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How rioting farmers unraveled Europe’s ambitious climate plan

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Thursday, May 2, 2024

Farmer protests in Nîmes, France, in March. According to reports, large tires were set on fire during the blockade. | Luc Auffret/Anadolu via Getty Images Road-clogging, manure-dumping farmers reveal the paradox at the heart of EU agriculture. In February 2021, in the midst of the deadly second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon, France, temporarily took red meat off the menus of the city’s school cafeterias. While the change was environmentally friendly, the decision was driven by social distancing protocols: Preparing one hot meal that could be served to meat-eaters, vegetarians, and those with religious restrictions rather than serving multiple options was safer and more efficient. The response from the French agricultural establishment was hysterical. “We need to stop putting ideology on our children’s plates!,” then-Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie tweeted. Livestock farmers clogged Lyon’s downtown with tractors and paraded cows in front of city hall, brandishing banners declaring, “Stopping meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses.” An impromptu coalition of livestock producers, politicians, and parents unsuccessfully petitioned the city’s court to overturn the change. It may have seemed a tempest in a teacup — a quintessentially French squabble. But it was a microcosm of European agricultural politics, reflecting the great paradox of European Union (EU) farmers’ relationship to the state. On one hand, farmers are wards of the welfare state, dependent on national governments and the European Union for the generous subsidies and suite of protectionist trade policies that keep them in business. On the other, they are business people who balk at regulations, restrictions, and perceived government overreach. The tension between these positions regularly erupts into farmer revolts when governments attempt to regulate food or farming in the public interest as it might any other industry. EU politicians, meanwhile, often feel the need to kowtow to agribusiness because of its ability to mobilize protesters and voters alike. This year, it has become clear these protests have the power to transform Europe’s future. This past February, three years almost to the day after Doucet’s school lunch announcement, roads around Lyon were again blocked by farmers raging against the French government and the EU. It was one surge in the wave of protests that has swept through Europe in recent months, set off by a litany of demands, including continued subsidies and no new environmental regulations. In short, all the benefits of government with none of the governance. In Paris, farmers traded blows with police at the country’s Salon de l’Agriculture trade fair. In Germany, they tried storming a ferry carrying the country’s economy minister. In Brussels, they rammed through police barricades with tractors. In the Netherlands, they lit asbestos on fire alongside highways. In Poland, they massed along the Ukrainian border to prevent the import of cheap grain. In Czechia, they paved Prague’s streets with manure. The protests have come as the EU seeks to pass a slate of laws as part of its Green Deal, a sweeping climate plan that includes checking the worst harms of industrial agriculture, which takes up more than a third of the continent’s landmass and contributes disproportionately to its ecological footprint. That agenda is colliding with Europe’s longtime paradigm of few-strings-attached welfare for agribusiness. Agribusiness interests have been working to foil the Farm to Fork strategy, the crown jewel of the Green Deal meant to overhaul Europe’s food system, since its inception in 2020. This year, with the specter of right-wing populism looming over upcoming European Parliament elections (part of the EU’s legislative branch), farmers’ protests across the continent have succeeded at not only stalling new sustainability reforms, but also undermining existing environmental regulations. Now, plans to make Europe a global leader in sustainable agriculture appear to be dead on arrival. Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images Farmers dump manure on streets in the EU quarter of Brussels in March. How European agriculture got this way Despite its centrality to European politics and policy, agriculture is a very small industry within the bloc’s economy, making up about 1.4 percent of the EU’s GDP and no more than 5 percent of GDP in any of the Union’s 27 countries. The sector is also one of the biggest recipients of EU funds, with subsidies to farmers and investment in rural development consuming about a quarter of the EU’s budget, on top of often generous national subsidies. Meanwhile, European agriculture’s environmental footprint is vastly disproportionate to its economic contribution. It uses a third of all water on the increasingly arid continent. It’s responsible for 10 percent of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, including much of its methane and nitrous oxide, both highly potent greenhouse gases primarily released by animal agriculture. It accounts for about a quarter of global pesticide use, which has been linked to soil and water contamination, biodiversity loss, and a slew of impacts on human health. Of course, we need to eat, and food needs to be produced. But Europe’s monocrop- and livestock-intensive agriculture system is anything but sustainable. Yet the EU continues to pour massive amounts of money into subsidizing an economically negligible sector that is responsible for many of the continent’s environmental problems and that, off the back of those subsidies, organizes to prevent environmental regulations or even conditions on those very subsidies. Many countries around the world generously subsidize food production — including, famously, the United States, where agriculture makes up less than 1 percent of GDP and punches far above its weight politically. But much of the US ag sector’s billions in annual federal payouts comes in indirect forms like subsidized crop insurance, including more than a third of the $24 billion it received in 2021 — and these subsidies make up a much smaller share of the industry’s contribution to GDP relative to agriculture subsidies in the EU. In Europe, decades of government policy have integrated food production into an extensive state welfare framework where, on paper, the good of farmers is equated with the public good. That system emerged from the ruins of World War II, when shoring up farming and food security became an existential policy imperative on the devastated and often starved continent. Post-war policies were designed to secure the food supply, provide farming families with a stable income, and stimulate rural economies in the interest of the public good. European agriculture policy became its own welfare system defined by subsidies and protection from foreign competition. It worked. By 1950, agricultural production in Western Europe had recovered to pre-war levels. When the European Economic Community (EEC), the precursor to the EU, formed in 1957, agriculture was central to the discussions, as economic integration would require dealing with the problem of highly subsidized and protected farming in member states. The answer was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), launched in 1962, a centerpiece of EEC and later EU policy. An extension of national-level agricultural welfare policies, the goal of the CAP was “to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture.” In other words, rather than using policy to build agriculture into a viable competitive business, the goal was to protect agriculture from the market and commit to a long-term policy of keeping farmers in business. CAP was “from the outset a public policy reflecting highly subjective political ‘preferences,’ not rational commercial interests,” economic historian Ann-Christina Knudsen argues in her book Farmers on Welfare: The Making of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy. For decades, CAP has been the EU’s biggest budget line. As recently as the 1980s, it made up about two-thirds of the Union’s budget. While bouts of trade liberalization and the rise of other priorities have steadily reduced its relative size, about a third of the EU’s 2021-2027 budget was earmarked for CAP. Over 70 percent of this money is distributed as direct payments to farmers. Since payments are primarily based on farm size, the biggest farms get the lion’s share of that money. Over half of the EU’s 9 million farms produce less than 4,000 euros of products per year and make up a combined 2 percent of Europe’s farm production, while the top 1 percent of farms — those that bring in over 500,000 euros — control 19 percent of all farmland and are responsible for over 40 percent of output. The top 0.5 percent of farms receive over 16 percent of all CAP payments. Lavish subsidies have helped make Europe a net exporter of agricultural products, with early concerns about food security long since displaced by a global thirst for Irish whiskey and Dutch beer and hunger for Irish butter and French cheese. Coupled with decades of government policy incentivizing industrial production methods that favor big operations, such as factory farming and large-scale monocropping, CAP has served to push Europe’s farmers to get big or get out. Between 2005 and 2020, the EU lost over 5 million farms, virtually all of them small operations sold by retiring farmers or those simply unable to compete with their larger neighbors. Large farmers, in turn, have organized into powerful political interest groups that aim to dictate agricultural policy to their governments. Farmers and their political allies pack the EU’s agriculture committee. Lobby organizations like Copa-Cogeca, which represents large farmers’ unions across the EU, and CropLife Europe, a pesticide trade group, pressure governments to entrench the status quo, including maintaining CAP as an ever-open spigot gushing taxpayer money. And where governments are seen as truant in delivering on their promises, cities and nations can be brought to a standstill by blockades of tractors, helping galvanize public opinion and push politicians into acquiescence. Europe’s turn toward environmental protections is clashing with farming interests Today, the growing importance of environmental goals in EU politics has driven a wedge into the sometimes contentious but mostly cozy relationship between farming interests and governments. While EU subsidies do come with some environmental strings attached, such as requirements to protect wetlands or engage in soil-friendly crop rotation, these are often poorly enforced and noncompliance is common. In Europe, much like in the US, agriculture is governed with a lighter touch compared to other industries, a paradigm often known as agricultural exceptionalism. In the Netherlands, for instance, farms have for decades been granted a derogation on nitrogen emissions, allowed to emit more than any other industry. This meant that, over the years, dairy farms and heavily fertilized crop fields leached nitrogen into the soil and water, poisoning rivers and wetlands. In 2019, the Dutch government sought to close the loophole and buy out livestock farmers unable to comply with the restriction. Farmers launched a series of protests marked by the now-ubiquitous use of tractors to block roads and public spaces in a show of force against government bureaucrats. Many felt aggrieved that government, by pushing the resource-intensive industrial farming that had made the Netherlands into an agricultural