The SEC’s Climate Proposal Sets Table For Netherlands Style Farm Crisis
Environmental policies to fight climate change are now being used to make life impossible for farmers, especially ranchers. This is increasingly looking like a coordinated effort against the Western world’s agricultural sector. The U. S. is the next target. At a time when large multilateral institutions like the World Bank are talking about supply chain crises, and politicians are calling for reshoring critical supply chains from microchips to energy, radical environmental measures such as those being imposed in Europe will almost certainly lead to near-term food supply chain disruptions and the offshoring of native grown and raised food in favor of those grown and raised in countries that do not enforce similar restrictions on their agriculture. It will be too expensive to do so domestically. Farming becomes a quaint hobby instead. Because the regulatory burden and financial pressures to adhere to ever-more restrictive environmental policies will remove many players from the market, leading to market consolidation and greater import penetration. It started in The Netherlands. The Netherlands is home to the world's biggest agricultural export terminal, and to global financiers ABN Amro, ING Group, and Rabobank, as well as Uniliver, a conglomerate waiting for the “new foods” market to take hold. This includes high-tech, laboratory grown meats made from animal stem cells. These three banks, Unilever, and many others quietly push for stricter environmental rules on ranchers and farmers through associations like the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Dutch farmers protested their country’s policy to reduce emissions. Protests have now spread across Germany, Italy, and Poland. The Netherlands government is the tip of the spear. They say emissions of methane, nitrogen oxide, and ammonia, which livestock produce, must be drastically reduced. Over the last week, the Trudeau administration said it wants to enforce a 30% reduction in “carbon emissions”, citing environmental harms caused by Canadian farmers. Now they are protesting, too. Oddly enough, this policy decision will hurt smaller to midsized family farms much more than it will the corporate-controlled industrial farms that many environmentalists have long opposed. Can such a policy take root in the U. S.? In fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), of all places, has released a proposed rule on climate change for publicly traded companies. The proposal is part of the investment world of Wall Street, London, and Frankfurt’s new favorite product line — Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance banking, known as ESG. ESG investing affects portfolio manager decisions and corporate lenders. “E” is the main one as it is easily sold to companies and the public as a means to rollback climate change.
All data is taken from the source: http://forbes.com
Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoz...
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