The total quantity of nitrogen excreted in animal manure in 2023 was 464 million kg. That was 26 million kg below the nitrogen emission ceiling for that year. The total quantity of phosphate excreted was 147 million kg, which was 3 million kg below the relevant ceiling for 2023. However, the volumes produced in 2023 still exceed the new ceilings that will take effect in 2025. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports this based on the definitive figures on the excretion of minerals by livestock in the Netherlands.
The EU has approved a €105m subsidy scheme to encourage Dutch livestock farmers to move away from nature protection areas in a bid to tackle dangerous nitrogen emissions.
Since 2019, the agricultural superpower has seen widespread farmers' protests against the government's efforts to tackle nitrogen pollution – including ammonia from slurry, manure and chemical fertilisers.
That culminated with the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) becoming part of a new right-wing coalition that took office earlier this month.
The cows are innocent.
She is also considering a multi-billion euro phase-out program for livestock farmers.
Tomorrow evening at 8 PM ET, I will address the nation from the Oval Office on what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people.
Quote:She is also considering a multi-billion euro phase-out program for livestock farmers.
And violate the farmers' right to produce nitrogen pollution? No way!
...you are the guilty one.
Lash wrote
The cows are innocent.
@hightor,
Did that seem like a phone call to you?
Why was that recording used rather than a brief live video?
Kamala actually made a flub and was caught referring to it as a recording before she caught herself. This is bizarre!
Congress members are calling for proof of life.
Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸@mtgreenee
“Joe, I know you’re still on the rec…the call.”
Did Kamala spill the beans? Was it a recording?
That’s what she started to say.
3:25 PM · Jul 22, 2024
“Of course it’s not appropriate, for heaven's sakes. What, are they just going to say if you’re not a white male, it’s a DEI candidate?”
When someone says, “Whoever I choose for VP will be a black female,” that’s the defining criteria for DEI.
(2023)
Over 750 Dutch farmers have signed up for a government buy-out scheme, although it will take months before it's clear if the plan will be put into practice.
The outgoing ruling coalition wants to cut emissions, predominantly nitrogen oxide and ammonia, by 50 per cent nationwide by 2030.
Despite its small size, the Netherlands is the world’s second-biggest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the US..
Intensive farming has left the small nation with higher nitrogen oxide levels than EU regulations allow. These emissions worsen climate change and can harm biodiversity.
The government of the Netherlands has announced a €25 billion plan to greatly reduce livestock numbers in the country. Parts of the plan includes paying some farmers to relocate or exit the industry and helping others to transition towards a low-density farming system
Netherlands has the highest density of livestock in Europe, and it has become overwhelmed by the amount of manure produced which has led to the nitrogen pollution of its water sources
While being lauded internationally as the “tiny country that feeds the world” and the continent’s biggest meat exporter, the Netherlands has been struggling at home with a pollution crisis caused by an excess of farm animals.
'We need insects'
Biodiversity is under threat. Native species are disappearing more rapidly here than elsewhere in Europe, according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
Rudi Buis, a representative from the ministry of agriculture, tells me the stakes are high: "It's necessary to improve the nature, for our health, for clean air, water, soil and also for the agriculture because we need biodiversity. We need insects for our crops... if we want some economic activity in the future, we also have to improve our nature."
The Netherlands is struggling with high emissions of nitrogen from agriculture, transport and industry, which threaten the country’s nature and biodiversity.
While nitrogen itself is not harmful, nitrogen oxides and ammonia are. The former come from the combustion of fuels and the latter from animal manure. An excess of these particles can lead to acid rain, deterioration of the soil, groundwater pollution and biodiversity loss.
Vice President Kamala Harris continues her momentum toward the 2024 presidential election since President Joe Biden’s surprise announcement on Sunday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.
