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Comment by blunte | Hacker News Reader

I find it a bit ironic given the MIT climate simulator on HN yesterday - the biggest impact (in that simulator) to climate change was the land/agriculture methane.

Right now the Dutch farmers are again harassing the country with their tractors on public roads, angry about what they feel is undue pressure to reduce their emissions. Maybe they'll get one or two more generations of farming as they hasten their own demise.

Meanwhile, since NL has failed significantly to meet EU (nitrogen) emissions requirements - almost entirely because of mass agriculture - there's a freeze on building housing, roads, etc. Oh and the country-wide max speed limit will be limited down to 100kph starting Jan 1 (which I don't mind so terribly, but many people do mind).

So basically, the commercial farmers are ruining this country (and contributing to ruining the planet), and being jerks while doing so.

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I do not know the details, but it is my understanding that the Netherlands exports a large amount of its agricultural production. One could say, let's only produce what we need, and methane production will go down. However, if that was done, all of the countries that rely on the Netherlands for agricultural imports would need to increase production or find somewhere else that would. There is no guarantee that using country level caps will improve anything.

Unless I'm missing something, maybe it would be better to assign the emission penalty of a product to the consumer rather than the producer?

Correct

This pretty much sums it up.

The world has a large surplus of agricultural products which are often produced due to significant subsidies. So, it’s not clear production would increase to compensate rather than existing land being repurposed.

Yes, and the Netherlands is an extremely good place for agriculture, with rich soil and very advanced technology. So if the world is going to produce this much, it's good for emissions to have it in the Netherlands.

But that is the whole world. I live in the Netherlands, and I don't want all of our nature to die, because I enjoy it and I want my children to be able to enjoy it. So I still want less production in the Netherlands.

Also because much of it is meat production, fed on imported soy from the other side of the world. And mostly for exporting. It must be possible to produce the meat elsewhere.

Moving the production to a different country would be a solution, since the Netherlands is currently producing way more nitrogen per area of land than other European countries.

Moreover, our nature areas are generally smaller and closer to agriculture. Therefore, nitrogen output has (had) a lot more impact on nature here than in other countries.

More information can be found in this news article (Dutch): https://nos.nl/artikel/2307260-kan-de-ruime-duitse-stikstofn...

> Moving the production to a different country would be a solution, since the Netherlands is currently producing way more nitrogen per area of land than other European countries.

Isn't this just because it is producing highly efficiently, at least in terms of land use? If you move the production elsewhere, it will consume the same amount if nitrogen on a wider area, so with worse impacts on wildlife and biodiversity.

No, because the concentration is a big part of the problem. If things were more spread out, but with the same total amount of nitrogen, there would be less of an issue (and this is why Germany has less strict rules on nitrogen).

Well, overall the Netherlands only gain 8% if you discount export related emissions, so it doesn't gain you a fantastic amount.

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

In the end it all comes back to weak politics. Our 'polder model, which is basically appeasement imo, has meant that for decades we have not done anything about the fact we have too many farmers, cows and pigs. (After the USA the Dutch are the largest exporter of food worldwide.)

And now, when push comes to shove, they get pissed because they are not protected from by the government anymore. Measures that should have been slowly introduced over years have to be implemented quick now and that hurts. But ANY other branch would have had to adjust to market conditions and not complain. Yet the farmers got subsidized when they produced to much milk driving the prices below production costs...

This is a very one-sided view of the nitrogen problem.

It would be fair to point out the allowed nitrogen levels are orders of a magnitude smaller than in for example Germany, which is the result of a political decision to assign many many Natura2000 areas.

edit: and to add to this, there is plenty of support for the farmers, and their activism in The Netherlands.

So because some people are shitting in their kitchen, it isn't a bad idea to do so as well?

On a more serious note though, much of the agriculture in the Netherlands is the production of meat, especially pork, for export. This is by far the biggest source of pollution. I'd rather live with less animal farmers and more Natura2000 areas than the other way around.