powerhouse, had helped create the very environmental problems now being blamed on farmers. Peter Boer/Bloomberg via Getty Images A two-week old calf on a dairy farm in Hazerswoude, Netherlands. Livestock farmers have been protesting the Dutch government’s efforts to limit polluting nitrogen emissions from farms. Cities across the country ground to a halt, and the protesters formed a new political party, the far-right-aligned BoerBurgerBeweging (the Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB). Last year, it won the country’s provincial elections in a landslide on the back of rural votes as well as broader anti-government and anti-EU sentiment, controlling 20 percent of seats in the Dutch senate. It was a portent of things to come. 2019 was also the year the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, proposed the Green Deal, which aims to achieve net zero emissions across the EU by 2050 through emissions reduction across all industries, renewable energy and electric vehicle adoption, and reforestation programs. Farm to Fork, the food system component of the plan, calls for dramatically reducing pesticide use and food waste, and promoting more sustainable dietary choices through product labeling and school lunches; independent modeling suggested it could cut agricultural emissions by up to 20 percent and halve biodiversity destruction. Environmental policies are broadly popular with the European electorate, and that plan was arrived at through the EU’s highly bureaucratic — but nonetheless democratically deliberative — process. But because it originated with the European Commission, whose members are unelected, it was seen by some as being mandated by unaccountable functionaries. Farmers bristled at the idea of being told to devote some of their land to biodiversity and nature restoration. Growers of monocrop products like grains and grapes for wine balked at drastic pesticide reductions. The pesticide industry and its lobby saw its profits threatened. But most impacted would be livestock, the sector least able to meet stringent environmental or animal welfare standards. Animal agriculture makes up 40 percent of European agricultural production, releases more than 80 percent of the continent’s emissions from agriculture, and receives more than 80 percent of CAP subsidies, according to a recent study using data from 2013. Immediately, the agricultural lobby began petitioning politicians to delay or do away with the proposed rules, starting with the proposed pesticide reduction measures. At first, EU politicians held in their support for reforms, voting in 2021 to implement Farm to Fork. But as Covid-19, with its disruption of food supply chains, dragged on and Russia invaded Ukraine, raising the specter of a food shortage, ag lobby groups gained new ammunition to fire at what they framed as the Green Deal’s attack on food security and the livelihood of farmers. Attacks on pro-Green Deal politicians escalated, including threats of violence against its staunchest supporters. Bit by bit, political support for Farm to Fork began to erode. By the end of 2023, before most of Farm to Fork had even been implemented, many of its core initiatives were already watered down or abandoned, including pesticide reduction mandates and farm animal welfare improvements. Also declawed was the nature restoration law, which would require EU member states to restore 20 percent of degraded habitats to preserve biodiversity, by calling on farmers to plant tree and flower strips along the edges of fields, for example. Industrial beef and dairy operations were also granted an exemption from industrial emissions targets despite being among the food system’s biggest emitters, responsible for most agricultural methane emissions. Throughout, political allies of agricultural lobbies like the right-wing European People’s Party have celebrated these wins over the specter of “NGO environmental dictatorship.” Farming interests are blocking the development of sustainable alternatives The same groups pushing against environmental regulation in the name of keeping the government out of business have few compunctions about turning to governments to thwart their competition. Meat producers in particular are threatened not only by environmental regulations that would affect them most, as the food system’s biggest emitters, but also by meat alternatives that have the potential to cut into their market share. Cell-cultivated meat, a novel technology that can harvest animal tissue from stem cells rather than slaughtered animals, has not yet received regulatory approval for sale in the EU and remains largely theoretical. That did not stop politicians in Italy, under pressure from agricultural lobby groups, from passing legislation last November banning not just the sale of cellular agriculture products, but also scientific research into the technology. Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, a member of the country’s far-right ruling party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), declared cultivated meat a threat to Italian culture and civilization. Soon thereafter, members of the Italian delegation to the EU, joined by representatives from 11 other countries, called on the Council of Europe to “ensure that artificially lab-grown products must never be promoted as or confused for authentic foods,” ostensibly in the public interest. Farming lends itself to populism, which often acts as a cover for cold business calculations. The cultivated meat ban reveals that agricultural lobby group demands are generally about realpolitik rather than a principled position about state intervention — no different from any business that aims to protect its bottom line. Political scientist Leah Stokes, in her book Short Circuiting Policy, has described such policy fights as “organized combat” between interest groups, which tends to favor powerful incumbents over new constituencies aiming to build political support for social or economic change. In Italy, an entrenched and politically well-connected agricultural lobby had the power to write its preferences into policy while proponents of cellular agriculture did not, allowing them to nip potential competition in the bud. Something similar is at work in the unraveling of the EU’s green agenda. Proponents of environmental legislation, while technically having science and public support on their side, were either unprepared or lacked the heart for a fight with the battle-tested farming lobby. All that took place before Europe became engulfed by protests. Then came the tractors. Last December, a proposed cut to diesel subsidies (used to power tractors and other farm machinery) in Germany, which had more to do with the country’s budgetary crisis than with environmental regulations, sent aggrieved farmers into the streets. Dozens of other protests erupted around Europe stemming from particular national issues. But as they grew, they coalesced into a generalized grievance about the failure of government and the EU to sufficiently support farmers, with new environmental policies offering a particularly easy target for ire. Alan Matthews, an Irish economist and preeminent expert on the CAP, recently argued that part of the problem is the changing social capital of farmers: “Instead of being seen as heroic producers of a vital commodity, they are increasingly described as environmental villains and climate destroyers. ... Instead of taking responsibility for these problems, farmers often adopt a defensive position of denial.” The protests have brought farmers of all stripes to the streets, big and small, organic and conventional. Despite their differences and the historic exclusion of small farmers from EU policymaking, most of Europe’s farmers share a common interest in maintaining subsidies and reducing regulation. They also raise some valid points about the contradictions in EU policy, such as in their calls for more protection from foreign competitors that produce with lower standards than in Europe, including livestock produced in jurisdictions with no animal welfare protections or raised using growth stimulants banned in Europe. But this argument is undermined by farmers’ calls to weaken those very standards. By late February, when a massive protest by farmers from across the continent ran amok through the EU quarter of Brussels, politicians across the continent were buckling to farmers’ demand. At the EU, even the watered-down version of the nature restoration law that had passed a vote in EU Parliament despite protests was stalled — perhaps indefinitely — as states including Belgium and Italy withdrew their support. But perhaps most worrying has been the willingness of EU politicians to weaken already existing environmental standards, including loosening environmental conditions and reporting requirements for all farms smaller than 10 hectares. These decisions may have also been motivated by upcoming EU elections. Many Europeans support the farmers’ cause, and as the Dutch case showed, the protests have the potential to galvanize voters to support parties seen as “pro-farmer.” With widespread concern about large gains for right and far-right parties in the EU Parliamentary elections next month, even ostensibly pro-Green Deal politicians, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have been forced to act appropriately deferential to the protesters. Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks at the European Parliament on February 6, the same day that she recommended shelving a plan to cut pesticide use as a concession to protesting farmers. Sooner or later, climate change will force a reckoning with farming practices The latest progress report on the EU’s quest for carbon neutrality, released by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change amid the protests in January, showed little improvement, especially in agriculture. It called for reductions in production of meat and dairy, higher consumer prices of highly emitting foods, more incentives for farmers to embrace green practices, and, as a political hint, more ambitious policy plans. In short: the opposite of the situation on the ground. Arriving at a viable agricultural policy that marries support for farmers, green goals, and liberal trade policies is a difficult balancing act with few clear-cut solutions. It is unlikely that these could be achieved without continued state and EU involvement in shaping how food is produced in Europe through some mix of protectionism, policy nudges, and regulation. CAP, in one form or another, isn’t going anywhere. But to the extent that it remains primarily a subsidy program, there is no reason why conditions on meeting strict climate and environmental targets should not be massively strengthened, rather than weakened, and enforcement ramped up. And there is no reason not to use policy to steer production away from highly polluting industries like meat and dairy toward less harmful ones. To be in favor of more sustainable farming is not to be against farmers; it is to be against unsustainable farming practices. To allow these two to be conflated is to lose the fight, as the EU is currently doing. After all, to the extent farmers see themselves as businessmen, a sign of business acumen is making a profit within regulatory and market constraints. One thing is certain: Bowing to the demands of special interests whose only interest is maintaining agricultural exceptionalism only precipitates a sooner reckoning with environmental crises, which will force farming to change whether farmers want to or not. The EU, however, seems to be taking marching orders from a parasite of its own creation, abandoning the very notions of public good that led to the creation of its agricultural policies in the first place.

