Holland Dutch

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:SEE {fertilizer BS}:

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ymail steve d 9 25

The Amsterdam case is now a major lifeline for Greenpeace after the group was hit in March with an outrageous $669 million damages verdict following a rigged trial in North Dakota. That case was financed by Warren.

What happens in Amsterdam literally could determine if Greenpeace lives or dies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/business/royal-dutch-shell-climate-change.html

gRETA?

Dutch court ruled Wednesday that Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, must accelerate its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to tackle climate change.}:}:

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NOTE AHA: morano has this rap he does at high speed every appearance after he’s responded to whatever the “news” fake outrage of the day is, so fast that like gop state of the union by huckabee you have ti know the code/script gotten by endless rep gaslighting

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...And while the trust acquired a minority stake in Picnic through its investment, it “is not a controlling shareholder,” Koolhoven clarified. Neither Gates, nor the trust, own or operate Picnic.

Fire crews in Almelo responded to the “very large” blaze at the distribution center late Sunday, according to a statementin Dutch from the local fire brigade. Officials said the fire completely destroyed the building, but no injuries were reported. The cause of the fire was not yet known and was still being investigated, according to the agency’s statement.

The false claims about the blaze emerged amid ongoing protestsby thousands of farmers in the Netherlands, demonstratingagainst the government’s plans to slash emissions that livestock produce in their waste. During the demonstrations, some protesters blocked supermarket distribution centers, including separate ones operated by Picnic, Koolhoven added.

Old, misrepresented photos and video purporting to show such demonstrations have also been shared and debunkedin recent days.

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7 25 kelly the first morano BS

penn itit AO power black rock guy said grn energy can’t do it; opp zone // jack kemp blue collar ---; will ai ~ us w/ change of prez; nuke, gates; coal gas; bright spot of AI “useless eaters” am renn enterprise zones; cliate nutters losing , also int’l; no pushback on trump mille argentina, netherland farm throw manure; getty fdn bill gates, branson? media corps AP NPR, crap studies, vanilla ive cream gone; comb public health and climate japan gas carcinogen; even cda carney vs trudeau puppet of of--- WEC zero out carbon tax for time being [tariff?] no pushback; mtg trump EPA wash mtg; award most conseq cab; endangerment, UN climate agenda, Rio, permanent changes vs term 1; hassled in restaurant by cli activists.

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Nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers' revolt that turned a nation ...}:

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › environment › nov](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen-wars-the-dutch-farmers-revolt-that-turned-a-nation-upside-down)

Nov 16, 2023 — The long read: In 2019, a looming crisis over pollution led the Dutch government to crack down on farm emissions. The response was furious ...

LONG READ

Nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers’ revolt that turned a nation upside-down | Farming | The Guardian

...

Conspiracy theorists seized on another part of the press release. Noting the contribution of housing and infrastructure to nitrogen emissions, it stated that “the government considers it important that the licensing of housing construction … does not come to a halt”. This statement seems to have been the basis for the idea, which took off on social media, that the government planned to replace Dutch farms with apartment buildings that would be used to house migrants from Turkey and the Middle East.

A former FvD candidate was invited on to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News programme, where she repeated this same conspiracy theory. (She wore a red bandana, a symbol of support for the protesters, tied around her neck.)}:

In 2022, as discontent with the government intensified, protesters showed up at the home of Christianne van der Wal, the new minister for nature and nitrogen policy (the element had been given its own cabinet post). Stepping out of her front door to confront the men in her driveway, she told them: “My children are inside shaking.” Undeterred, the protesters attacked a police van that had been sent to protect her. One night six months later, in a Ku Klux Klan-style protest, a group carried flaming torches to the home of another cabinet minister.

Alongside such violent actions, fierce but peaceful protest against the government continued. Farmers’ associations and feed companies supplied farmers with Dutch flags to be flown upside down as a sign of displeasure; along many rural roads, upside down flags were placed every 100 metres or so. Alongside their own upside-down flag, the Grins posted a sign on their lawn reading “We are fed up with this policy”.

This year, relations between the government and the agricultural sector have deteriorated further. In June, the largest farmers’ union dropped out of negotiations for an agreement over nitrogen policy, blaming the government’s intransigence. By then, the far right had successfully linked it to the refugee problem. Some rural municipalities wanted to select the nationality of refugees relocated in their communities.

...

---

Farmers on frontline as Dutch divided by war on nitrogen ...}:

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › environment › jun](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/25/farmers-on-frontline-as-dutch-divided-by-war-on-nitrogen-pollution)

Jun 25, 2023 — Government's buyout scheme is meeting fierce resistance from farmers in Netherlands.

[### EU okays $1.61 billion for Dutch government to buy out ...

Reuters

https://www.reuters.com › world › europe › eu-okays-1...](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-okays-161-bln-dutch-govt-buy-out-farmers-reduce-nitrogen-2023-05-02/)

May 3, 2023 — EU okays $1.61 billion for Dutch government to buy out farmers, reduce nitrogen. Reuters. May 3, 20234:02 AM PDTUpdated 8 months ago.

[### In the clash over Dutch farming, Europe's future arrives

Mongabay

https://news.mongabay.com › 2023/09 › in-the-clash...](https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/in-the-clash-over-dutch-farming-europes-future-arrives/)

Sep 8, 2023 — Livestock-induced nitrogen emissions spurred the clash over the future of farming ... Dutch farmers' union, the Netherlands Agricultural and ...

---

https://townhall.com/columnists/mandygunasekara/

Mandy Gunasekara is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and former Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Articles

‘Not All Farmers Have a Future’ Is a Recipe for Famine

By Mandy Gunasekara

an 7 23 $

alt rt

The danger of worldwide fascism is being accelerated by the one thing few people want to talk about

Thom Hartmann

and Raw Story

July 12, 2023

The government of the Netherlands fell last week. The issue that tipped it over the edge was immigration driven by climate change. If Putin wanted to destroy democracy in Europe (and he does), back in 2015 he couldn’t have picked a better strategy. Odds are, though, he was just trying to protect his deepwater ports; it wasn’t until the crisis developed that he realized how he could exploit it to overthrow liberal democracies in the EU. The way it’s played out gives us a glimpse into our future — and the future of democratic republics all across the world — as the global climate emergency and the refugee crisis associated with it grows more severe over the next few years.