Well, if us Dutch people stop shitting in our kitchen, we import food from other countries shitting in their kitchen, plus we now have extra fuel to burn to get the food here.

Actually, Dutch export most of their food and turn around and import cheaper food from far away (Spain and Brazil being two common sources).

Check it out at the grocery store sometime. It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

> It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

Wait, is Dutch produce supposed to be nice? I know that in Germany, Dutch tomatoes are disparaged as "Wasserbomben", and in Romania the Dutch vegetables are the cheap supermarket stuff that you buy if you don’t a chance to pass by the marketplace and buy something locally grown.

Dutch greenhouses are in fact capable of producing "Wasserbomben" as well as quality produce -- at a higher price point. Unfortunately, supermarkets in most parts of the world have decided they prefer the former.

Italian immigrant here: let me tell you something. NL may cultivate and export the most mass of agricultural products, but there’s nothing the lit greenhouses you see taking off from Schiphol can do to best the sun scorching the skin of a tomato growing in Puglia. The metabolism it has to crank up 200% to defend against such constant environmental aggression is something irrepetable you can smell and taste.

This is the reason I've stopped buying red peppers in the summer when the local super market starts importing them from Netherlands. In the winter, they import them from Spain. The quality difference is staggering.

My own country is also great at mass producing poor quality food in the sense of taste - in other terms of look, feel and uniformity it's great.

I'm not convinced they couldn't produce great taste in Netherlands, though, if they put their mind to it. I think it's more of a bug in the market mechanisms. But it's depressing for sure. I root for the day small-scale shipping is automated and solved for good, and then I can be the one deciding who I'm buying peppers from.

We are the biggest exporter of agricultural products after the US, which is insane given the size of our country:

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2019/01/18/neder...

There is no need to import food, we could just start exporting less.

Only by value. We specialized in expensive produce.

> There is no need to import food, we could just start exporting less.

Are you going to pay the unemployment salary for the people who currently work in the agricultural sector?

Do you agree that your analogy is very very far fetched?

If the analogy would hold up just a little bit, all this nature already would have perished, right?

This is about the subtle opinion of some green leaning people who think it is not the 'right' nature which is growing in the Natura2000 areas right know.

Nothing catastrophic, just a purely intellectual debate.

Well there are many important differences between plants and animals so... sounds like they have a reasonable basis for concern.

It looks to me like Germany has a significant amount of Natura 2000 sites, rather in proportion to NL in terms of land size. However, Germany has triple the percentage of forest compare to NL. Germany also has a lot of manufacturing that NL doesn't have. Both use about 50% of their land for agriculture.

From what I can gather, Dutch farming is higher output - production wise as well as emissions wise.

How does this explain 2 orders of a magnitude difference in allowed nitrogen disposition compared to Germany?

NL has less biomass to absorb it - less forest and less soil.

There is basically less material for the pollutants to disperse.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

The problem in the Netherlands is that the Natura2000 areas are too small. So any activity next to such areas immediately affects rare species.

The other problem is that the government, in cooperation with many sectors, has created paper realities. One by one, those realities go down when people start measuring and then a sector is in trouble.

> So basically, the commercial farmers are ruining this > country (and contributing to ruining the planet), > and being jerks while doing so.

Yet they apparently have huge backing from the public.

When I try debating the problem with people they get extremely angry with me when I mention that the farmers are:

  a) Entirely responsible for the problem.
  b) Largely capable of fixing the problem.
  c) Relatively rich. Agricultural land is VERY valuable here.
  d) They are actively destroying our planet and country.

It's pure insanity.

You have rich business men who have invested in quadrupling their farming capacity (and now have problems with their loans) demanding that the government bail them out, or they'll ghost ride along the motorway (which they did this afternoon on my local motorway). Or they'll block the supermarket distribution centers for Xmas.

If I wasn't alone I'd love to protest at a few hundred of the farms here in the region, see how they like it when we block their commerce. We can import food from Germany, their businesses wouldn't last half a year if they can't ship anything.

