I’ve often had to apologize for something inane our politicians or fringe ranchers have been doing down here.
But you weren’t supposed to try to catch up.
Please tell your politicians to quit trying to outdo our stupidity. It’s unseemly, un-Canadian.
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I’ve always been appalled at the left’s devotion to dogmas impossible to scientifically, logically prove or disprove — at least for another 100 years or so.
Their fallback is always, “Well, if we hadn’t acted, it would have been worse.” Covidity?
Also unprovable.
The left ignores obvious basics. Earth’s climate is very dependent on the sun, which is 90 million miles away. We’re not going to affect its operation any time soon. Scientists cannot determine whether the earth’s core is 8,000 F or 18,000 F. That’s important. The atmosphere surrounding earth is a huge quantity. Affecting that with anything less than a volcanic eruption is problematic.
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Now, I’m in favour of scientific research on a pilot project scale. Experimenting with national and global food supplies? No. That is a matter of planetary suicide, regardless of how many coal plants we have and whether electricity is heating homes or charging electric vehicles.
The overnight decision in Sri Lanka to go organic and ban the use of chemical fertilizers is difficult to grasp. Then there’s Europe. Americans often think — for an unfathomable reason — that the Europeans are smarter than us. But Europe has had two major, real-world experiments blow up. The first, depending on renewable energy such as windmills and solar panels to power their world, was a gargantuan and expensive flop. In two weeks, Germany reversed its Green energy policies. The second experiment, related, was relying on their friendly Russian neighbour for much natural gas. Putin seemed to enjoy figuratively perching by the Nord Stream valve (until it was recently sabotaged), deciding like some puppet master how much gas flows.
Dutch farmers evidently paid close attention to Canadian truckers descending on Ottawa to protest restrictions and requirements. Reminiscent of the “tractorcades” that descended on Washington D.C. decades ago, Dutch farmers evidently looked it up or remembered.
It is difficult for rational beings to fathom the Green enviro-zealots thinking. What will some global warming 50 or 100 years from now matter if we’ve all starved to death long before? It’s reminiscent of the French hysteria about GMOs years ago. GMOs really had science and safety behind them, yet the French regarded them as sorcery, witchcraft, “Frankenfood.”
The problem is, nutcases like that are running countries.
Sri Lanka is one thing. EU wants a 95 per cent reduction. What happened to the stolid, common-sense Dutch? What happened to the previously assumed rational Canadians? To propose cutting emissions from fertilizer by 30 per cent by 2030 is near madness.
The politicians worshipping climate “change” have graduated from making it more expensive and less reliable to heat homes, cook food and run transportation, to playing with the food production system like some parlour game. This is our day-to-day existence.
All because they have declared a climate “emergency” they can’t prove. We’re suffering heat and drought and water shortages. They cite that as “proof” that we have failed to control our climate. And by cutting off farmers and spending trillions they can?
Cloud seeding fails to make it rain. Yet they think they can affect a planet’s climate?
A Canadian podcast, The Big Story, recently featured Kelvin Heppner, field editor for RealAgriculture and Manitoba farmer.
He noted that Dutch farmers were protesting because the government has proposed requiring farmers to cut nitrogen fertilizer emissions by 50 per cent — 70 per cent in some areas — by 2030.
Their livestock sector would have a 30 per cent target.
These would be national, total targets. Some farmers are afraid there is no way to hit the targets in such a timeline without shutting down some farms. The Netherlands already has some of the strictest limits on nitrogen emissions and manure, and a minister of nature and nitrogen policy.
Heppner said Canadian proposals are not as strict as the Dutch but bad enough.
The Canadian government has proposed cutting nitrous oxide emissions from nitrogen fertilizer by 30 per cent by 2030 from a 2020 baseline. It claims not to want to cause a reduction in fertilizer use, just the emissions from its use. No one knows if that’s possible.
It sounds like “We don’t want you to quit swimming, we just won’t allow you to get wet.”
Heppner said there has not been much target input from those with production responsibility. There is fear that Canadian farmers will not get credit for techniques they’re already using to reduce emissions, and that the targets will not be adjusted accordingly.
There are products and procedures involving application timing, rates, placement, slow-release and moisture-release already being used. The concern is that setting the targets does not consider practices already in place in estimating use, emissions and improvements. If those targets are absolute, that could mean total crop production could not increase.