The current rise-of-rightwing-fascism crisis building in Europe began in 2010 and started with global climate change.

The fall of that year saw unusually severe rainfall across the wheat-growing parts of Canada, cutting that nation’s wheat harvest, along with drought across Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and China. A La Nina caused crop failures in Argentina and Peru. Worldwide prices of staple foods, particularly wheat, exploded.

On December 17 of that year a street vendor in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest the high cost of the wheat he needed to make the foods he and his peers sold, and the harassment of police against their protests. It sparked what we referred to then as the Arab Spring, that lasted through most of 2011.

The steady warming and drought in that area, though, never let up and the desert in North Africa relentlessly continued to eat up millions of acres of food-producing land, particularly across Syria. By 2015 it had pushed over a million Syrian subsistence farmers off their land — that had desertified — and into Syria’s cities, particularly Damascus and Aleppo.

Northern Africa became the world’s number one food importer, and the prices kept rising relentlessly.

Newly homeless, hungry, and destitute, these Syrian farmers began demonstrations in the streets demanding food, shelter, and employment or “welfare” payments from the Syrian government.

Bashar Assad, being a psychopathic dictator, ordered his troops to fire live ammunition into the crowds in 2012 and 2013, and soon a full-blown revolt was on: “rebels” seized Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, in early 2013.

Syria was also the base for Russia’s Mediterranean fleet, with multiple deep-water ports that Putin believed were critical to his nation’s military defense. By 2015 he had a dozen battleships there, along with submarines and other warships.

He had to prevent the Assad government from falling or risk an “Arab Spring democracy” emerging — as happened for a short while in Tunisia and Egypt — that might align itself with the West and kick Russia out.

Making a long story short, Putin bombed the crap out of Syria on Assad’s behalf, virtually leveling the city of Aleppo, killing hundreds of civilians.

It was one of the worst war crimes of this century, almost as deadly as George W. Bush’s brutal and criminal invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions of climate and war refugees fled the country, joining Bush’s wars’ fugitives making their way into Europe by any means possible.

Thus began Europe’s refugee crisis, which just helped bring down Holland’s government. In two weeks, it may well cause the rightwing fascist-aligned anti-immigrant People’s Party to come to power in the Spanish elections on July 23.

As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted in a 2021 report:

“By the end of 2016, nearly 5.2 million refugees and migrants reached European shores, undertaking treacherous journeys from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries torn apart by war and persecution.”

This flood of brown-skinned Muslims fleeing African and Middle Eastern climate change and wars into Europe over the past decade is why Italy and Sweden now have rightwing leaders; why Viktor Orbán was able to gain and hold power in Hungary with his promise to “build a wall” along Hungary’s southern border (a promise he kept); and why rightwing parties are today growing so rapidly in Germany, Greece, Norway, Austria, Belgium and France.

The legacy of five centuries of racist imperialism across four continents has been that wealth and safety from the ravages of climate change are concentrated in mostly White-run nations, while vulnerability to desertification and poverty are concentrated in mostly Brown- and Black-run nations.

When Russia intervened in British politics to tear apart the EU, their trolls’ mainFacebook pitch for Brexitwas that “those [Brown and Black] people” the EU had let in were now making their way to the UK.

While every country in the world can accept refugees in small numbers without crisis, when “other people” begin showing up in large numbers the response by every nation in history typically tends toward rightwing nationalism and xenophobia, an obsession with borders, and demands for racial, cultural, and religious “purity.”

Here in North America we’re seeing a similar dynamic. Reagan so severely destabilized Central America and Venezuela with his sanctions, illegal Iran-Contra program, and support for rightwing death squads that those nations never recovered. In the years since, climate change has bit these weakened governments deep, forcing millions of subsistence farmers — just like in Syria but here mostly from hard-hit Guatemala — off land that once grew crops but is now, just a few years later, scrub desert.

Exploiting the climate refugee crisis on America’s southern border, Republican politicians have spent the years since Obama’s election in 2008 falsely claiming that Democrats had thrown the border “open,” producing thousands of news stories that have been used by coyotes — human traffickers — to draw even more refugees toward the United States.

Compounding that, Trump launched his 2016 campaign on keeping Brown people out of the United States, and today racism and xenophobia form the foundation of most Republican political campaigns (when they aren’t hating on queer people or women).

The result of these trends has been a worldwide shift to the right. As Freedom House noted in a 2022 report, over 60 countries experienced “declines” in democracy the previous year; only about 20 percent of people worldwide now live in “free” nations:

“Global freedom faces a dire threat. … Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same. …

“The global order is nearing a tipping point, and if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail.”

So far, the western world’s refugee crisis has been mostly driven by massive policy errors and outright war crimes: Russia’s response to the Syrian farmers, the US invasion and destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, and American meddling in Central America and Venezuela.

But all have been either triggered or exacerbated by the worldwide climate emergency. And, as we can see from this summer’s weather worldwide, that emergency is building at a rate far more rapid than even alarmist climate scientists were predicting just a decade ago.

Recent projections show that within just the next two decades as many as three billion people could be fleeing areas that will soon only marginally support human life.

As equatorial regions become uninhabitable, the mostly darker-skinned people living there will be migrating north and south into areas controlled by lighter-skinned people in numbers that will make today’s Syrian, Iraq, and Afghan refugee crisis look like a statistical blip.

It will put worldwide white supremacist and Nazi movements into hyperdrive.

In addition to acting immediately to mitigate climate change and green the world’s economy, the free nations of the world must harden our democracies against reactive rightwing violence- and hate-based racist political movements.

That will alsorequire radically reducing the Supreme Court-gifted political power of big money here in America— particularly from the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it has created — and returning that power and wealth to the hard-hit majority. The Democratic Party in America is increasingly committed to this, but Republicans and the dozens of billionaires in their camp are prepared to spend heretofore unimaginable sums to keep climate deniers and race-baiters in office.

We also must help those nations most hard-hit by the warming — caused largely by our carbon pollution — to deal with their own refugees internally, lest they irrecoverably destabilize first their own governments and then ours.