> If I wasn't alone I'd love to protest

You are never alone. Find like-minded people and go ahead. (I am not saying whether I find it a good idea or not).

But the non-farmer protesters are getting arrested while the farmers are breaking plenty of laws (road/obstruction) and the government is afraid to touch them.

Now the farmers are hanging nooses everywhere and trying to compare themselves with the Jews in WW2. I'm inclined to think that being forced to reduce your business production by 20-40% is not quite the same as being captured and put into a gas chamber to die.

> But the non-farmer protesters are getting arrested

But you have to be ready to make sacrifices for your ideals. I didn't say it's gonna be easy.

I grew up in England in the 1980s, and if there was one thing which Thatcher did which was absolutely correct it was standing up to the Coal Unions.

The government needs to stand up to these thugs.

Can we also mention that most of the electricity in NL is made with coal and gaz, what a green country. https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...

At least I'm seeing a lot of solar being installed. Granted this isn't the best country for solar, but it helps.

Yeah, we've really been in the back of the pack on green energy. When you see how much countries like Denmark and Germany have been investing in clean energy, it's embarrassing how little we've done.

Fortunately our eternally right-wing government finally seems to realise that something should be done. Let's hope they actually do.

Investing in renewable energy doesn't mean that you'll drastically reduce your CO² emissions.

You have to take into account the capacity factor of what you install https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/load-factor...

You need to install 3 to 4 times more windmill and solar panel to approach the same output. You also need to install huge way to store your electricity (mostly using damns, hard to get in places where you don't have mountains such as NL) and you need to invest the double into the electricity infrastructure to transport this electricity (your windmill will produce most of the time at 10-20% of it capacity, but the day it produces 90% you still have to transport it, therefore your grid need to be oversized for the average usage).

Solar panels are mostly coming from China and need to be changed each 20-30 years (they are loosing efficiency after a few decades). Windmills need to be changed each 20 years (lots of mechanical stress involved), and are mostly impossible to recycle (https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/industry/how-can-wi...). Also, to install windmills you need to put a lot of concrete in the fields as a base, concrete that is emitting also a lot of CO² to produce.

As a result you'll still have a non-controlled electricity production, where prices will vary a lot and where maintenance costs will stay really high decades after decades. It's not only about investing, it's also about maintaining something that works through the years.

> Solar panels ... need to be changed each 20-30 years

How does this maintenance cost compare to the operating cost of a coal plant where coal has to be delivered non-stop?

Regarding the drop of price of solar panel I don't think that it's not that uninteresting to invest in it. I'm all in to invest into renewable energy but I wanted to point out the hidden costs of deploying such technologies.

But overall, if it's about CO² emission we want to reduce, I think it's way more efficient to invest into house/buildings isolation, heat pump and save 20 or more % of energy better than trying to invest massively into renewable energy that will gives non-controlled productivity.

Most of this is incorrect, starting with your first claim.

Here's a chart that shows the yearly CO2 emissions from electricity generation in Denmark

https://energinet.dk/Om-nyheder/Nyheder/2017/05/19/El-produk...

If you know a bit about Danish politics, you can clearly tell at which point there was lackluster political support.

It can be quite difficult to blame the Dutch farmers for something that involves the decisions of people all around the world. At this point they may be better to get as rich as possible so that they can weather the pain of climate change better.

This, but repeated everywhere.

> the biggest impact (in that simulator) to climate change was the land/agriculture methane

Hum... You mean that the only control that had an actual effect was the land/agriculture methane. The impact was really small, huge changes lead to only ~0.3°C changes in a century, but it was the only one where you could make large changes.

> Meanwhile, since NL has failed significantly to meet EU (nitrogen) emissions requirements - almost entirely because of mass agriculture - there's a freeze on building housing, roads, etc. Oh and the country-wide max speed limit will be limited down to 100kph starting Jan 1 (which I don't mind so terribly, but many people do mind).

And all of their efforts combined, even if it were 100% successful, will be a drop in the bucket of the emissions coming from China.

