Which is not only bad for the farmers, it is bad for the Dutch economy, since that country is the number two exporter of food products in the world. Not to mention that it is bad for
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January 25, 2023 — John Hinderaker
I have been writing lately about the war on agriculture–the Left’s attack on modern, scientific farming. The Left’s two main targets, so far, are fertilizers and animal husbandry. What is the end game? Leftists want us to eat a largely vegetarian diet, with insects as a protein source instead of cows, pigs and poultry. This is no secret if you follow leftist writing, but many people find it hard to
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January 15, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Leftists, perhaps thinking their war on reliable energy is well in hand, are now making war on scientific agriculture. The war has two main elements: opposition to fertilizers, without which billions of people could not be fed, and hostility toward animal husbandry. Leftists don’t want you to eat meat. When you tell people that liberals’ end game is for them to eat bugs, they sometimes think you can’t be serious.
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October 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Human history has largely been a struggle to get enough to eat. Starvation was an ever-present threat, almost everywhere, until very recently. Only in the last century or two has even part of the world learned how to produce an abundant and reliable supply of food. It requires a scientific approach to hybridization, crop rotation, intensive fertilization, pest control, and more. As a result of these modern farming methods, for
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September 20, 2022 — John Hinderaker
As has often been noted, environmentalism is, for many, a religion. It now appears that it is a religion that demands human sacrifice. Agricultural productivity depends on fertilizers. The world cannot be fed without them. Yet, when it comes to a tradeoff between carbon dioxide and mass starvation, the “green” left is OK with starvation. Reuters reports: The European Union is divided on how to help poorer nations fight a
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