To paraphrase JFK, we are not helpless before this task.

But it will require western and American media and political systems to take on these three crises — climate change, the refugees it produces, and politicians who demagogue the issue while blocking forward progress — now.

We are quite literally out of time.

From Your Site Articles

How capitalism is leading us to instability, inequality, and fascism ›

Noam Chomsky: 'Proto-fascism' and 'white nationalism are prime ingredients of the GOP’s slow-motion coup ›

Eco-fascism: White nationalists' extreme solution to the coming environmental apocalypse ›

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FERTILIZER BS, WHAT IS ORIGIN? ESCALATOR?

https://townhall.com/columnists/mandygunasekara/

Mandy Gunasekara is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and former Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Articles

‘Not All Farmers Have a Future’ Is a Recipe for Famine

By Mandy Gunasekara

Farmers around the globe are feeling unfairly targeted and unfortunately, they are right. From the Netherlands to Ireland to Canada, ...

August 06, 2022

no lnx

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

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Farmers around the globe are feeling unfairly targeted and unfortunately, they are right. From the Netherlands to Ireland to Canada, nations are increasingly targeting their respective agriculture sectors under the banner of climate change. Going after farmers could not come at a worse time as the war in Ukraine has triggered an international food shortage, which one United Nations official recently stated is “threatening global hunger on an unprecedented scale.” 

For example, the Netherlands,while a relatively small country, is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world, the largest exporter of meat among all EU nations, and the third largest dairy exporter in the world. The Dutch climate proposal up for consideration would close up to 30% of their farms and force farmers to kill off livestock in order to comply with European Union (EU) environmental rules. When the newly created Dutch Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy announced the plan, local farmers were given three options—(1) Comply; (2) Relocate; or (3) Shutdown. There was no sleight of hand, the government made it clear “there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers within [this] approach.” 

Dutch farmers are pushing back and have expressed anger at being unfairly targeted compared to other industries in their country. They are also frustrated that the proposal did not include more moderate alternatives to reduce nitrogen without putting farms out of business.

Similar scenarios are playing out elsewhere. After the Irish government made climate standards more stringent, one local farmer explained it “made whole classes of farms unviable.” Canadian farmers are worried Prime Minister Trudeau’s nitrogen reduction proposal will significantly cut yields to canola, corn, and spring wheat that are extremely important to global food supplies.

:{This is no coincidence and will likely expand. Extreme environmentalists have long agitated to transform the agriculture sector, especially livestock farmers, and the global diet in the process. At the United Nations, this concept is referred to as the Food System Transformation, which will develop “essential steps needed to transition to healthier, more sustainable food systems.”

:{This includes the :{establishment of an International Panel for Food System Science (IPFSS)—akin to a global food police}:—which would “provide support in justifying difficult or controversial decisions,” like shutting down livelihoods and exacerbating a food crisis.:{A future IPFSS would also be charged with reducing “misinformation” online as the quickest way to force acceptance of bad ideas is to quash dissent}:.& ...

A key component of a global food transition is to reduce meat consumption, either by convincing people to become vegan or by purposefully limiting supply to consumers. The fact that livelihoods may be ruined—and some may starve in the process—is just a necessary part of this global transition to stop climate change, so the extremists say.}:}:

There are also efforts to create protein ormeat alternatives including a push to make eating crickets mainstream. Ontario, Canada, will soon be home to the world’s largest insect farm owned by a company that cites the bugs as “an excellent-value protein at a fraction of the environmental impact.” 

The Biden administration is also pushing these disastrous policies. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, the innocuous-sounding “climate smart ag” hides a much more extreme agenda. Biden administration official Samantha Powers recently commented on ongoing fertilizer shortages, stating coldly that it may “hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway” such as “natural solutions like manure and compost.”

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Sri Lanka embraced this “natural” approach in April 2021, when the government banned the use of chemical fertilizers to “protect the soil and biodiversity.” As a result, crop production fell by an average of 30 to 50 percent, and today the country is in shambles. The Sri Lankan people are starving, the economy is collapsing, and the President and Prime Minister have fled the country after citizens breached the official residences.

Like much of the green agenda, green agriculture as pushed by extreme environmentalists at the UN, the EU, and in the Biden administration is very dangerous. It purports to “solve” environmental problems by shutting entire industries down, rejecting the benefits of modern farming, and dismissing the resulting consequences that largely impact marginalized populations.

There is a better way to improve the environmental impact of agriculture. It will be solved by technology and by working alongside farmers, not shutting them down.

Mandy Gunasekara is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and former Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

---

lnx

example, the Netherlands, while a relatively small country, is the https://dutchreview.com/culture/innovation/second-largest-agriculture-exporter/"...meat among all EU nations, and the third largest dairy exporter in the world. The Dutch climate proposal up for consideration would close up to 30% of their farms and force farmers to https://apnews.com/article/netherlands-the-hague-climate-and-environment-fcc706577d9e2e5d221141286f573158"  kill off livestock in order to comply with European Union (EU) environmental rules. When the newly created Dutch Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy announced the plan, local farmers were given —(1) Comply; (2) Relocate; or (3) Shutdown. There was no sleight of hand, the government made itclear “there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers within [this] approach.” pushing back and have expressed anger at being unfairly targeted compared to other industries in their country. They are also frustrated that the proposal did not include more moderate alternatives to reduce nitrogen without putting farms out of business.  

Similar scenarios are playing out elsewhere. After the Irish government made climate standards more stringent, one local farmer explained it “made whole classes of farms unviable.” Canadian farmers are worried Prime Minister Trudeau’s nitrogen reduction proposal will significantly cut yields to canola, corn, and spring wheat that are extremely important to global food supplies. 

This is no coincidence and will likely expand. Extreme environmentalists have long agitated to transform the agriculture sector, especially livestock farmers, and the global diet in the process. At the United Nations, this concept is referred to as the Food System Transformation, which will develop “essential steps needed to transition to healthier, more sustainable food systems.” This includes the establishment of an International Panel for Food System Science (IPFSS)—akin to a global food police—which would “provide support in justifying difficult or controversial decisions,” like shutting down livelihoods and exacerbating a food crisis. A future IPFSS would also be charged with reducing “misinformation” online as the quickest way to force acceptance of bad ideas is to quash dissent.

