The Highwire with Del Bigtree - FARMERS PROTEST GROWS AS NET ZERO THREATENS LIVELIHOODS

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

As protesting farmers surround the EU commission in Brussels, their livelihoods are being traded to reach a net zero goal with questionable benefits for humanity. We take a deeper look at the ‘equitable’ future governments are seeking.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Let's take a little time to do a deep dive into history and do a little history lesson. So in 1949, Chinese communist leader Mao Zey Tong took power in China. And just nine years later, he announced the Great Leap Forward. This was an economic and social campaign that was supposed to last four years, but they scrapped it. One of the things they did was they abolished private ownership of farms. So you cannot own anything. So all traditional household farms are transformed into large-scale collectives. animals, the household tools, everything, your land, it was all given to the government.

And essentially at that point, everyone was equal because they had to work on the collective as well. So you had no more landowners. And well, how did that work out? There's a paper that was written on this, a really in-depth examination. And it's titled Great Leap Forward or Backward, anatomy of a central planning disaster. It says in there, starts in 1958. It says, In 1959, grain output in China fell precipitously by 15%. It declined by another 16% in 1960. Based on census data, demographers were able to infer from extrapolations of Chinese mortality trends that the total number of premature deaths between 1959 and 1961 range from 18.48 to 30 million.

If these estimates were accurate in the order of magnitude, this famine would still be the worst in world history in terms of loss of human life. Now, I'm going to get to why I'm covering that in a second, but breaking news right now is what's happening at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. They've been surrounded by protesting farmers. We've been covering this, Germany, Italy, France have been protesting throughout the last couple months. They have converged in Brussels, and they've surrounded this building here.

We have some footage. Police have shot rubber bullets. There's fires. There's barricades. It's getting a little hairy. Wow, look at that. Yep. And all the leaders from the EU are in, at that building, they have met to discuss Ukraine funding,

which has went through to the tune of $54 billion. And it continued Ukraine funding. So they're not happy. The farmers are not happy because of the green restrictions that are being put on them, the cuts to their agricultural fuels. This is a sustained protest. And so this is just more footage coming out of this. and you can go on social media as well,

and there's just tons of footage from major news organizations now covering this. So this is not something that's happening. So similarly, you have the European Union we're seeing it here an attack on farming. You have John Kerry saying that global warming is now caused by farmers, by ranchers. They're going after our food supply, our farmers.

And as you're pointing out, this is what China did when they were basically taking full control of the people's rights. Right. And people out there maybe are looking and going, well, these are just large agricultural farms. These are not talking about my little garden plot in my backyard. Well, check out this headline. Carbon footprint of homegrown food five times greater than those grown conventionally.

So yes, your homegrown garden is part of the net zero target. And this is what the point I'm trying to make here because it's not just large farms. It's your backyard farms. It's how you grow. everything, it's a quality and equity. No one will be left behind. Everyone will be treated equally. It's amazing just to think, like

now plants. Plants are causing global warming. Like, I go back to my childhood, like as a kid, you're like, you know, plant a tree, plant a garden. That is what, you know, turns the CO2 into oxygen. This is just, it is 1984, right?

It's just the opposite of what is what's being advertised. And people, some people, I guess, are buying it. And we talk about, you know, I let in with this with what happened in China because we talk about equality and equity in these words. And so we go to the United Nations and they have a research paper. It's titled Research for Social Change, Transformations to Equity and Sustainability. Those are these key words.

And it says the achievement of desirable development outcomes through just and participatory processes is ultimately a political project. So right there it says your government. will drive this. Social change inevitably involves contestation of ideas and interests between different groups and requires the redistribution of resources and entitlements, the improvements in the institutions of governance that manage collective concerns at different levels. So redistribution of resources. So how is this being done? Well, we look across America and we see a lot of different leaders, governors, representative, congressmen, congresswoman, and they all have different ideas on this.

And we voted them in. But there is an underbelly. There's a lay. that we don't have control of, and these are called the C-40 cities. So these are your leaders of your cities, your major cities. In the United States, we can check out 14 major cities here, but these are throughout the world. They're all signed on in this. In the US, we have LA, San Francisco, Austin, Houston, Miami, DC, Philly, New York, on and on.

And so what do they do? Well, it's not their mayors that are actually running this. The C-40 cities, all of these leaders are pledged to an agreement, and it's run by Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, and a mayor of Freetown Sierra Leone. So these are two co-chairs. And they're the people running this. And they have pledged, they have an equity pledge.

And what is that pledge? To deliver, among other things, bold climate action that benefits all residents equitably. So here we are again. They are working on the behalf of not you who voted them in, or the boards who voted them in. They're working on behalf of this global consortium of sustainable equity climate change net zero seekers.

And they even have their own research paper that came out. It's called the future of urban consumption in a 1.5 degrees Celsius world. This is again, the C40 Cities report. And in there, under food consumption interventions, they have a little chart. And we can look at that now. So here, by 2030, coming up pretty quick, about six years,

this is the progressive target. They say that per person per day, people can only eat 2,500 calories. Well, if you go to the right, you see an ambitious target, if they're really do good, zero meat consumption, zero dairy consumption is gone. So you can see why they're just trying to, they don't want to, like China, they don't want to collectivize and control these farmers. They just want them gone. And again, 2,500 calories per person per day. So they say this, into that chart, adopting dietary change is the consumption intervention with the greatest potential for emissions reductions. Adopting a healthy diet, i.e. lowering meat and

dairy intake would contribute 60% of the emissions reductions, 43% and 70% respectively, while the remainder is likely associated with reduced calorie intake. So where are all the farmers going? They're trying to get them out of here, and they want you to eat less. That's the bottom line here for the environment, of course. And you can see, again, the historical account of what happened in China where they actually kept the farms. They just try to collectivize them a little bit under communist regime, that was terrible. But what happens when you try to just get rid of them? This is the point we're trying to make here. This is why farmers are protesting all throughout the European Union. And why we should be supporting them. I mean, they are fighting for us right now.

They're fighting to be allowed to still feed us real, R-E-A-L food. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Amazing. Wow. Well, Jeffrey, this is something that's not going away. Yeah. Amazing reporting, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, that was a mindblower. I was really giddy there at the top, but you managed to just rounded off with some very scary movement. But look, it's our next mission, right? We've got to stop this. We've got to stop the destruction of our farms. So keep up the great work, Jeffrey.