{"id":245858,"date":"2023-02-27T12:47:34","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T11:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=245858"},"modified":"2023-02-27T12:51:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T11:51:15","slug":"childish-beliefs-drive-lethal-energy-and-agricultural-agendas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=245858","title":{"rendered":"Childish Beliefs Drive Lethal Energy and Agricultural Agendas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden and environmentalist policies would destroy agriculture, habitats, products and nutrition<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul Driessen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many eco-activists (and too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists) have trouble thinking beyond slogans. They apparently believe declaring ecological emergencies, repeating clever mantras, and issuing proclamations and mandates will create a fossil-fuel-free, organic farming utopia. In their dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 1950, American farmers increased per-acre corn yields<\/a> by an incredible 500% \u2013 and other crop yields by smaller but still amazing amounts, while using less land, water, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides. Their exports helped slash global hunger and malnutrition. Farmers in Brazil<\/a>, India<\/a> and other countries<\/a> worldwide have likewise enjoyed record harvests in recent years. Their success has many \u201croots.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hybrid seeds combine valuable traits from different plants. Biotech seeds protect crops against insects and viruses and reduce water and pesticide demand. Nitrogen fertilizers (synthesized from natural gas<\/a>) join phosphorus and potassium in supercharging soils. School and online programs offer libraries of agricultural success tools. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide<\/a> (CO2) further spurs plant growth<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long-lasting herbicides control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from crops, while enabling farmers to utilize no-till farming that avoids breaking up soils, reduces erosion, further retains soil moisture and preserves vital soil organisms. Israeli-developed drip irrigation delivers water without the evaporation characteristic of other irrigation methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern high-tech tractors use GPS systems, sensors, cameras and other equipment to steer precise courses across fields, while constantly measuring soil composition, and injecting just the right kinds and amounts of fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, along with seeds, to ensure optimal harvests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine the bounteous crops for humanity if all these technologies could spread across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, this planet-saving, life-saving progress is under assault \u2013 by well-meaning or ideologically driven, ill-advised or ill-intended \u2026 but all well-funded<\/a> \u2026 organizations that demand natural gas bans, \u201cmore Earth friendly\u201d agriculture and a return to \u201ctraditional farming lifestyles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their hatred of biotech crops is intense and well-documented, but they also despise hybrid seeds. They want modern herbicides and insecticides banned, in favor of \u201cnatural\u201d alternatives that are often toxic<\/a> to bees, animals and people; may actually be synthetic (eg, neurotoxic pyrethrins); and are rarely tested for residues on produce or long-term toxicity to humans. They demand \u201cnatural\u201d fertilizers, which often provide a tiny fraction of nutrients that modern synthetic fertilizers do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They want to teach only \u201ctraditional\u201d (ie, subsistence<\/em>) farming, especially in Africa. They prefer to call it \u201cfood sovereignty\u201d \u2013 which they claim is the \u201cright\u201d to \u201cculturally appropriate\u201d food produced through \u201cecologically sound and sustainable methods,\u201d in accord with AgroEcology policies<\/a>. In other words, millions more people (ruling elites and their kids?) doing back-breaking stoop labor, dawn to dusk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tractors? Why not horses, oxen or human labor, they ask? At least get rid of gasoline and diesel tractors and trucks, in favor of electric models. Never mind that EV tractors and combines would require several tons<\/em> of battery modules, and still wouldn\u2019t be able to do a full day\u2019s work without hours-long recharges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They want oil and gas locked in the ground. \u201cWe don\u2019t need petrochemical products, especially synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.\u201d Or tractor tires, paint, windows, GPS\/computer housings, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have these illiterati looked at their own clothing, food, homes, offices or world? Synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, cell phone and computer housings, pharmaceuticals, tapes and adhesives, protective gear, eyeglasses, car bodies, detergents, wind turbine nacelle covers and blades, medical devices, car bodies \u2013 practically everything around them and in their lives exists because of oil, gas and petrochemicals<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we can just use biofuels to replace feed stocks for products we really need, they proclaim. Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banishing oil, gas, petrochemicals and internal-combustion engines would certainly mean no more ethanol as a gasoline additive. That would eliminate the need to grow corn on 36,000,000 acres (equivalent to Iowa), and that land could be used for food crops or wildlife habitat. Except it won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organic farms have significantly lower crop yields per acre and require far more land<\/a> than conventional agriculture. Worse, ending oil and gas production means tens of millions of acres would have to be planted with biofuel crops<\/em>, to provide feed stocks for thousands of now-petrochemical products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means vastly more tractors or human labor \u2013 and more water, fertilizers and pesticides \u2013 to cultivate and harvest sugar and oilseed crops<\/a> (and algae). And then all those simple biofuel molecules would have to be transformed into much more complex hydrocarbons to provide the necessary feed stocks. That would require even more energy, from even more wind turbines and solar panels \u2013 on top of doubling or tripling our existing electricity needs, to transform the U.S. and global economies to all-electric systems, and repeatedly recharge the grid-balancing and power backup batteries those systems would require.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or perhaps Team Biden plans to simply import<\/em> all those petrochemicals and\/or products \u2013 as it seems to be planning with regard to wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers and other \u201cgreen\u201d energy equipment. America will not be able to produce any of it, because Team Biden and its allies oppose mining<\/a> and drilling in the USA (even for raw materials<\/a> essential for their utopian \u201crenewable\u201d energy transformation \u2013 and we won\u2019t even have affordable, reliable electricity to operate factories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can these \u201cbest and brightest\u201d decision-makers and advisors be so ignorant, inept and clueless \u2013 so unable to connect even two or three dots? They\u2019re destroying our planet, habitats and wildlife, to \u201cSave the Earth\u201d from a computer-modeled<\/a> \u201cclimate crisis\u201d that President Biden absurdly insists is \u201ca greater threat than nuclear war<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They base critical policies that deeply affect lives and livelihoods everywhere on childish beliefs in Santa Claus and Harry Potter. They think we can banish today\u2019s energy and agricultural resources and technologies \u2013 and amazing replacements will just be there<\/em> \u2026 via some mystical, mythical process called Materials Acquisition for Government-mandated Infrastructure Change (MAGIC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of them know this cannot possibly happen, but promote the policies anyway. They seem to believe they can mandate that \u201ccommon folks\u201d will just have to live austerely, under nineteenth or early twentieth century living standards, in 700-square-foot apartments, using electricity when it\u2019s available (not when they need it), and subsisting on bug burgers and larvae milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They think Africa would be \u201cthe perfect laboratory\u201d for testing new foods, like \u201ccrackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages\u201d made from lake flies<\/a>. If all that fails, they\u2019ll just impose forced rationing<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others would go even further. Obama science advisor John Holdren<\/a> advocated \u201cde-development of the [United States and other over-developed countries] and semi-development of the under-developed countries, to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau<\/a> once said, \u201cin order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.\u201d Environmental Defense scientist Charles Wurster<\/a> said \u201cPeople are the cause of all the problems\u2026. We need to get rid of some of them, and [banning DDT] is as good a way as any.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Environmental and racial justice? Campaigns, policies government actions to eradicate fossil fuels and modern agricultural practices and technologies go well beyond callous and imperious. They go well beyond eco-imperialism<\/a>, eco-colonialism and eco-Apartheid. They drive eco-manslaughter<\/em> on a global scale via energy, farming and climate policy. They impose systemic, systematic racism<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These ideas, and these policy proponents, are what should be banished from government, media and academic institutions. Not the wondrous technologies that make modern life possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org<\/a>) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\t

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