"People Eat More Protein Than They Need To"

A couple of stories at the aggregators this morning reminded me that they don't just want us to drive electric cars. In Scientific American ,

In the U.S., people eat more protein than they need to. And though it might not be bad for human health, this excess does pose a problem for the country’s waterways. The nation’s wastewater is laden with the leftovers from protein digestion: nitrogen compounds that can feed toxic algal blooms and pollute the air and drinking water. This source of nitrogen pollution even rivals that from fertilizers washed off of fields growing food crops, new research suggests.

Well, they sure know about nitrogen pollution in the Netherlands and the EU, huh?

Dutch government proposals for tackling nitrogen emissions indicate a radical cut in livestock - they estimate 11,200 farms will have to close and another 17,600 farmers will have to significantly reduce their livestock.

Other proposals include a reduction in intensive farming and the conversion to sustainable "green farms".

As such, the relocation or buyout of farmers is almost inevitable, but forced buyouts are a scenario many hope to avoid.

Inevitably,

Dutch farmers dumped manure and set fire hay on fire along major highways Wednesday, prompting traffic jams in central and eastern parts of the Netherlands, in protest over government plans to reduce fertilizer use and livestock numbers.

Wait a moment. Ukraine has applied to join the EU, and the EU apparently views this favorably and is expediting the application. But isn't Ukraine's agriculture the key to avoiding a global food crisis?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth month, is preventing grain from leaving the "breadbasket of the world" and making food more expensive across the globe.

Russian forces' blockade of Ukrainian ports, destruction and alleged theft of the country's grains and agricultural machinery, and shells and mines now strewn across its fields are threatening to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries.

So the EU thinks the Netherlands has too many farms, but not that far away, if the world doesn't get enough Ukrainian farm products, there's going to be a crisis. What will happen when the Russians are inevitably kicked out of Ukraine, and Ukraine is in the EU. Is the EU going to reduce the number of Ukrainian farms? How's that all going to work?

Meanwhile, in California,

It appears that the “Climate Change Mitigation Strategist” on the California State Water Resources Control Board has stepped down, making a splash with a resignation letter that blames Governor Gavin Newsom and his administration, as well as his own colleagues, for California’s inability to manage its climate crisis.

In his resignation letter, he says,

Sadly, this state is not on a path towards steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions reductions, massive construction to alleviate the housing crisis, quickly and permanently reducing agriculture to manage the loss of water to aridification, and reducing law enforcement and carceral budgets and reallocating resources to programs that actually increase public health and safety.

"Quickly and parmanently reducing agriculture" is part of the whole progressive-reset agenda that hasn't had much attention, but it's there. And California is the top US state in agricultural revenue, 11.63 percent of the total. Exactly what these people intend to do with the people who work directly on farms, sell to farmers, transport farm products, and provide other support, is unclear -- but the same people would also like to eliminate another key part of the California economy, oil and natural gas.

California's natural gas and oil industry supported 1,059,000 total jobs across the state’s economy in 2019. California ranked among the highest states for the percentage of total economic contributions by the natural gas and oil industry, generating $199.3 billion toward the state’s gross domestic product—including $94.4 billion added to total labor income.

If Newsom has been dragging his feet on this agenda, that's certainly good news. The problem overall is that the philosopher-king wannabes have an overall agenda that at least in its end state proposes drastic reductions in the world standard of living, only decades after market and commercial progress succeeded in raising that standard and putting billions of people into a relatively prosperous new middle class.

I've only started to try to get my head around this.