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kos ref

for the longest time, the FoxNews website seemed pretty normal on climate change, all things considered. While Fox TV centered hatemongers like Tucker Carlson and the website reflects that with ample coverage of what was on TV, the original content produced for the website was generally indistinguishable from any other lazy political "news" that quotes who said what. The site was clearly biased in every conceivable way (choice of stories to cover, who to quote, how to frame stories, etc) but wasn’t necessarily going out of the way to spread climate disinformation.

That appears to be changing.

fox News dot com has, in the last month or so, hired two conservative propagandists in journalist disguises, Thomas Catenacci, formerly an energy reporter at the Koch-sponsored Daily Caller, and Haris Alic, formerly of the cult-founded and $1bilion+ sponsored Washington Times where he turned fossil fool press releases into "news”. Before that, he was at white supremacy-laundering Breitbart, and before that, the billionaire-backed Free Beacon.

Back on June 21st, Thomas Catenacci published his first Fox pieceattacking Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for calling on Biden to pause the federal gas tax, "just months after declining to pause her own state's gas tax." (Maybe something changed in the months between?)

Since then, he's published one Dem hit piece after another, real hard-hitting stuff like "Kamala Harris' office posts video of VP sinking basketball shot, leaves out her first 5 misses."

He also covered the climate activists slashing SUV tires in NYC (twice), and somehow suckered a Sierra Club spokesperson into feeding him quotes for a piece about how environmentalists are "pushing extreme measures amid global energy crisis," like investing in clean energy sources not controlled by Russia, which is apparently extreme.

This week, Catenacci helped propagate the lie that protests in the Netherlandsand the uprising in Sri Lanka are driven by anti-climate policy sentiments, and yesterday he brought the Daily Caller's trick of "reporting" on a climate advocate's airline emissions toFox with a piece about John Kerry's family's private jet emissions (quoting, of course, a professional denier).

Meanwhile, on July 8th Haris Alic published his first Fox story, advancing the Koch network's organized anti-ESG disinformation with "news" that Sen. Steve Daines(R., Mont.) introduced a go-no-where bill to "block Biden from adding 'woke' requirements to US retirement plans." Then he did a puff piece about Republican Gov. Youngkin's "speculation of 2024 presidential run," followed by a piece about how Nancy Pelosi went on "lavish Italian vacation as inflation back home hits 40-year high."

You know, Fair And Balanced.

This week, Alic is gassing up former ALEC chair Joe Manchin with an entirely credulous story headlined "Manchin denies he opposes Democratic spending bill, says he'll wait until August to decide." No surprise, when it comes to the fossil fuel loving Democrat, Fox News has no problem taking him at his word and including zero skeptical quotes pushing back on his claims!

How do you follow "reporting" that is shamelessly tongue-on-boot? With a story about conservative ads, of course, turning your compatriot's paid media spend into some free earned media about how (industry front) groups have paid for a "deluge of conservative ads [to] urge Manchin to stand up to Democrats."

Not exactly breaking news that Fox is backing fossil fuels over a livable climate, but the fact that its website just hired not one but two up-and-coming climate disinfo spreaders suggests Fox is only ramping up the lies as the midterm election season heats up.

---

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mma 7 22

Just a week after the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases in the United States, Fox’s leading prime-time hack Tucker Carlson hosted fringe right-wing Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, to spread transparent lies about the Dutch government implementing climate policy designed to reign in emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia from the agricultural sector by 2030.

According to Dutch government data, about “70 percent of the country’s surface area exceeds critical limits for nitrogen.” In Europe, nitrogen pollution has caused billions of euros in economic damages and has cascaded through environmental trophic levels, leading to the destruction of drinking water sources, soil health, and biodiversity. In the Netherlands, scientists have also reported decreased plant and species diversity in dunes, bogs, and heathlands.

Despite clear scientific evidence to the contrary, Carlson introduced the July 7 segment by insinuating a longtime right-wing narrative – climate change and its environmental protection policy solutions are nothing more than a sinister ruse by global elitists designed to “whip you into a panic” in order to demand obedience and increase political power. Referencing protests on July 5, during which Dutch police fired on farmers protesting plans to cut nitrogen emissions, Carlson warned his audience the United States could face similar turmoil if “we let them do it.” He later cautioned: “This is what climate activism actually looks like: men in uniform shooting at 16-year-olds.”

Video] citationFrom the July 7, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

While Carlson claimed the emissions reductions would have the “effect of destroying agriculture in the Netherlands,” he failed to mention the Dutch government has earmarked billions of euros to help farmers transition through a voluntary program that offers various strategies to increase sustainability in farming, with only the “very last option” involving the “complete ‘buyout’ of the farmers involved.” Instead, Carlson employed a jingoistic red herring criticizing China’s and India’s use of fossil fuels that failed to account for developed countries’ disproportionate roles in climate change.

Carlson then brought on Vlaardingerbroek to baselessly claim that the Dutch government is “stealing our farmers’ land … under the guise of the made-up nitrogen crisis.” This is a clear lie fueled by years of denial of the climate’s impact on future economies. (A 2022 report from the World Economic Forum estimated that climate inaction would cost $178 trillion over the next 50 years.) Vlaardingerbroek then returned to her nativist tendencies to claim the emissions reduction is designed to push farmers off their land to “house new immigrants,” subtly encouraging anti-immigrant sentiments.

The pair then pivoted to a recent favorite narrative of Carlson, suggesting that climate activism and President Joe Biden’s policies around the war in Ukraine are pushing us toward food shortages and a global famine. Carlson further suggested that the resulting American climate policies would increase food prices. Vlaardingerbroek enthusiastically agreed, saying Dutch citizens understand “no farmers, no food.” Yet, Carlson and Vlaardingerbroek ignored scientific evidence that demonstrates the opposite as true: Climate change has already impacted our food and drinking supply. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2019 Special Report on Climate Change and Land projects an increase of up to 183 million additional people at risk of hunger due to climate change impacts.