A large tractor with burning tires in the background
Farmer protests in Nîmes, France, in March. According to reports, large tires were set on fire during the blockade. | Luc Auffret/Anadolu via Getty Images

Road-clogging, manure-dumping farmers reveal the paradox at the heart of EU agriculture.

In February 2021, in the midst of the deadly second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon, France, temporarily took red meat off the menus of the city’s school cafeterias. While the change was environmentally friendly, the decision was driven by social distancing protocols: Preparing one hot meal that could be served to meat-eaters, vegetarians, and those with religious restrictions rather than serving multiple options was safer and more efficient.

The response from the French agricultural establishment was hysterical. “We need to stop putting ideology on our children’s plates!,” then-Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie tweeted. Livestock farmers clogged Lyon’s downtown with tractors and paraded cows in front of city hall, brandishing banners declaring, “Stopping meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses.” An impromptu coalition of livestock producers, politicians, and parents unsuccessfully petitioned the city’s court to overturn the change.

It may have seemed a tempest in a teacup — a quintessentially French squabble. But it was a microcosm of European agricultural politics, reflecting the great paradox of European Union (EU) farmers’ relationship to the state.

On one hand, farmers are wards of the welfare state, dependent on national governments and the European Union for the generous subsidies and suite of protectionist trade policies that keep them in business. On the other, they are business people who balk at regulations, restrictions, and perceived government overreach. The tension between these positions regularly erupts into farmer revolts when governments attempt to regulate food or farming in the public interest as it might any other industry. EU politicians, meanwhile, often feel the need to kowtow to agribusiness because of its ability to mobilize protesters and voters alike.

This year, it has become clear these protests have the power to transform Europe’s future.

This past February, three years almost to the day after Doucet’s school lunch announcement, roads around Lyon were again blocked by farmers raging against the French government and the EU. It was one surge in the wave of protests that has swept through Europe in recent months, set off by a litany of demands, including continued subsidies and no new environmental regulations. In short, all the benefits of government with none of the governance.

In Paris, farmers traded blows with police at the country’s Salon de l’Agriculture trade fair. In Germany, they tried storming a ferry carrying the country’s economy minister. In Brussels, they rammed through police barricades with tractors. In the Netherlands, they lit asbestos on fire alongside highways. In Poland, they massed along the Ukrainian border to prevent the import of cheap grain. In Czechia, they paved Prague’s streets with manure.

The protests have come as the EU seeks to pass a slate of laws as part of its Green Deal, a sweeping climate plan that includes checking the worst harms of industrial agriculture, which takes up more than a third of the continent’s landmass and contributes disproportionately to its ecological footprint. That agenda is colliding with Europe’s longtime paradigm of few-strings-attached welfare for agribusiness.

Agribusiness interests have been working to foil the Farm to Fork strategy, the crown jewel of the Green Deal meant to overhaul Europe’s food system, since its inception in 2020. This year, with the specter of right-wing populism looming over upcoming European Parliament elections (part of the EU’s legislative branch), farmers’ protests across the continent have succeeded at not only stalling new sustainability reforms, but also undermining existing environmental regulations. Now, plans to make Europe a global leader in sustainable agriculture appear to be dead on arrival.

A truck sprays manure onto the street in front of a sleek office building; much of the street is already covered. Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images
Farmers dump manure on streets in the EU quarter of Brussels in March.

How European agriculture got this way

Despite its centrality to European politics and policy, agriculture is a very small industry within the bloc’s economy, making up about 1.4 percent of the EU’s GDP and no more than 5 percent of GDP in any of the Union’s 27 countries. The sector is also one of the biggest recipients of EU funds, with subsidies to farmers and investment in rural development consuming about a quarter of the EU’s budget, on top of often generous national subsidies.

Meanwhile, European agriculture’s environmental footprint is vastly disproportionate to its economic contribution. It uses a third of all water on the increasingly arid continent. It’s responsible for 10 percent of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, including much of its methane and nitrous oxide, both highly potent greenhouse gases primarily released by animal agriculture. It accounts for about a quarter of global pesticide use, which has been linked to soil and water contamination, biodiversity loss, and a slew of impacts on human health.

Of course, we need to eat, and food needs to be produced. But Europe’s monocrop- and livestock-intensive agriculture system is anything but sustainable.

Yet the EU continues to pour massive amounts of money into subsidizing an economically negligible sector that is responsible for many of the continent’s environmental problems and that, off the back of those subsidies, organizes to prevent environmental regulations or even conditions on those very subsidies.

Chart showing EU agriculture contributing 1.4 percent of the continent’s GDP, using 24% of its budget as subsidies, emitting 10% of its greenhouse gases, and using 31% of its freshwater and 39% of its land

Many countries around the world generously subsidize food production — including, famously, the United States, where agriculture makes up less than 1 percent of GDP and punches far above its weight politically. But much of the US ag sector’s billions in annual federal payouts comes in indirect forms like subsidized crop insurance, including more than a third of the $24 billion it received in 2021 — and these subsidies make up a much smaller share of the industry’s contribution to GDP relative to agriculture subsidies in the EU. In Europe, decades of government policy have integrated food production into an extensive state welfare framework where, on paper, the good of farmers is equated with the public good.

That system emerged from the ruins of World War II, when shoring up farming and food security became an existential policy imperative on the devastated and often starved continent.

Post-war policies were designed to secure the food supply, provide farming families with a stable income, and stimulate rural economies in the interest of the public good. European agriculture policy became its own welfare system defined by subsidies and protection from foreign competition.

