Dutch Farmers set up tractor blockades in protest of government mandates reducing emissions this past week.
QUICK FACTS:
- Over 40,000 farmers have taken to the streets in protest of new climate-related regulations that would force thousands out of work.
- “The honest message… is that not all farmers can continue their business,” the government said in June when announcing the new mandates, meaning many farmers would be losing their job.
- To show their disapproval farmers have dumped hay bales on roads, blocked highways with tractors and dispersed manure outside government officials’ homes.
AUSTRALIAN SENATOR MALCOLM ROBERTS ON THE INTERNATIONAL IMPACT:
“This is the end path of climate change activism. Eventually everything has to be stopped, even our food supply,” Roberts said. “Dutch farmers are protesting new rules that will close farms and force them to kill off livestock to curb “emissions”. Godspeed to the farmers.”
BACKGROUND:
- Among the mandates include cutting back on ammonia and nitrogen oxide emissions, both of which are found in large amounts in livestock manure.
- “We cannot invest,” Marijn van Heun, a 23-year-old Dutch dairy farmer said. “Our fathers, our uncles, cannot invest in the future. And so as young farmers we also have no prospect of… taking over a farm.”
- The Netherlands is currently the largest meat exporter in the EU and the protests come while food shortages are affecting every country across the globe.
