The United Nations recently confirmed that the world population has officially reached 8 billion. However, what should be a celebration of humanity’s ability to innovate and populate has many analysts worried about the future: How is the planet supposed to lodge, power and feed this large number of people? According to a recent Politico headline, for one, climate […]
The war in Ukraine has affected Europe’s agricultural sector and slowed the ambitions of the European Union to enact sweeping new farming rules. Reforms in Brussels are modeled on the so-called Farm-to-Fork strategy, a roadmap through which the union wants to slash pesticide use, reduce farmland and push organic agriculture well beyond its current market […]
I was interviewed on the Central European Affairs Podcast by Zoltán Kész. A link to a transcripted version can be found here.
Over the summer, farmers in the Netherlands vehemently protested against the government’s new environmental rules. Over multiple weeks, thousands of farmers burned hay bales and blocked roads and food distribution centers in an effort to draw attention to new EU rules that would paralyze the sector. The government in The Hague attempts to follow EU […]
During his long tenure as the successor to the throne, then-Prince Charles was a defender of the environment. The Prince of Wales website underlines the use of “his unique position to champion action for a sustainable future.”He testifies to having made changes in his own lifestyle that made him more eco-friendly: running his Aston Martin luxury car on surplus […]
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a move that considerably upsets farmers, is moving to essentially ban the commonly used pesticide atrazine. The agency is adapting the so-called concentration equivalent level of concern (CE-LOC) for atrazine from 15 parts per billion (which it had set itself in 2020) to 3.4 ppb — meaning that thousands […]
The conversation over pollinator health has sparked a heated debate on using crop protection chemicals. In Europe, both neonicotinoid pesticides (marketed since the 1990s) and its competitor sulfoxaflor (registered with the EPA since 2013) have been banned over concerns the insecticides adversely affect bee health. “Should other politicians vote down the (National Front’s) proposals on […]
The Environmental Protection Agency isn’t listening to farmers and its own scientific panel. In a move that is causing American farmers significant distress, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is effectively banning the use of the herbicide atrazine. The agency is lowering the so-called concentration equivalent level of concern (CE-LOC) to 3.4 ppb (parts per billion), […]
The consequences of a bill in Congress will make you want to buy a new phone and laptop, provided that inflation leaves you with enough disposable income to do that. While Americans are dealing with the effects of record-high gas prices, Democrats in Congress are suggesting the so-called PFAS Action Act, which would declare perfluoroalkyl and […]
For the EU, former President Donald Trump’s international policy was seen as a major regression for global trade policy. When former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker signed the EU-Japan trade deal in 2018 — abolishing virtually all tariffs — Europe sold the move as being in significant contrast to the protectionism taken in the United States. That said, many […]
Bill Wirtz 