It worked. By 1950, agricultural production in Western Europe had recovered to pre-war levels. When the European Economic Community (EEC), the precursor to the EU, formed in 1957, agriculture was central to the discussions, as economic integration would require dealing with the problem of highly subsidized and protected farming in member states.

The answer was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), launched in 1962, a centerpiece of EEC and later EU policy. An extension of national-level agricultural welfare policies, the goal of the CAP was “to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture.”

In other words, rather than using policy to build agriculture into a viable competitive business, the goal was to protect agriculture from the market and commit to a long-term policy of keeping farmers in business. CAP was “from the outset a public policy reflecting highly subjective political ‘preferences,’ not rational commercial interests,” economic historian Ann-Christina Knudsen argues in her book Farmers on Welfare: The Making of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy.

For decades, CAP has been the EU’s biggest budget line. As recently as the 1980s, it made up about two-thirds of the Union’s budget. While bouts of trade liberalization and the rise of other priorities have steadily reduced its relative size, about a third of the EU’s 2021-2027 budget was earmarked for CAP. Over 70 percent of this money is distributed as direct payments to farmers.

Since payments are primarily based on farm size, the biggest farms get the lion’s share of that money. Over half of the EU’s 9 million farms produce less than 4,000 euros of products per year and make up a combined 2 percent of Europe’s farm production, while the top 1 percent of farms — those that bring in over 500,000 euros — control 19 percent of all farmland and are responsible for over 40 percent of output. The top 0.5 percent of farms receive over 16 percent of all CAP payments.

Lavish subsidies have helped make Europe a net exporter of agricultural products, with early concerns about food security long since displaced by a global thirst for Irish whiskey and Dutch beer and hunger for Irish butter and French cheese.

Coupled with decades of government policy incentivizing industrial production methods that favor big operations, such as factory farming and large-scale monocropping, CAP has served to push Europe’s farmers to get big or get out. Between 2005 and 2020, the EU lost over 5 million farms, virtually all of them small operations sold by retiring farmers or those simply unable to compete with their larger neighbors.

Large farmers, in turn, have organized into powerful political interest groups that aim to dictate agricultural policy to their governments. Farmers and their political allies pack the EU’s agriculture committee. Lobby organizations like Copa-Cogeca, which represents large farmers’ unions across the EU, and CropLife Europe, a pesticide trade group, pressure governments to entrench the status quo, including maintaining CAP as an ever-open spigot gushing taxpayer money.

And where governments are seen as truant in delivering on their promises, cities and nations can be brought to a standstill by blockades of tractors, helping galvanize public opinion and push politicians into acquiescence.

Europe’s turn toward environmental protections is clashing with farming interests

Today, the growing importance of environmental goals in EU politics has driven a wedge into the sometimes contentious but mostly cozy relationship between farming interests and governments.

While EU subsidies do come with some environmental strings attached, such as requirements to protect wetlands or engage in soil-friendly crop rotation, these are often poorly enforced and noncompliance is common. In Europe, much like in the US, agriculture is governed with a lighter touch compared to other industries, a paradigm often known as agricultural exceptionalism.

In the Netherlands, for instance, farms have for decades been granted a derogation on nitrogen emissions, allowed to emit more than any other industry. This meant that, over the years, dairy farms and heavily fertilized crop fields leached nitrogen into the soil and water, poisoning rivers and wetlands.

In 2019, the Dutch government sought to close the loophole and buy out livestock farmers unable to comply with the restriction. Farmers launched a series of protests marked by the now-ubiquitous use of tractors to block roads and public spaces in a show of force against government bureaucrats. Many felt aggrieved that government, by pushing the resource-intensive industrial farming that had made the Netherlands into an agricultural powerhouse, had helped create the very environmental problems now being blamed on farmers.

A small black-and-white calf with ear tags in each ear is seen in a crate behind metal bars. Peter Boer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A two-week old calf on a dairy farm in Hazerswoude, Netherlands. Livestock farmers have been protesting the Dutch government’s efforts to limit polluting nitrogen emissions from farms.

Cities across the country ground to a halt, and the protesters formed a new political party, the far-right-aligned BoerBurgerBeweging (the Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB). Last year, it won the country’s provincial elections in a landslide on the back of rural votes as well as broader anti-government and anti-EU sentiment, controlling 20 percent of seats in the Dutch senate.

It was a portent of things to come.

2019 was also the year the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, proposed the Green Deal, which aims to achieve net zero emissions across the EU by 2050 through emissions reduction across all industries, renewable energy and electric vehicle adoption, and reforestation programs. Farm to Fork, the food system component of the plan, calls for dramatically reducing pesticide use and food waste, and promoting more sustainable dietary choices through product labeling and school lunches; independent modeling suggested it could cut agricultural emissions by up to 20 percent and halve biodiversity destruction.

Environmental policies are broadly popular with the European electorate, and that plan was arrived at through the EU’s highly bureaucratic — but nonetheless democratically deliberative — process. But because it originated with the European Commission, whose members are unelected, it was seen by some as being mandated by unaccountable functionaries. Farmers bristled at the idea of being told to devote some of their land to biodiversity and nature restoration. Growers of monocrop products like grains and grapes for wine balked at drastic pesticide reductions. The pesticide industry and its lobby saw its profits threatened.

But most impacted would be livestock, the sector least able to meet stringent environmental or animal welfare standards. Animal agriculture makes up 40 percent of European agricultural production, releases more than 80 percent of the continent’s emissions from agriculture, and receives more than 80 percent of CAP subsidies, according to a recent study using data from 2013.

Immediately, the agricultural lobby began petitioning politicians to delay or do away with the proposed rules, starting with the proposed pesticide reduction measures. At first, EU politicians held in their support for reforms, voting in 2021 to implement Farm to Fork. But as Covid-19, with its disruption of food supply chains, dragged on and Russia invaded Ukraine, raising the specter of a food shortage, ag lobby groups gained new ammunition to fire at what they framed as the Green Deal’s attack on food security and the livelihood of farmers. Attacks on pro-Green Deal politicians escalated, including threats of violence against its staunchest supporters. Bit by bit, political support for Farm to Fork began to erode.

By the end of 2023, before most of Farm to Fork had even been implemented, many of its core initiatives were already watered down or abandoned, including pesticide reduction mandates and farm animal welfare improvements. Also declawed was the nature restoration law, which would require EU member states to restore 20 percent of degraded habitats to preserve biodiversity, by calling on farmers to plant tree and flower strips along the edges of fields, for example. Industrial beef and dairy operations were also granted an exemption from industrial emissions targets despite being among the food system’s biggest emitters, responsible for most agricultural methane emissions.

Throughout, political allies of agricultural lobbies like the right-wing European People’s Party have celebrated these wins over the specter of “NGO environmental dictatorship.”

Farming interests are blocking the development of sustainable alternatives

The same groups pushing against environmental regulation in the name of keeping the government out of business have few compunctions about turning to governments to thwart their competition. Meat producers in particular are threatened not only by environmental regulations that would affect them most, as the food system’s biggest emitters, but also by meat alternatives that have the potential to cut into their market share.

Cell-cultivated meat, a novel technology that can harvest animal tissue from stem cells rather than slaughtered animals, has not yet received regulatory approval for sale in the EU and remains largely theoretical. That did not stop politicians in Italy, under pressure from agricultural lobby groups, from passing legislation last November banning not just the sale of cellular agriculture products, but also scientific research into the technology.

Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, a member of the country’s far-right ruling party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), declared cultivated meat a threat to Italian culture and civilization. Soon thereafter, members of the Italian delegation to the EU, joined by representatives from 11 other countries, called on the Council of Europe to “ensure that artificially lab-grown products must never be promoted as or confused for authentic foods,” ostensibly in the public interest.