The farmers are right to protest pointless austerity measures, especially since they’re growing food to keep people alive.

Knowing that 1/3 of the food produced is wasted (http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/en/) that we consume way more meat than a few decades ago and that we import a lot of cereals, vegetables and fruits from aboard I don't think that blaming the Chinese or Indian people is the way to go.

30% of China production is exported.

Growing tomatoes in December in huge greenhouses like you can see in many places in Netherlands is maybe not the smartest way to save energy.

There’s no blame. China is 29% of global CO2 emissions and the Netherlands is 0.47%.

There is literally nothing the Netherlands can do to materially affect global CO2 output at this point. The measures put forth are unserious in the face of real data.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

It's known that Netherlands only host companies that are in the interest of the environment. One example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell.

It's super easy to say "look I'm not to blame" when most of what you're doing is not at home.

Except for the intensive agriculture, most of the Dutch activity is in the 3rd sector, services. And in those services you have banks, oil companies, lobbying… (and also tax evaded ones, but that's another topic) that can be considered as the most impacting companies, even CO² wise, in the world.

So please, counting on the fact that Dutchies are not a lot of people and are putting solar panel on their roof is really missing 95% of the topic.

One or two generations of farming? By then they'll be retired (with a pension) or dead, do you think they care?

No, they don't care. They, like many older people in other countries, feel that they have a right to their "way of life". It's a strange failure of thinking when someone believes that they have a right to be how they have previously been (especially when their previous behavior has been demonstrated to be foolish or harmful to themselves or others).

In Europe we believe that everyone should have the right to be exactly how they wish to be (with obvious limits).

A strong part of the protestors are young farmers. Set on taking over their parents farm and continuing the family business. And they probably want the same for their kids as well. It's really puzzling they take this stance, especially since the majority is also anti EU, which is also against their best interest, because most of their revenue is from export, which would suffer havily when a Nexit would ever occur.

Source (Dutch): https://www.trouw.nl/binnenland/vooral-jonge-boeren-worden-s...

Just a guess, but I know some farmers. What I get from them is, that they are all about freedom to do what they think is right on their own land. Anything that brings regulations to their farms is felt as an attack. To be honest, I can understand them. They work insane hours all year long, constant pressure from the markets and society and every year there are more laws demanding their time and resources. That some of these laws might be necessary is lost in their daily struggle.

Most of them are also rich as fuck considering they often own their land outright. I think the support for them is overestimated.

My uncle thinks the atmosphere will explode when the Siberian permafrost releases its methane. Then I started thinking, maybe that is what happened in Tunguska. For a thermobaric event of geological proportions maybe it was small.

ED: Didn't mean to scare anyone. Just following a thread of logic.

Alternative take: people are prioritizing the compromises they need to make in order to minimize emissions. Ignoring the 12 year doomsday clock (which has been stuck on ≈10 years for about 30 years), it will be much easier to convince people to make gradual sacrifices of their quality of life rather than telling them to drop everything and move into a mud hut, and people like meat.

The protests are related to regulations for nitrogen emissions, not greenhouse gases. So it's not related to this "demise" nonsense. And if there should be a demise -- well, the Dutch contribution to global GHG emissions is almost negligible these days. As for nitrogen emissions, these have more than halved since 1990. We could still do better, but if Dutch agricultural production moves abroad it will certainly be replaced by dirtier production methods. Net result globally will be negative, even if we manage to protect Dutch Natura2000 areas.

Can anyone downvoting this explain why? To me it seems a balanced argument, well worded, void of emotion, and I can't see a fault in it.

I didn't downvote it, but regardless of why the farmers are protesting (which indeed is about nitrogen emissions limits), the farm industry does also contribute significantly to air pollution - https://euconf.eu/clean-air/topics-air-pollution-from-agricu... (this and plenty of other studies/measures).

So while I did bring up the farmer protests, which are indeed about nitrogen and not about climate change, it's still one facet of the same problem: commercial interests over regional and global health interests.

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