The urgency to implement climate mitigation strategies comes not from power-hungry global elitists craving control, but from climate scientists who have warned for decades that unless immediate action is taken, irreversible environmental consequences will impact every aspect of daily lives -- including American and Dutch.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/business/royal-dutch-shell-climate-change.html

a ]Dutch court ruled Wednesday that Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, must accelerate its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to tackle climate change.

The District Court in The Hagueruled that Shell was “obliged” to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of its activities by 45 percent at the end of 2030 compared with 2019.

Shell has already adopted targets for emissions reduction, but the terms of the court’s decision could require the company to substantially accelerate the process of reducing emissions-producing fuels like oil and gas.

At present, Shell says it hopes to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, with a series of interim targets along the way.[cf intensity BS?]

A spokesman said that the company expected to “to appeal today’s disappointing court decision.”

The ruling will likely only apply in the Netherlands, and it is unclear how it would be enforced. There was also a small consolation for Shell: The court found that the company’s current carbon dioxide emissions were not unlawful.

==

11/18

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07214-2

A landmark climate-change lawsuit brought by young people against the US government can proceed, the Supreme Court said on 2 November. The case, Juliana v. United States, had been scheduled to begin trial on 29 October in Eugene, Oregon, in a federal district court. But those plans were scrapped last month after President Donald Trump's administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene and dismiss the case.

The plaintiffs, who include 21 people ranging in age from 11 to 22, allege that the government has violated theirconstitutional rights to life, liberty and propertyby failing to prevent dangerous climate change. They are asking the district court to order the federal government to prepare a plan that will ensure the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere falls below 350 parts per million by 2100, down from an average of 405 parts per million in 2017.

By contrast, theUS Department of Justice argues that “there is no right to ‘a climate system capable of sustaining human life’” — as the Juliana plaintiffs assert.

Although the Supreme Court has now denied the Trump administration's request to the dismiss the case, the path ahead is unclear. In its 2 November order, the Supreme Court suggested that a federal appeals court should consider the administration's arguments before any trial starts in the Oregon district court.

Lawyers for the young people said they would push the district court to reschedule the trial next week.

“The youth of our nation won an important decision today from the Supreme Court that shows even the most powerful government in the world must follow the rules and process of litigation in our democracy,” said Julia Olson, co-counsel for the plaintiffs, in a statement reacting to the Supreme Court decision.

A new generation

Although climate change is a global problem, lawyers around the world have brought climate-change-related lawsuits against local and national governments and corporations since the late 1980s. These suits have generally sought to force the sort of aggressive action against climate change that has been tough to achieve through political means.

Many of the cases have failed, but in 2015, a citizen’s group called the Urgenda Foundation won a historic victory against the Dutch government. The judge in that case ordered the Netherlands to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions to at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, citing the possibility of climate-related damages to “current and future generations of Dutch nationals” and the government’s “duty of care … to prevent hazardous climate change”. A Dutch appeals courtupheld the verdict last month.

Over the past few years, the Dutch case has emerged as a model for climate lawsuits in other countries,says Gillian Lobo, a lawyer who specializes in climate-change-related cases at ClientEarth in London. More recently, she says, the Juliana lawsuit has inspired its own copycats — some of which have progressed further than Juliana itself. “It is a global phenomenon,” Lobo says.

One case modelled on the Juliana lawsuit has already produced a striking victory. InJanuary, 25 young people sued the Colombian government for their right to a healthy environment, in a case called Demanda Generaciones Futuras v. Minambiente.

The Colombian Supreme Court found in the plaintiffs’ favour in April. Not only did it order the government to take steps to reduce deforestation and climate change, it also ruled that the ColombianAmazon rainforest is “a subject of rights” that is entitled to “protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration”.

Fuzzy future

The young plaintiffs in the Juliana case allege that they have already suffered harm as a result of climate change. Seventeen-year-old Jaime and her family left their home on the Navajo Nation Reservation in Cameron, Arizona, in 2011 because the natural springs on which they depended for water were drying up.Fifteen-year-old Jayden’s home in Louisiana was severely damaged by flooding in 2016, and 19-year-old Vic’s school in White Plains, New York, closed temporarily in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy hit.

US climate hawks hope that the Juliana plaintiffs will ultimately prevail, but President Donald Trump’s administration is mounting a multipronged defence. The Justice Department denies that the district court in Oregon has jurisdiction over the broad sweep of federal policies at issue, and that the rights to life, liberty and property set out in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution translate into the right to a stable climate.

In any case, the department argues, no meaningful redress is possible, given that drastically reducing emissions in the United States might not move the needle on climate change much if other countries’ greenhouse-gas output grows. This echoes the argument made in 2007 by the Supreme Court's chief justice, John Roberts, when he dissented from the court’s decision in a pivotal climate case, Massachusetts vs. Environmental Protection Agency. The court’s ruling, which Roberts protested, forced the agency to regulate carbon emissions as a pollutant.

Andrea Rodgers, co-counsel for the Julianaplaintiffs, says that the Trump administration hasn’t challenged the fact that humans are changing the climate. “They haven’t presented experts to contest what our scientists are saying about ice melt or sea-level rise or terrestrial impacts or how climate change happens or ocean acidification,” she says.

To win, Rodgers says, “we have to show that the United States government is liable, but also that there is a remedy that the judge can order”. The United States has seen its greenhouse-gas emissions drop in recent years, as the country shifts its energy mix away from coal and towards renewable sources, but as of 2016, it remains the second-largest emitter after China.

James Hansen, a climatologist at Columbia University in New York City and a long-time climate activist, is an expert witness in the case — but he is also a plaintiff, representing “future generations” not yet born. (His 20-year-old granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, is also a plaintiff.)

Hansen has been fighting for action on climate change since he first testified on the subject before the US Senate in 1988. He says that if the Julianaplaintiffs lose their case, he will simply try another way. “We need to win as soon as possible,” Hansen says, “but if we lose, we don’t give up — we come back with a stronger case.”