Farming lends itself to populism, which often acts as a cover for cold business calculations. The cultivated meat ban reveals that agricultural lobby group demands are generally about realpolitik rather than a principled position about state intervention — no different from any business that aims to protect its bottom line. Political scientist Leah Stokes, in her book Short Circuiting Policy, has described such policy fights as “organized combat” between interest groups, which tends to favor powerful incumbents over new constituencies aiming to build political support for social or economic change. In Italy, an entrenched and politically well-connected agricultural lobby had the power to write its preferences into policy while proponents of cellular agriculture did not, allowing them to nip potential competition in the bud.

Something similar is at work in the unraveling of the EU’s green agenda. Proponents of environmental legislation, while technically having science and public support on their side, were either unprepared or lacked the heart for a fight with the battle-tested farming lobby.

All that took place before Europe became engulfed by protests. Then came the tractors.

Last December, a proposed cut to diesel subsidies (used to power tractors and other farm machinery) in Germany, which had more to do with the country’s budgetary crisis than with environmental regulations, sent aggrieved farmers into the streets. Dozens of other protests erupted around Europe stemming from particular national issues. But as they grew, they coalesced into a generalized grievance about the failure of government and the EU to sufficiently support farmers, with new environmental policies offering a particularly easy target for ire.

Alan Matthews, an Irish economist and preeminent expert on the CAP, recently argued that part of the problem is the changing social capital of farmers: “Instead of being seen as heroic producers of a vital commodity, they are increasingly described as environmental villains and climate destroyers. ... Instead of taking responsibility for these problems, farmers often adopt a defensive position of denial.”

The protests have brought farmers of all stripes to the streets, big and small, organic and conventional. Despite their differences and the historic exclusion of small farmers from EU policymaking, most of Europe’s farmers share a common interest in maintaining subsidies and reducing regulation.

They also raise some valid points about the contradictions in EU policy, such as in their calls for more protection from foreign competitors that produce with lower standards than in Europe, including livestock produced in jurisdictions with no animal welfare protections or raised using growth stimulants banned in Europe. But this argument is undermined by farmers’ calls to weaken those very standards.

By late February, when a massive protest by farmers from across the continent ran amok through the EU quarter of Brussels, politicians across the continent were buckling to farmers’ demand. At the EU, even the watered-down version of the nature restoration law that had passed a vote in EU Parliament despite protests was stalled — perhaps indefinitely — as states including Belgium and Italy withdrew their support.

But perhaps most worrying has been the willingness of EU politicians to weaken already existing environmental standards, including loosening environmental conditions and reporting requirements for all farms smaller than 10 hectares.

These decisions may have also been motivated by upcoming EU elections. Many Europeans support the farmers’ cause, and as the Dutch case showed, the protests have the potential to galvanize voters to support parties seen as “pro-farmer.” With widespread concern about large gains for right and far-right parties in the EU Parliamentary elections next month, even ostensibly pro-Green Deal politicians, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have been forced to act appropriately deferential to the protesters.

Ursula von der Leyen, a blonde woman in her 60s, speaks into microphones in front of the EU flag. Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks at the European Parliament on February 6, the same day that she recommended shelving a plan to cut pesticide use as a concession to protesting farmers.

Sooner or later, climate change will force a reckoning with farming practices

The latest progress report on the EU’s quest for carbon neutrality, released by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change amid the protests in January, showed little improvement, especially in agriculture. It called for reductions in production of meat and dairy, higher consumer prices of highly emitting foods, more incentives for farmers to embrace green practices, and, as a political hint, more ambitious policy plans. In short: the opposite of the situation on the ground.

Arriving at a viable agricultural policy that marries support for farmers, green goals, and liberal trade policies is a difficult balancing act with few clear-cut solutions. It is unlikely that these could be achieved without continued state and EU involvement in shaping how food is produced in Europe through some mix of protectionism, policy nudges, and regulation. CAP, in one form or another, isn’t going anywhere.

But to the extent that it remains primarily a subsidy program, there is no reason why conditions on meeting strict climate and environmental targets should not be massively strengthened, rather than weakened, and enforcement ramped up. And there is no reason not to use policy to steer production away from highly polluting industries like meat and dairy toward less harmful ones.

To be in favor of more sustainable farming is not to be against farmers; it is to be against unsustainable farming practices. To allow these two to be conflated is to lose the fight, as the EU is currently doing. After all, to the extent farmers see themselves as businessmen, a sign of business acumen is making a profit within regulatory and market constraints.

One thing is certain: Bowing to the demands of special interests whose only interest is maintaining agricultural exceptionalism only precipitates a sooner reckoning with environmental crises, which will force farming to change whether farmers want to or not. The EU, however, seems to be taking marching orders from a parasite of its own creation, abandoning the very notions of public good that led to the creation of its agricultural policies in the first place.

Read the full story here.
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This election, what are Labor and the Coalition offering on the energy transition, climate adaptation and emissions?

Cost of living is trumping climate at this election, but the issue won’t disappear. Here’s what major parties are offering – and what we actually need.

