Big Green agenda leads to starvation and poverty

 John Stossel:

Starvation. Poverty. People struggling to buy medicine and fuel.

Disaster happened after one government fell under the influence of the world’s environmental extremists.

Many “experts” say pure nature is best. United Nations officials now tell politicians that the climate “crisis” demands countries make all sorts of sacrifices, like cutting nitrogen waste.

Much of that waste comes from synthetic fertilizer, so activists applauded when Sri Lanka’s government decided to become the first country to really take their advice. Sri Lanka banned all synthetic fertilizers.

Oops.

Suddenly, the same farms produced much less food. Food prices rose 80%.

One result: riots. As my new video shows, thousands swarmed the president’s mansion. Some had a cookout on his lawn.

The president resigned and fled the country.

It turns out that we need chemical fertilizers.

Environmental writer Michael Shellenberger says that if countries listened to today’s green activists, there would be mass starvation.

“We could only support 2 to 3 billion people on Earth if we just relied on natural fertilizers like manure,” Shellenberger says. “[But] there’s 8 billion people.”

“Why can’t we just make more organic manure?” I ask.

“It takes twice as much land to produce all the cows that you need to get the manure,” he explains. “Synthetic fertilizers are a friend to saving nature because they reduce how much land we need.”

Now the environmental purists make excuses for Sri Lanka.

Mother Jones said it’s “ridiculous to single out [the fertilizer ban] as the ‘underlying’ cause, as Shellenberger did.” Others say that Sri Lanka just needed time to adjust to organic farming.

“You might be able to become poorer over five or 10 years, rather than over six months,” replies Shellenberger. “But the result will be the same.”

I push back. “There were other causes of the problems: higher oil prices, COVID, other stuff happened.”

“But those same problems affected other countries where the economies did not collapse,” Shellenberger replies. “What made the difference in Sri Lanka was its fertilizer ban.”
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Big Green is not your friend.  They want to restrict the growth of food by returning to primitive methods.  They not only want to limit fertilizer, but also fossil fuels used to run equipment that produces food and gets it to market.