Nature 563, 163-164 (2018)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07214-2

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/facebook-ramps-up-efforts-to-curb-hateful-content-in-ads/

Washington (AFP) – Facebook said Friday it would ban a “wider category of hateful content” in ads as the embattled social media giant moved to respond to growing protests over its handling of inflammatory posts.Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook also would add tags to posts that are “newsworthy” but violate platform rules — following the lead of Twitter, which has used such labels on tweets from President Donald Trump.The initiative comes with the leading social network facing a growing boycott by advertisers — with soft drink behemoth Coca-Cola and Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever join…

Read More

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great

In the most groundbreaking climate lawsuit decision to date, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands has ordered the Dutch government to cut its climate-heating greenhouse gas pollution by 20 percent, by the end of 2020.

The court ruled that the Dutch government’s duty to protect its citizens’ human rights make it responsible for taking action to slash carbon emissions, no matter how little that action means in terms of overall global carbon pollution. The case has been litigated for six years.

“David Boyd, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said it was ‘the most important climate change court decision in the world so far,’” reports The Guardian, “‘confirming that human rights are jeopardised by the climate emergency and that wealthy nations are legally obligated to achieve rapid and substantial emission reductions.’”

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bit lost see clintel

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/06/climate-science-deniers-planning-coordinated-european-misinformation-campaign-leaked-documents-reveal

A coalition of climate science denial groups is gearing up for a European media blitz later this month, in an apparent bid to derail efforts to set an EU-wide “net zero” emissions target, documents obtained by DeSmog show.

Plans for a self-styled “European Declaration” include press conferences in Brussels, Rome and Oslo and a letter to be sent to leaders of EU and UN institutions, scheduled for mid-September.

The letter claims to have “400 independent Climate Scientists and Professionals” signed up so far.

Some notable signatories are part of a trans-Atlantic network of thinktanks pushing for environmental deregulation post-Brexit, and have a history of climate science denial. A number of former employees of the network’s member organisations are now staffers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet  Brulle, Professor of Sociology at Drexel University and an expert on climate science denial, told DeSmog the campaign looked like a panicked response to recent high-profile efforts to highlight the climate crisis:

“The rise of the Extinction Rebellion movement, and the immense popularity and influence of Greta Thunberg, are having a significant impact on media coverage of climate change and concern about this issue. I would suspect that the aim of the campaign is to blunt the impact of these climate advocacy efforts.”

“The talking points are stale and patently scientific nonsense. That isn't critical. The point would be to keep the ‘contested’ nature of climate change alive.”

Geoffrey Supran, a Research Associate at Harvard University who gave evidence to the European Parliament in March on oil giant ExxonMobil’s historic promotion of climate science denial, said he thought the move was an attempt to distract from the various upcoming efforts to increase action on climate change globally, such as the UN Climate Action Summit at the end of the month:

“These people are the rhetorical equivalent to the kid in the classroom screaming ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ They're desperate for attention.”

“As always, they presumably hope to muddy the waters of public and political discourse on the climate crisis. To feed the echo chamber of sympathetic right-wing media and blogs, and to prey on naive and unsuspecting journalists who may be tempted to exercise false balance in their climate coverage.”

Coordinated effort

The campaign is being spearheaded by a new Netherlands-based climate science denial group called the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL), launched in April with funding from Niek Sandmann, a multimillionaire real estate developer.

The group’s co-founder Guus Berkhout, an engineering professor who began his career at Shell and set up the Delphi Consortium in the 1980s to develop new exploration methods for the oil and gas industry, told DeSmog that interest in the campaign had been “overwhelming”.

Berkhout said there were plans to hold press conferences in European capitals and that the effort was being “expanded to a World Climate Declaration”. He declined to offer further details or comment.

In addition to CLINTEL, the international organising group includes some well-known figures from the climate misinformation world, including:

• Professor Richard Lindzen, former Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (USA)
• Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition (Australia)
• Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, Speaker at the European Institute for Climate and Energy (Germany)
• Professor Jeffrey Foss, Contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada)
• Jim O’Brien, Chair and Co-founder of the Irish Climate Science Forum (Ireland)
• Terence Dunleavy, Founding Chairman of the International Climate Science Coalition (New Zealand)

In an email seen by DeSmog, Berkhout explains that “signatures are being collected from persons who give a valuable contribution to the climate debate and are recognised as such”. He goes on to boast that there are “already a lot of great names on the list”.

Of the 400 signatories, only a handful have a background in climate science, with the majority being writers, engineers and geologists with no direct expertise in the field.

In addition to the Cato Institute's Richard Lindzen,the list features numerous figures from US-based libertarian groups, including Patrick Michaels of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Charles Battig and Willie Soon from the Heartland Institute, which provides a total of 12 signatures alone. All three organisations are members of the Atlas Network, a Koch-funded international umbrella body of free-market groups.

UK affiliates of the network include the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance. A number of former employees of these groups are now working in Boris Johnson’s government.

Taxpayers’ Alliance founder Matthew Elliott is reportedly advising new Chancellor Sajid Javid, whose Conservative leadership campaign he ran, while former employee Chloe Westley has joined Boris Johnson’s Number 10 team. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has appointed two special advisors from the IEA and ASI.

UK support

The UK’s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation(GWPF)](https://www.desmog.co.uk/global-warming-policy-foundation), founded by former Chancellor [Nigel Lawson in the run-up to the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, is also well-represented in the campaign.

At least four members of its Academic Advisory Council feature in the letter’s signatories, and other contributors to the GWPF have also backed the “declaration”.

One is Northumbria University Professor Valentina Zharkova, who gave a lecture to the group last year claiming that climate change is caused by natural solar cycles. A paper Zharkova co-authored in June on the same subject was criticised for containing “basic errors” and an investigation into how it came to be published was launched by the scientific journal that printed it.

CLINTEL also has close ties to the GWPF. Berkhout wrote an essay for the UK group last year insisting that climate change was purely a natural phenomenon. And in February, the GWPF published an article by its Dutch counterpart that said: “Yes, the Earth is warming up. But that is business as usual. Earth’s history tells us that climate change has always happened.”

The following month GWPF director Benny Peiser spoke at a gathering in:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{ Amsterdam where CLINTEL announced its upcoming launch.

At that event, Berkhout: “in this whole audience, apart from the organisation and a few brave ones, I don't see young people. So the first thing we are going to do is talk with the young people.” CLINTEL currently has a youth wing called “Young Clintel”.