Composite image, Xiangli Li, Shirley Jayne Photography and geckoz/ShutterstockAustralia’s 2022 federal election was seen as the climate election. But this time round, climate policy has so far taken a back seat as the major parties focus on cost-of-living issues. Despite this, climate change remains an ever-present threat. Last year was the world’s hottest on record and extreme weather is lashing Queensland. But there are hints of progress. Australia’s emissions have begun to fall and the main power grid is now 40% renewable. So before Australians head to the polls on May 3, it’s worth closely examining the climate policies of the two major parties. What are they offering on cutting emissions, preparing for climate-boosted disasters and future-proofing our energy systems? And where are the gaps? Energy transition - Tony Wood, Grattan Institute Cost-of-living pressures, escalating damage from climate change and global policy uncertainty mean no election issue is more important than transforming Australia’s economy to achieve net zero. But our energy supply must be reliable and affordable. What should the next government prioritise? There is great pressure to deliver power bill relief. But the next government’s priority should be reducing how much a household spends on energy, rather than trying to bring down the price of electricity. Far better to give financial support for battery storage and better home insulation, to slash how much power consumers need to buy from the grid. The Liberal-led Senate inquiry has just found supporting home electrification will also help with cost of living pressures. The electricity rebates on offer from Labor and the temporary cut to fuel excise from the Coalition aren’t enough. Federal and state governments must maintain their support and investment in the new transmission lines necessary to support new renewable generation and storage. Labor needs to do more to meet its 2030 target of reaching 82% renewables in the main grid. Currently, the figure is around 40%. The Coalition’s plan to slow down renewables, keep coal going longer and burn more gas while pushing for a nuclear future carries alarmingly high risks on reliability, cost and environmental grounds. Gas shortfalls are looming for Australia’s southeast in the next few winters and the price of gas remains stubbornly high. Labor does not yet have a workable solution to either issue, while the Coalition has an idea – more and therefore cheaper gas – but no clarity on how its plan to keep more gas for domestic use would work in practice. So far, we have been offered superficially appealing ideas. The field is wide open for a leader to deliver a compelling vision and credible plan for Australia’s net-zero future. Climate adaptation – Johanna Nalau, Griffith University You would think adapting to climate change would be high on the election agenda. Southeast Queensland just weathered its first cyclone in 50 years, estimated to have caused A$1.2 billion in damage, while outback Queensland is enduring the worst flooding in 50 years. But so far, there’s little to see on adaptation. Both major parties have committed to building a weather radar in western Queensland, following local outcry. While welcome, it’s a knee-jerk response rather than good forward planning. By 2060, damage from climate change will cost Australia $73 billion a year under a low emissions scenario, according to a Deloitte report. The next federal government should invest more in disaster preparation rather than throwing money at recovery. It’s cheaper, for one thing – longer term, there are significant savings by investing in more resilient infrastructure before damage occurs. Being prepared requires having enough public servants in disaster management to do the work. The Coalition has promised to cut 41,000 jobs from the federal public service, and has not yet said where the cuts would be made. While in office, Labor has been developing a National Adaptation Plan to shape preparations and a National Climate Risk Assessment to gather evidence of the main climate risks for Australia and ways to adapt. Regardless of who takes power, these will be useful roadmaps to manage extreme weather, damage to agriculture and intensified droughts, floods and fires. Making sure climate-exposed groups such as farmers get necessary assistance to weather worse disasters, and manage new risks and challenges stemming from climate change, is not a partisan issue. Such plans will help direct investment towards adaptation methods that work at scale. New National Science Priorities are helpful too, especially the focus on new technologies able to sustainably meet Australia’s food and water needs in a changing climate. Intensifying climate change brings more threats to our food systems and farmers. Shirley Jayne Photography Emission reduction – Madeline Taylor, Macquarie University Emission reduction has so far been a footnote for the major parties. In terms of the wider energy transition, both parties are expected to announce policies to encourage household battery uptake and there’s a bipartisan focus on speeding up energy planning approvals. But there is a clear divide in where the major parties’ policies will lead Australia on its net-zero journey. Labor’s policies largely continue its approach in government, including bringing more clean power and storage into the grid within the Capacity Investment Scheme and building new transmission lines under the Rewiring Australia Plan. These policies are leading to lower emissions from the power sector. Last year, total emissions fell by 0.6%. Labor’s Future Made in Australia policies give incentives to produce critical minerals, green steel, and green manufacturing. Such policies should help Australia gain market share in the trade of low-carbon products. From January 1 this year, Labor’s new laws require some large companies to disclose emissions from operations. This is positive, giving investors essential data to make decisions. From their second reporting period, companies will have to disclose Scope 3 emissions as well – those from their supply chains. The laws will cover some companies where measuring emissions upstream is incredibly tricky, including agriculture. Coalition senators issued a dissenting report pointing this out. The Coalition has now vowed to scrap these rules. The Coalition has not committed to Labor’s target of cutting emissions 43% by 2030. Their flagship plan to go nuclear will likely mean pushing out emissions reduction goals given the likely 2040s completion timeframe for large-scale nuclear generation, unless small modular reactors become viable. On gas, there’s virtually bipartisan support. The Coalition promise to reserve more gas for domestic use is a response to looming shortfalls on the east coast. Labor has also approved more coal and gas projects largely for export, though Australian coal and gas burned overseas aren’t counted domestically. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has promised to include gas in Labor’s renewable-oriented Capacity Investment Scheme and has floated relaxing the Safeguard Mechanism on heavy emitters. The Coalition has vowed to cancel plans for three offshore wind projects and are very critical of green hydrogen funding. Both parties will likely introduce emission reduction measures, but a Coalition government would be less stringent. Scrapping corporate emissions reporting entirely would be a misstep, because accurate measurement of emissions are essential for attracting green investment and reducing climate risks. Johanna Nalau has received funding from Australian Research Council for climate adaptation research, is a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Co-chair of the Science Committee of the World Adaptation Science Program (United Nations Environment Programme) and is a technical expert with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Madeline Taylor has received funding from the Australian Research Council, ACOLA, and several industry and government partners for energy transition research. She is a board member of REAlliance, Fellow of the Climate Council, and Honorary Associate of the Sydney Environment Institute.Tony Wood may own shares in companies in relevant industries through his superannuation fund

Trump Staff Cuts Hollow Out Extreme Heat Programs

Layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services have dealt a critical blow to the agency's efforts to manage rising temperatures made worse by climate change

CLIMATEWIRE | Widespread layoffs this week at the Department of Health and Human Services have effectively dismantled programs aimed at keeping Americans safe from extreme heat and other climate-driven weather.Last year was the warmest on record. But layoffs at HHS include staff that administer grants that help state and local health departments prepare and respond to extreme weather events such as heat waves, as well as federal workers tasked with maintaining online tools that raise awareness about the dangers of heat and tell people how to protect themselves from fatal conditions such as heat stroke.“This is really important, valuable work,” said Lori Freeman, CEO for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “As entire departments are cut, we are concerned that it will decimate resources available to key state and local work.”On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.That includes the entire staff of a federal program that helps low-income households pay utility bills for air conditioning and heating.Congress’ recently passed continuing resolution allocated $378 million to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It provides support to some 6 million Americans.But the staff who normally would process that money and send it to states where it can be spent to keep air conditioners running through summer heat waves are now all on administrative leave, and will be terminated June 2.“There are over 6 million families that are helped through this program, and now there is a possibility that the administration won’t allocate them,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents states. "It’s deeply disturbing."Heat can be deadly when people don't have access to air conditioning, as the majority of Americans who die from heat perish indoors. Cutting LIHEAP staff, and potentially preventing funds from reaching people in need, could cost lives, said Amneh Minkara, deputy director of the Sierra Club Building Electrification Campaign."The elimination of the staff administering LIHEAP could have dire, potentially deadly, impacts for folks who will not be able to safely cool their homes as we enter what is predicted to be another historically hot summer," she said.LIHEAP isn’t alone. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly the entire staff for the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP) has been axed, including those who worked in the climate and health program that provides grants to local and state health departments.Currently, the climate program, which annually receives $10 million in congressional appropriations, is funding grants to 13 state and local health departments. Those grants are in their fourth of five years, and recipients next week are supposed to submit annual reviews of how they have used the funds before they can be allocated the last year of funds.“The reports are just going to sit there because there is no one left to review them and approve their next year of funding,” said one employee who until this week worked in DEHSP’s climate and health program. The employee was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal.Asked about the funds, HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the agency “will continue to comply with statutory requirements, and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress’ statutory intent.”She did not respond to follow-up questions asking how HHS would allocate funds to states without help from staff members who have been laid off.Asked about HHS layoffs more broadly during a POLITICO Live event, HHS special government employee Calley Means said, “it is insane for you to insinuate that the thing standing between us and better health is more government bureaucrats.”“Those scientists demonstrably have overseen a record of utter failure,” he said.The layoffs have raised alarms among Democratic members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, who wrote in a letter to Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) that the cuts were made “indiscriminately” and “without regard to the impact that they will have on the ability of HHS and its operating divisions to meet its statutory responsibilities and its obligations to the American people.”Uncertain future for online resourcesDEHSP has in recent years created multiple online tools and trackers that combine health and weather data to show how climate change — and heat in particular — affect people's well-being.One tool, the HeatRisk tracker, marries National Weather Service and local health data to predict not just heat and humidity, but also the risk those temperatures pose to local residents with different underlying health conditions at a county level.The tool is widely used by state and county health departments.Last summer, for example, county health departments in Pennsylvania disseminated screenshots from the online tool to explain to Scranton-area residents that a mid-June heat wave “is hot enough to affect most people and impact most health systems.” The Pennsylvania Department of Health also referenced the tool in a health alert to hospitals and other health care facilities about the heat wave.But it’s not clear whether the tool will remain online this summer. One CDC climate program employee granted anonymity because of fears of reprisal said that some NWS staff who worked on the tool were probationary employees who have been laid off already.“Everybody who worked on that is RIFed,” he said, referring to the reduction-in-force notifications.The same CDC staff had been working to launch a new tool aimed at examining pollen trends and correlating them with emergency room visits for asthma and other related health conditions. The project was set to launch in a couple of weeks to help medical professionals respond to the way warmer winters due to climate change are boosting pollen productions and worsening allergies.“Now people who are trying to plan for allergy season won’t have that data about how pollen seasons have shifted, and the health care professionals who might tell their patients to get their allergy shots three weeks early won’t have the information to base that decision off,” the staffer said.Preston Burt, a communications specialist in the Environment Public Health Tracking Branch who was laid off this week, called the decision to terminate the CDC staff “shortsighted to the health of our country.”“They may, on paper, think that some activities are duplicative in other aspects of the federal workforce, but that's not the case, and the work we do has real impact and affects real people," he said.HHS also is expected to lay off most staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Employees told POLITICO’s E&E News that there are only two NIOSH programs expected to remain untouched by layoffs. One is a program that monitors World Trade Center first responders from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Another monitors radiation exposure during the Cold War.Supervisors in all other departments already have received their RIF notices, while hundreds more staff, who are union members, have been told that HHS has begun a process to terminate them come June 30.Among those leaving the agency are some of the nation’s leading experts on how to keep workers safe from heat stroke as they labor in extreme temperatures.“We always do a big push as summer gets closer on social media about here is how you keep workers safe from heat, what are the symptoms of heat-related illnesses,” said one NIOSH employee granted anonymity because of fears of reprisal. “But this year, when we get to heat season, there will be nobody left to respond to questions from the public about heat stress.”The employee said that spending constraints imposed by the Trump administration meant NIOSH has been unable to reprint educational pamphlets about heat stress and workers in preparation for summer.At the end of last summer, NIOSH released a smartphone app in partnership with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to help employers plan for extreme heat. The app uses a smartphone’s location to tell users what precautions can help prevent heat-related illness based on local temperature data.NIOSH staff responsible for maintaining and updating the app to fix any bugs have all been told they will be laid off by the end of June.“It’s fair to say that if there is no one at NIOSH to maintain it, the app will start to malfunction, and so the people who were relying on the app to keep people safe won’t be able to anymore,” said Doug Parker, former OSHA administrator who helped launch the app.Until now, NIOSH has always been housed within the CDC. What remains of NIOSH after the layoffs soon will be moved to a newly created Administration for Healthy America, in the office of the assistant secretary for health.Layoffs include staff who certify masks, respiratorsNIOSH is perhaps best-known by Americans for the work it does certifying respirators and masks that protect workers from infectious diseases, such as Covid-19, and on-the-job chemical exposures, including wildfire smoke.“The N in N95 stands for NIOSH,” said Parker.But the HHS layoffs include the team of workers who conduct those certifications.The cuts could directly hamper efforts to develop respirators for firefighters who battle wildfires, usually without any lung protection, due to the unique strains of the job. It also could hamper efforts to update existing masks to make them more comfortable for outdoor workers exposed to wildfire smoke or pesticides.Asked about the layoffs, Hilliard, at HHS, said only that NIOSH, “along with its critical programs,” will soon join the Administration for a Healthy America “alongside multiple agencies to improve coordination of health resources for low-income Americans.”She did not respond to follow-up questions about how or whether respirator certifications could continue at the agency without staff who have worked on those efforts.Parker expressed doubt that those certifications could easily be taken over by staff with other expertise, noting that certifications take into account a variety of factors about how ventilation and different mask materials might affect respirators’ effectiveness.“Without the research that NIOSH does and that expertise, these respirator problems are just not going to get solved,” he said. “You are talking about profound health consequences for people who have exposures.”Reporter Ellie Borst contributed.Reach reporter Ariel Wittenberg on Signal at Awitt.40Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

