Another “Green” Catastrophe

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

May 9, 2022

We briefly noted here the agricultural apocalypse occurring in Sri Lanka:

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[W]here are the environmentalists in all this? They are doing their best to reduce agricultural output. In Sri Lanka, the government mandated organic farming, with the result that yields declined catastrophically, prices skyrocketed, and, no doubt, many died.

 

The London Times had a more detailed account last month, headlined: “How Sri Lanka’s shift to organic farming left it in the manure.”

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What turned Sri Lanka’s economic situation from difficult to catastrophic was the decision by the Rajapaksa government to implement a nationwide ban on synthetic fertiliser. It was made not at the behest of neoliberal economists doing the bidding of global capital, but rather on the advice of environmentalists in the name of sustainable agriculture.

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The latest from Sri Lanka is grim:

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Sri Lanka’s prime minister resigned as protests over the country’s economic meltdown escalated into running battles in Colombo, troops on the streets and the death of a government MP.
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Rajapaksa has been blamed for mismanaging the economy to the point where it went into freefall and Sri Lankans were unable to find food, milk, medicines or petrol as imports became scarce and prices rose by 300 per cent in a matter of months. Power cuts have been long and often.

 

It is hard to overstate how destructive contemporary environmentalism has been around the world. Here in the U.S., we haven’t seen the kind of economic collapse experienced by countries like Sri Lanka, but it isn’t because the greenies haven’t been trying.