“Last month, the International Court of Justice issued a sweeping ruling on the legal duties of states to respond to climate change, demanding ‘deep, rapid and sustained reductions’ in emissions and opening the door to lawsuits for climate reparations….the United Nations’ highest court has deemed climate inaction a human rights violation and an infringement of international law,” notes Bjorn Lomborg:
The judgment is sure to cause significant economic harm, with far-reaching consequences for human well-being….the ruling gives nations and activists a powerful tool to advance ever more climate lawsuits. Any country could be sued for falling short of the legal standards it lays out — including the United States, despite its having withdrawn from the Paris agreement’s climate pledges.
The ICJ decision warns, for instance, that “failure of a State to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from [greenhouse gas] emissions” — including through fossil fuel production, consumption or even granting exploration licenses — “may constitute an internationally wrongful act.” That is an extraordinarily wide legal net. Simmons & Simmons, a leading international law firm, concluded that the judgment will “redefine the legal landscape of global climate governance” and even shape national court decisions over domestic policies.
Last month, climate lawsuits worldwide reached 3,099, up from 2,550 two years earlier. Among recent findings, the European Court of Human Rights used a human rights argument to force harsher climate policies on Switzerland — creating a legal precedent expected to unlock even more lawsuits in turn. A German court ruled that firms can face civil action for climate damages, which should frighten any U.S. company operating in Europe. Within the United States, fossil fuel firms are being sued over rising sea levels. Climate activists expect a flood of new lawsuits to be added to this surging global wave….the ICJ’s ruling doesn’t even get the science right…The judges also claim that hurricanes are becoming more frequent despite global evidence showing otherwise.
The ruling is likely to lead to harsh restrictions on industry and agriculture in law-abiding European countries that follow international and national court rulings, while having far less effect in Third World countries that don’t care much about international law, and have judiciaries that are powerless or not independent, and thus won’t restrict the actions of their own country’s government or major industries.
As Vijay Jayaraj noted in “Bureaucrats are killing agriculture in the name of global warming”:
Countries around the world are imposing on agriculture outlandish taxes and restrictions on emissions of greenhouse gases. Farmers are being forced to return to primitive forms of agriculture and even to reduce the numbers of their livestock….Justified in the name of climate action, such policies will not only destroy the livelihoods of the farmers but also disrupt food security across the world. Among the harshest policies are those of New Zealand, the Netherlands and Canada…
In the Netherlands,….new regulations and restrictions of the country’s ambitious climate goals are making it increasingly difficult to farm profitably.
For example, a proposal floated by the Dutch government would have farmers quit, relocate or downsize their business under strict guidelines in exchange for compensation.
“Dairy farmers that want to be bought out need to reduce their cattle stocks by 95 percent and permanently relinquish their right to increase stocks in future,” according to a 2022 report. “For pig, chicken, and turkey farms, this percentage is 80 percent.” The bottom line is the Dutch government wants to close down one-third of the country’s 50,000 farms.
The government in New Zealand has proposed to tax the flatulence and burps of cows and sheep. The country’s farmers accuse the government of making “vague promises of an obscure future review with unknown terms of reference.”
The government of the Netherlands has cracked down on farmers, attacking the world’s most successful agricultural sector. The Netherlands is tiny and densely populated. But Dutch farmers are so efficient and productive that the Netherlands is the world’s second-largest food exporter, close behind the United States, even though America has 200 times as much land as the Netherlands. Dutch farmers are pioneers in sustainable,environmentally-friendly agriculture.
But to reduce the Netherlands’ nitrogen emissions, the Dutch government cracked down on livestock-raising and fertilizer use. This will reduce food production in the Netherlands, and drive food production to other countries that grow food less efficiently with more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of food produced. Other countries use more land to produce less food than the Netherlands, so food production in those countries results in more deforestation and environmental damage.
In response to a court ruling telling the Dutch government to slash nitrogen emissions, the Dutch government is requiring a 50% cut in nitrogen emissions by 2030. That is effectively a deadline for phasing out nitrogen-based fertilizers. Those fertilizers are much better for growing crops than biofertilizers like manure. Nitrogen expert Wim de Vries, a professor at Wageningen University, doubts that the 2030 deadline is realistic. Dutch agriculture is not using excessive amounts of fertilizer: Its “fertilizer use hasn’t increased since the 60s even as yields have doubled. In other words, Netherlands is a massive farming ‘success,’ not failure.”
Farmers responded with massive protests to the Dutch government’s planned curbs on farming.
Progressives often dislike modern fertilizers because they are made using fossil fuels. Biden administration official Samantha Power celebrated fertilizer shortages that will force farmers to “hasten transitions” to “natural solutions, like manure and compost.”
The country of Sri Lanka recently destroyed its economy by doing what Power wanted: restricting fertilizers. Last year, Sri Lanka’s government banned fertilizer imports and told the nation’s farmers to practice organic agriculture instead. The result was a “man-made” food crisis as crop yields shrank and farmers stopped planting. The country went broke, and ran out of fuel. In its cities, deadly riots took place as people ran out of food and gasoline, and the President and Prime Minister were forced to resign.
Al Jazeera reported on how the anti-fertilizer policies promoted by progressives destroyed food production in Sri Lanka:
Mahinda Samarawickrema, 49, will not be planting paddy this season. After a government ban on chemical fertilisers cut his rice yield in half during the March harvest, the farmer, who owns eight hectares (20 acres) of paddy and banana, said he no longer has the income to maintain a farm. Especially as his banana crop also looks set to fail.
“It’s a total loss,” the father of five said in mid-April, standing in a field of stunted banana trees in Sri Lanka’s southern Hambantota district…By this time of the year, most of Samarawickrema’s trees should be twice their height and in bloom, but only a few of the 1,300 trees in the weed-strewn fields have any flowers. The farmer says he used to get up to 37,000kg (81,571 pounds) of bananas a year, but this time, he expects only 6,000kg (13,228 pounds). “Everything has collapsed,” he said…..Most smallholder farmers in Samarawickrema’s Walsapugala village also say they will not be irrigating their fields in the current growing season….They say the fertiliser ban induced crop failures make farming untenable….most smallholder farmers…in key agricultural regions in the north…are also halting operations this season.
That could leave Sri Lanka, which is already grappling with shortages of imported foodstuffs amid its worst-ever economic crisis, facing widespread shortages of domestically grown and produced food, too….President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s drive to make the country the world’s first to fully adopt organic agriculture – by banning all synthetic agrochemicals, including fertilisers and pesticides – has proved disastrous for Sri Lanka’s food security…the ban was imposed overnight in May of last year. The country’s 2 million farmers, … who until then were dependent on subsidised chemical fertilisers, suddenly found themselves left to their own devices…The result has been a dramatic fall in agricultural output …. a drop of between 20 to 70 percent, depending on the crop. For rice, a staple of the Sri Lankan diet, output fell by between 40 and 50 percent nationwide.