Plan for Norfolk megafarm rejected by councillors over environmental concerns

Application, submitted by Cranswick, would have created one of the largest industrial poultry and pig units in EuropeA megafarm that would have reared almost 1 million chickens and pigs at any one time has been blocked by councillors in Norfolk over climate change and environmental concerns.Councillors on King’s Lynn and West Norfolk borough council unanimously rejected an application to build what would have been one of the largest industrial poultry and pig units in Europe. Continue reading...

A megafarm which would have produced almost one million chickens and pigs at any one time has been blocked by councillors in Norfolk over climate change and environmental concerns.Councillors on King’s Lynn and West Norfolk borough council unanimously rejected an application to build what would have been one of the largest industrial poultry and pig units in Europe.More than 12,000 objections were lodged against the farm near the villages of Methwold and Feltwell, and 42,000 people signed a petition against it.Objections came from a local campaign group, NGOs including WWF, Sustain, FeedBack, and the RSPB, as well as the new Labour MP for South West Norfolk, Terry Jermy, and five parish councils. Jermy told the planning meeting on Thursday the intensive farm would threaten local jobs at established farms and businesses, including the vegetarian food giant Quorn, which has a manufacturing site in Methwold.Jake White, head of legal advocacy at WWF UK, told councillors the NGO estimated that the factory farm’s two sites would produce almost 90,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. Over a 20-year life span the greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial style farms would be more than 1m tonnes, he said.Cranswick plc, which provides chicken and poultry to leading British supermarkets, wants to build one of the UK’s largest industrial farms by expanding an existing site to rear 870,000 chickens and 14,000 pigs at any one time.In a briefing document submitted in the days before the planning meeting, the company said it wanted to modernise for a growing market, creating more British food to higher welfare standards through the redevelopment of existing farms.King’s Lynn and West Norfolk borough council was recommended to reject the application on ecology and climate change grounds by its officers. In a 200-page report, planning officers said the applicant “fails to demonstrate that the development would not result in significant adverse effects on [environmentally] protected sites”.There was also “insufficient environmental information to enable the council to reach a view” on its impact on the environment and climate change, the report added. A council lawyer said the company had not provided information on all the likely carbon emissions from the industrial farm and it would be unlawful for councillors to approve the application.There are also concerns about air pollution and the impact on a water depleted area. The Environmental Law Foundation said the farm would need more water than its abstraction licence allowed.Cranswick said the new site was needed to keep up with demand from supermarkets. Barry Lock, managing director for Cranswick in East Anglia, denied claims that the company had plans to export poultry and pork. He said 96% of the food they produce was for British customers. Lock cited food security and increased jobs for people. He said approving the megafarm would reduce carbon emissions because it would reduce the need for imports of meat from abroad.

What makes middle school even worse? Climate anxiety.

Students have big feelings about climate change. Most teachers don’t know how to help.