The GWPF did not respond to a request for comment.

Other UK signatories include directors and former directors of lesser-known oil and gas companies, as well as five Fellows of the Geological Society, a professional body representing Earth scientists.

In addition to the EU “net zero” emissions target under consideration, planned “climate strike” protests and the upcoming UN Climate Action Summit, the media offensive may also, given its European focus, be timed to coincide with a crunch government meeting in Germany on how the country will meet its 2030 emissions target, set to take place on 20 September.

German signatories to the letter include a spokesperson for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), which a Der Spiegel investigation earlier this year found had been working closely with the insurgent, far-right Alternative for Germany party to campaign against action on climate change.

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AN parramore

...LP: You’ve noted in the past that President Obama was not realistic in arguing that the U.S. economy could keep growing without increasing CO2 emissions thanks to the rollout of renewable energy technologies. How do you assess the situation now under Trump? What about Europe and China? Is anyone being more realistic today?

SS: The outlook is not good. The Trump administration is not the only government announcing its withdrawal from the voluntarist Paris agreement. (I call it voluntarist, because the agreement concerns official pledges by countries to reduce CO2 emissions, but lacks enforcement mechanisms). The Bolsanaro government in Brazil, the new government in Australia, part of the Italian government, and more are threatening to do the same.

China has made huge advances in energy efficiency and has also started to decarbonize, but the scale factor of China’s economic growth is still more than offsetting the drastic improvements in energy and carbon technologies.

The European Union (EU) is not delivering and policies are often counterproductive. Look at the ‘Yellow Vests’ protests in France. French President Macron proposed a consumer carbon tax on (car) fuels, which will hit the incomes of people who aren’t wealthy and who already have to cope with all kinds of economic insecurities and downward mobility. The outcome is not just a populist revolt, but a major discrediting of climate change mitigation policies.

In the Netherlands, the center-right government proposed a carbon tax on consumers but not on major polluting corporations.In March 2019, voters revolted. The government parties lost the provincial elections to a new rightwing populist party, which says that climate change is just a Marxist plot!

The EU has to come up with climate policies which protect the lower- and middle-income groups as much as is possible from the costs of adjustments, while taxing carbon emissions at their source. That means taxing the 100 global corporations which together are responsible for around 70% of cumulative CO2 emissions. It means taxing the rich to bring about a more fair and politically acceptable burden of adjustment.

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#2 in germany, ctr-left lose to greens and alt rt

dutch green big in EU parliament?

Green Party Wins Record Support in EU Elections as Youth-Led Climate Strikes Grow

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Historic Climate Ruling Upheld by Dutch Appeals Court

https://www.ecowatch.com/netherlands-climate-change-lawsuit-2611132561.html

A Dutch appeals court upheld a historic climate liability ruling Tuesday, affirming that the Dutch government has to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, The Associated Press reported.

The original ruling, decided in June 2015, was the first time a court found that governments had a legal obligation to their citizens to protect them from agw..

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https://www.alternet.org/drugs/how-prevent-opioid-overdoses-provide-addicts-free-pharmaceutical-heroin

no lnx

This Bold Plan to Fight Opioid Overdoses Could Save Lives — But Some Conservatives Think It's 'Immoral'

That's what the Dutch do, and it's working.

By Phillip Smith / Independent Media Institute July 17, 2018,

With Ohio beset by a massive public health around opioid use and overdoses—more than 4,000 Ohioans died of opioid overdoses in 2016—the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent travel editor Susan Glaser to Amsterdam in search of innovative approaches to the problem. While there, she rediscovered Holland's long-standing, radical, and highly effective response to heroin addiction and properly asked whether it might be applied to good effect here.

The difference in drug-related death rates between the two countries is staggering. In the U.S., the drug overdose death rate is 245 per million, nearly twice the rate of its nearest competitor, Sweden, which came in second with 124 per million. But in Holland, the number is a vanishingly small 11 per million. In other words, Americans are more than 20 times more likely to die of drug overdoses than the Dutch.

For Plain Dealer readers, the figures that really hit home are the number of state overdose deaths compared to Holland. Ohio, with just under 12 million people, saw 4,050 drug overdose deaths in 2016; the Netherlands, with 17 million people, saw only 235.

What's the difference? The Dutch government provides free heroin to several score hardcore heroin addicts and has been doing so for the past 20 years. Public health experts there say that in addition to lowering crime rates and improving the quality of life for users, the program is one reason overdose death rates there are so low. And the model could be applied here, said Amsterdam heroin clinic operator Ellen van den Hoogen.

"It's been an enormous success. I think it would work elsewhere," she told Glaser.

It already has. The Dutch program was modeled on a similar effort in Switzerland, which has also proven successful. Germany and Britain have also adopted similar programs.

The Dutch approach is an example of the country's policy of gedogen (pragmatic tolerance), the same principle that led the Dutch to pioneer legal access to marijuana in the 1980s. It is also rooted in the notion that, for some, drug addiction is a chronic disorder, not a condition to be "cured," and one that can be treated with supervised drug use under clinical supervision. And the complete cessation of drug use need not be the ultimate goal; rather, the Dutch look for reductions in criminal activity and increases in the health and well-being of the drug users.

"It's not a program that is meant to help you stop," acknowledged van den Hoogen. "It keeps you addicted."

That's not a sentiment sits well with American moralizers, such as George W. Bush's drug czar, John Walters, whom Glaser consulted for the story. He suggested that providing addicts with drugs was immoral and not "real treatment," but he also resorted to lies about what the Dutch are doing.

He claimed the Dutch are "keeping people addicted for the purpose of controlling them" and that the Dutch have created "a colony of state-supported, locked-up addicts."

Actually, the Dutch are dealing with older, hard-core addicts who have repeatedly failed to quit after repeated stints in treatment, including methadone maintenance therapy, and they are neither "controlling them" or locking them up. Instead, the people in the program show up at the clinic twice a day, get their fix, then go about their business. This heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) allows those hardcore users to live less chaotic and more productive lives.

And heroin-assisted treatment is "real treatment," said Peter Blanken, a senior researcher with the Parnassia Addiction Research Centre in Rotterdam. He pointed out that one-quarter of program participants make a "complete recovery," including better health and quitting illegal drugs and excessive drinking. Many others continue to use heroin, but do so with better outcomes, he said.

