more than ten thousand Dutch farmers protested in the city of the Hague on Saturday, in response to the new European Union-backed climate change laws.
The Hague police allowed the farmers’ rally, but blocked their tractors from entering the city. “Thousands of farmers and anti-establishment demonstrators protested Saturday in a park in The Hague against Dutch government plans to reduce nitrate emissions,” the Associated Press reported Saturday. “Police said they stopped an unknown number of tractors that were headed for the farmers’ demonstration.”
The Dutch government has committed itself to meeting the EU targets on lowering greenhouse gas emissions, even if it means putting the country’s farmers out of business.
The farmers’ fear for their livelihood is not based on baseless conspiracy theories, but on the threats issued by the country’s government. The Dutch government wants to “convince farmers to reduce livestock herds or leave the industry to cut emissions,” The UK newspaper Financial Times reported recently.
Climate activists also held a counter-demonstration in the city, demanding an end to fossil fuel and the creation of more radical climate laws. “Elsewhere in the city, thousands of environmentalists blocked a major thoroughfare in an unauthorised protest against tax rules they say encourage the use of fossil fuels,” Reutersreported.