When the Marshall Fire swept through the grassy plains and foothills outside Boulder, Colorado, in late December 2021, it burned down more than 1,000 homes — and left many young people shaken. “It can just be pure anxiety — you’re literally watching a fire march its way across, and it’s really, really close,” said David Thesenga, an 8th grade science teacher. Some of his students at Alexander Dawson School in the small town of Lafayette lost their homes to the fire.  As more students come to school traumatized by living through fires, floods, and other extreme weather, teachers are being asked to do more than educate — they’re also acting as untrained therapists. While Thesenga’s private school has psychologists on staff, they don’t provide mental health resources dedicated to helping students work through distress related to the changing climate, whether it’s trauma from a real event or more general anxiety about an overheated future. “Sometimes you don’t need a generic [tool],” he said. “What you need is something very specific to the trauma or to the thing that is causing you stress, and that is climate change.” Middle school teachers around the country say they feel unprepared to help their students cope with the stress of living on a warming planet, according to a new survey of 63 middle school teachers across the United States by the Climate Mental Health Network and the National Environmental Education Foundation. Nearly all of the teachers surveyed reported seeing emotional reactions from their students when the subject of climate change came up, but many of them lacked the resources to respond. “Students are showing up in the classroom with a range of climate emotions that can be debilitating,” said Sarah Newman, the founder and executive director of the Climate Mental Health Network. “This is impacting students’ ability to learn and how they’re engaging in the classroom.”  One of the biggest concerns Thesenga hears from his students is that climate change feels out of their control and thinking about it seems overwhelming. “They just feel powerless, and that’s probably the scariest thing for them,” he said.  Katie Larsen, who teaches 6th and 9th grade biology at The Foote School in New Haven, Connecticut, says that her students have grown up knowing that climate change is a problem, but learning about the extent of environmental damage — like how many species go extinct every year — often surprises them. She tries to shift the conversation away from doom and gloom and toward something more hopeful, such as what people can do to save ecosystems. “I think the more positive you can make it, and action-oriented, the better,” she said. A growing body of research shows that young people’s anxieties about climate change can affect their relationships and their ability to think and function. Last November, a study in The Lancet Planetary Health found that 16- to 25-year-olds were struggling with their worries about climate change. Of the more than 15,000 young Americans surveyed, 43 percent reported that it hurt their mental health, and 38 percent said that it made their daily life worse.  Then there’s the matter that surviving a specific disaster can be traumatizing for people of any age. Living through a hurricane or flood can lead to an increased risk of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, while wildfires have been connected with anxiety, substance abuse, and sleeping problems, according to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2022. These problems are especially acute for children and adolescents. An 8-year-old walks through what remains of her grandfather’s house in a neighborhood decimated by the Marshall Fire in Louisville, Colorado. Michael Ciaglo / Getty Images To address the lack of resources for dealing with distress related to climate change, the Climate Mental Health Network and the National Environmental Education Foundation developed a new toolkit that teachers can use in their middle school classrooms. One handout, called the “climate emotions wheel,” helps students identify their emotions, arranging them into four main categories — anger, sadness, fear, and positivity — and then breaking those down to more specific feelings, such as betrayal, grief, anxiety, and empowerment. While science classrooms are a natural fit for these resources, Megan Willig, who helped create the activities with the National Environmental Education Foundation, says she hopes that teachers can use them in English, social studies, and art classes, among other subjects. They’re designed to be quick and ready to use. “Teachers shared that they’re busy, and they have a lot on their plates,” said Willig, who’s a former teacher herself. The exercises prompt students to reflect on how other young people are processing distress over climate change and explore how to turn their anxiety into action. One activity in the toolkit introduces “negativity bias,” referring to how the brain often latches onto negative thoughts, and asks students to counter that tendency by brainstorming happier emotions related to the Earth. Another prompts students to consider their “spheres of influence” and think about what they can do to contribute to solving climate change in their inner circle, their community, and in the wider world. Read Next How climate disasters hurt adolescents’ mental health Zoya Teirstein The toolkit was piloted last fall by 40 teachers who volunteered in 25 states. Afterward, all of the teachers who participated said they’d recommend it to a colleague, and a majority reported feeling more confident addressing students’ emotions — as well as their own. The tools were successful in red states like Utah, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, West Virginia, and Indiana, as well as blue ones like New York and Washington. Newman thinks it’s a sign that the need for these kinds of resources isn’t a partisan issue. She views middle school as a crucial moment to offer mental health support. “Kids are really becoming more aware of climate change and what’s actually happening,” she said. “It’s often the first time that they’re going to be learning about it in school. They have more access to social media and online news, which is amplifying their awareness and knowledge about climate change, and they’re going through really formative times.” Asked if he would try the exercises, Thesenga said he would give them a shot. “Absolutely, why the hell not?” he said. In his Facebook groups, he’s seen fellow teachers say they avoid the subject altogether in class. “That is not the answer — your students want to know,” Thesenga said. “You’re the frontline person. You have to buck it up, and you have to do this.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What makes middle school even worse? Climate anxiety. on Apr 3, 2025.

States lead on landfill methane emissions as federal action stalls

Landfills are a major problem for the climate: They’re the United States’ third-largest source of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide in the short term. Last year, the federal government was poised to start reining in these emissions: In July, the Environmental Protection…

Landfills are a major problem for the climate: They’re the United States’ third-largest source of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide in the short term. Last year, the federal government was poised to start reining in these emissions: In July, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would release new regulations to better detect and prevent methane leaks from landfills. The Trump administration, which has announced its intention to cut the EPA’s budget by 65% or more, seems unlikely to follow through on these plans or any other policy limiting landfill emissions. But in the absence of federal leadership, states like Michigan, Oregon, Colorado, and California are moving forward with their own plans. Regulatory efforts are underway among these climate leaders to implement stricter rules for landfill operators and require the use of novel technology, like drones and satellites that monitor leaks. “These state regulations could be hugely impactful,” said Elizabeth Schroeder, the senior communications strategist at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit working to transform heavy industry. They not only have the potential to make a real dent on greenhouse gas emissions, Schroeder said, but could also set a national example for other states looking to curtail methane pollution. How states can step up regulation on landfills Currently, the EPA requires landfill operators to cover trash to minimize odor, disease risk, and fire — a practice that also minimizes methane leaks. This usually looks like a layer of dirt or ash, followed by tarps. Operators of large landfills must also install extraction systems, networks of pipes that collect methane and other gases from inside the landfill. The extraction systems then pump these emissions to burn off at flares or, increasingly, to biogas energy projects. However, landfills are dynamic systems — over time, as waste breaks down and shifts, cover develops holes and pipes crack. Maintenance is often imperfect. An analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund found that between 2021 and 2023, more than one-third of landfills had at least one violation of EPA standards. Operators of landfills that exceed a specific emissions threshold are supposed to conduct quarterly ​“walking” surveys for leaks. But experts say that these surveys are infrequent and often miss large portions of the landfill. States have an opportunity to step up those standards — not only by lowering emissions limits but by improving the maintenance and monitoring of landfills, said Tom Frankiewicz, the waste-sector methane expert at climate-focused think tank RMI. ​“While we would love to see all this done comprehensively in one national-level regulation, it’s states that are taking the lead on deployment of advanced technology and setting new best practices for landfills.” In 2010, California became the first state to develop standards for landfills that were stricter than federal rules. Those included a lower emissions threshold at which landfills had to install gas collection systems and a requirement that operators enclose flares so that the methane burns more efficiently. Other states, including Oregon and Washington, followed suit and in some respects even surpassed California, said Katherine Blauvelt, the circular-economy director for Industrious Labs. But despite this early progress, landfills in these states and elsewhere continue to spew methane and undermine climate goals. Now, though, Colorado has taken the lead on a new generation of landfill emissions regulations. The state is developing what some experts are calling a first-of-a-kind program for monitoring and responding to methane leaks from landfills. As part of the initiative, Colorado plans to implement remote-sensing technologies, including fly-overs and satellites, to detect methane leaks, which operators would then be required to address. “Colorado would be the first state to incorporate that into a rule where, instead of relying on voluntary follow-up, there would actually be requirements around mitigating emissions that are detected,” said Ellie Garland, a senior associate focusing on methane policy at RMI. A draft rule will be publicly available in April, with a final vote expected in August. In addition, Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment is considering additional requirements for landfills that include stricter rules for the maintenance of cover and a lower threshold at which landfills are required to report and control emissions, Garland said. Currently only 15 of the state’s about 50 active landfills do this, although Colorado began requiring 35 more landfills to begin reporting emissions starting on March 31, said Clay Clarke, the manager of the climate change program at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Not all landfills are required to control emissions. That’s because smaller landfills don’t generate enough gas to collect and flare. Under proposed regulations, many of these landfills would need to pipe gas to biofilters — a system that uses microorganisms to digest methane.

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