There is also a real safety benefit to using state-supplied pharmaceutical heroin. It's potent, but it's a known quantity. Users face no risk of adulteration with more dangerous drugs, such as fentanyl, which is deeply implicated in the current U.S. overdose crisis.

In the current political atmosphere in the United States, providing heroin to hard-core addicts is a hard sell indeed. Other, lesser, harm reduction interventions, such as needle exchanges remain controversial, and the country has yet to see its first officially sanctioned safe injection site. And drug decriminalization, which has led to a dramatic reduction in heroin addiction and overdose deaths in Portugal, remains off the table here, too. But with an annual drug overdose death toll of more than 50,000 people a year, it may time to start asking how many more Americans we are willing to sacrifice on the altar of moralistic drug prohibition.

This article was produced by Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05042018/shell-knew-scientists-climate-change-risks-fossil-fuels-global-warming-company-documents-netherlands-lawsuits

Internal company documents uncovered by a Dutch news organization show that the oil giant Shell had a deep understanding, dating at least to the 1980s, of the science and risks of global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions.

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They show that as the company pondered its responsibility to act, Shell's scientists urged it to heed the early warnings, even if, as they said, it might take until the 2000s for the mounting evidence to prove greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were causing unnatural climate change.

"With the very long time scales involved, it would be tempting for society to wait until then before doing anything," company researchers wrote in a 1988 report based on studies completed in 1986. "The potential implications for the world are, however, so large that policy options need to be considered much earlier. And the energy industry needs to consider how it should play its part."

Otherwise, a team of Shell experts said, "it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation."

For the next decade—as the emerging science was becoming increasingly robust, and as international efforts to curb heat-trapping emissions gained steam and calls for action grew more urgent—the company persisted in emphasizing the lingering uncertainties of climate science and the costs of ambitious policies, the documents show.

Shell's own "review of the scientific uncertainty and the evolution of energy systems indicates that policies to curb greenhouse gases beyond 'no regrets' measures could be premature, divert economic resources from more pressing needs and further distort markets," a February 1995 management brief advised.

The documents were unearthed by the journalist Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent, whose investigative article was published on Thursday in Dutch. Many of the documents, along with explanatory notes, were released on the Climate Files website, where researcher and climate advocate Kert Davies maintains extensive archives. To get their work before a broader audience, they shared embargoed copies of the documents.

What Shell Knew & What It Means for Lawsuits

Just like researchers at other oil and gas companies, notably Exxon, Shell's scientists and managers understood, before the general public, that uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions could eventually put its core businesses at risk—and alter ecosystems and put much of the world's population in peril.

The accretion of evidence complicates the industry's position as Big Oil defends itself in a broadening array of climate-related litigation.

On Wednesday, Dutch environmentalists said they plan to sue Royal Dutch Shell to force it to cut its oil and gas investments and production. Donald Pols, director of Friends of the Earth Netherlands/Milieudefensie, said the company "should take its responsibility to stop wrecking the climate."

Responding to the litigation, Shell said that it has long embraced climate change science and strongly supports the Paris climate agreement aimed at limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less. But it said that meeting that target is a complex social challenge, that energy is important to the global quality of life, and that the issues should not be tackled in court. Rather, it called for sound government policy and a cultural shift toward green energy.

Shell is already a defendant in other court cases.

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/dutch-government-ordered-cut-carbon-emissions-landmark-ruling

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http://www.ecowatch.com/shut-down-coal-plants-netherlands-2017447528.html

no link

Climate Sep. 26, 2016 03:07PM EST

Dutch Parliament Votes to Shut Down All Coal Plants

Dan Zukowski

As President Obama's signature Clean Power Plan heads to court, the Dutch parliament voted Thursday to shut down its entire coal industry. The move is needed in order for the country to meet its 2030 goal to reduce carbon emissions by 55 percent.

Dutch parliament building in The Hague.

Markus Bernet, Wikimedia

The action would put the Netherlands in position to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement. The 77 to 72 vote, while non-binding, comes on the heels of a recent confidential study, leaked to the Dutch newspaper Trouw, that one or more plants would have to be closed. The country has five coal plants currently in operation, including three that just came online last year. A recent five percent increase in emissions has been linked to its newest plants.

An overwhelmed Urgenda lawyer Cox after winning the historic Dutch climate case.

Urgenda / Chantal Bekker

In June, 2015, a court in The Hague ordered the Dutch government to cut its emissions by 25 percent within five years. The unprecedented ruling came in a case brought by the Dutch Urgenda Foundation. In a transcript from the reading of the verdict, the court said: "The state must do more to avert the imminent danger caused by climate change, also in view of its duty of care to protect and improve the living environment." The government has appealed the ruling.

In the leaked document, the consulting firm CE Delft said that the Dutch government would need to quickly close one or two power plants to meet the court's order. They concluded that closing the plants would impose lower costs to society than other alternatives to achieve the court-imposed emissions target. The report estimated that the average household would save 80 Euros ($90 at current exchange rates) a year, against costs of 30 Euros ($34). The Dutch economic ministry estimated that the cost of closing all the country's coal plants by 2020 would total 7 billion Euros ($7.9 billion).

Last year, five older coal-fired plants were decommissioned. Some environmentalists think that a coalition agreement could keep some or all of the three newer plants open. The issue has been contentious and is likely to affect next year's Dutch elections. The right-wing, populist Freedom Party, which may block the parliament's plan, currently leads many opinion polls.

Inhabitat

In the U.S., 94 coal plants were shut down last year, with another 41 expected to the shuttered in 2016. Aging plants and cheap natural gas are driving the transition from coal, even as 26 states are suing the federal government to overturn the Clean Power Plan. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will hear oral arguments Sept. 27.

Even if the Clean Power Plan survives this challenge, a study published today in Nature Climate Change says that the U.S. will miss its 2025 carbon emissions target by a wide amount, as much as 1.5 billion metric tons per year. Nevertheless, "The study underscores the importance of EPA's Clean Power Plan for meeting the climate change promises," wrote Science this morning.

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