Today more than 350 national security leaders endorsed Harris for president, noting that if elected president, “she would enter that office with more significant national security experience than the four Presidents prior to President Biden.” As vice president, she “has met with more than 150 world leaders and traveled to 21 countries,” the authors wrote, and they called out her work across the globe from her work strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to her historic trip to Africa and her efforts to expand U.S. relationships with nations in the Caribbean and North Central America. In contrast to Harris, the letter said, “Trump is a threat to America’s national security.”
Those signing the letter included former Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, national security advisors Susan Rice and Thomas Donilon, former secretaries of defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, and former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
In a New York Times op-ed today, former secretary of state Clinton praised Biden for his “decision to end his campaign,” which she called “as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime.” She went on to say that Vice President Harris “represents a fresh start for American politics,” offering a vision of an America with its best days ahead of it and, rather than “old grievances,” “new solutions.”
Clinton noted that her own political campaigns had seen her burned in effigy, but said, “It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible” and that Americans cannot overcome sexism and racism. After all, she pointed out, voters elected Black American Barack Obama in 2008, and she herself won the popular vote in 2016. “[A]bortion bans and attacks on democracy are galvanizing women voters like never before,” Clinton wrote, and “[w]ith Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket leading the way, this movement may become an unstoppable wave.”
Today, Harris held her first campaign rally, speaking to supporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Republicans held their national convention just last week. The energy from the 3000 people packed into the gym where she walked out to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” was palpable.
She began by thanking Biden and touting his record, then turned to noting that in her past as a prosecutor, California attorney general, U.S. senator from California, and vice president, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds—predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So,” she said, “hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.” She went on to remind the audience that Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students, was found liable for committing sexual abuse, and “was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.”
While Trump is relying on “billionaires and big corporations,” she said, “we are running a people-powered campaign” and “will be a people-first presidency.” The Democrats, she said, “believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead; a future where no child has to grow up in poverty; where every worker has the freedom to join a union; where every person has affordable health care, affordable childcare, and paid family leave. We believe in a future where every senior can retire with dignity.”
“[A]ll of this is to say,” she continued, “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. Because…when our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
In contrast, she said, Trump wants to take the country backward. She warned that he and his Project 2025 will “weaken the middle class,” cutting Social Security and Medicare and giving “tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” while “working families foot the bill.” “They intend to end the Affordable Care Act,” she said, “and take us back…to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions…. Remember what that was like? Children with asthma, women who survived breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes. America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back. We’re not going back.”
“[O]urs is a fight for the future,” she said “And it is a fight for freedom…. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. And now…the baton is in our hands.”
Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans are still scrambling for a plan of attack against Harris. One of their first angles has been the sexism and racism Clinton predicted, calling her “a DEI hire.” House Republican leaders have told fellow lawmakers to dial back the sexist and racist attacks.
MAGA Republican representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) has taken a different angle: he introduced an impeachment resolution against Harris, while others are demanding that the House should investigate Harris and demand the Cabinet remove President Biden under the 25th Amendment. The Republican National Committee has decided to make fun of Harris’s laugh.
But concern in the Trump camp showed today when Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio shared with reporters a “confidential memorandum” trying to get ahead of polls he says will show Harris leading Trump. He said he expects to see a “Harris Honeymoon” that will end quickly.
Trump has continued to post angrily on his social media feed but is otherwise sticking close to home. His lack of visibility highlights that the Republicans are now on the receiving end of the same age and coherence concerns they had used against Biden, and there might be more attention paid to Trump’s lapses now that Biden has stepped aside. CNN’s Kate Sullivan noted today, for example, that “Trump said he’d consider Jamie Dimon for Treasury secretary, but now says he doesn’t know who said that.”
As Tim Alberta noted Sunday in The Atlantic, the Trump campaign tapped J.D. Vance in an attempt to harden the Republican base, only to find now that he cannot bring to the ticket any of the new supporters they suddenly need.
According to Harry Enten of CNN, Vance is the first vice presidential pick since 1980 who has entered the race with a negative favorability rating: in his case, –6 points. Since 2000, the usual average is +19 points. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 by +6 points in an election Republican governor Mike DeWine won by +25 points. Vance “was the worst performing Republican candidate in 2022 up and down the ballot in the state of Ohio,” Enten said. “The J.D. Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective.”
Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who specializes in focus groups, noted that swing voters groups “simply do not like” Vance. “Both his flip flopping on Trump and his extreme abortion position are what breaks through,” she wrote.
The 2024 election is not consuming all of the political oxygen, even in this astonishing week. Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that eight large companies must turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices.
“Firms that harvest Americans’ personal data can put people’s privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices,” FTC chair Lina M. Khan said. “Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.”
The eight companies are: Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co.
In the House, Republicans have been unable to pass the appropriations bills necessary to fund the 2025 U.S. budget, laced as they are with culture-wars poison pills the extremists demand. Today House members debated the appropriations bill for the Interior Department and the Environment which, among other things, bans the use of funds “to promote or advance critical race theory” or to require Covid-19 masks or vaccine mandates.
According to the European climate service Copernicus, last Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history. The MAGA Republicans’ appropriations bill for Interior and the Environment calls for more oil drilling, fewer regulations on pollutants, no new regulations on vehicles, rejecting Biden’s climate change executive orders, and reducing the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 20%.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, but environmental regulations against them have mainly paid attention to sources such as industrial facilities, landfills and consumer products like certain cookware and paints.
New research published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives says that pesticides used on crops including corn, wheat, spinach, apples and strawberries -- and other sources such as insect sprays and pet flea treatment -- can now be added to the list.
"The more we look, the more we find it," co-author Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, told AFP.
"And it just emphasizes the importance of cutting down on sources and really regulating these chemicals."
Research suggests that high levels of exposure to forever chemicals weakens human immune systems, making them less responsive to vaccines and more susceptible to infections.
There is also emerging evidence they may reduce fertility, lead to growth delays in children, and interfere in the body's natural hormones.
For the new paper, the authors trawled public databases and carried out freedom of information requests to obtain information on both "active" and "inert" ingredients in pesticides.
Active ingredients are those that target pests, while those that are called inert are everything else. The latter are not required to be disclosed on the label even though they can increase the efficacy and persistence of the toxic active ingredient, and can be toxic themselves.
The researchers uncovered a concerning trend: 14 percent of all US pesticide active ingredients are PFAS, including nearly one-third of active ingredients approved in the past decade.
Eight approved inert ingredients in pesticides were PFAS, including the non-stick chemical known by the brand name Teflon.
The Teflon company that made nonstick pans with this chemical ended its use in 2013, and its elimination was tied in research to fewer low birth weight babies. In February, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to ban its use in pesticides.
Study co-author David Andrews, a scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, told AFP that part of the problem stemmed from a narrower definition of PFAS molecules by the EPA compared to that adopted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Adding PFAS to pesticides makes them more powerful and longer lasting, Andrews told AFP, which could be another driving factor.
Forever chemicals were first developed in the 1940s and have now accumulated in the environment globally, entering the air, soil, groundwater, lakes and rivers.
More than 15,000 synthetic chemicals qualify as PFAS, and their indestructibility arises from their carbon-fluorine bonds, one of the strongest types of bonds in organic chemistry.
'Ineffective regulation'
Another critical issue identified by the study was the plastic containers used to store pesticides and fertilizers, 20-30 percent of which are "fluorinated" to improve their strength, but can leach PFAS back into the container's contents.
Such unintentional addition of extra PFAS back into the pesticide has been found during testing, and although the EPA moved to ban fluoridation of these containers, its decision was overturned by a US court.
"This is truly frightening news, because pesticides are some of the most widely dispersed pollutants in the world," co-author Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said about the findings.
"Lacing pesticides with forever chemicals is likely burdening the next generation with more chronic diseases and impossible cleanup responsibilities."
The authors recommended measures including a ban on fluorinated plastic containers, mandating disclosure of all "inert" ingredients on product labels, comprehensive study of what happens to pesticide compounds in the environment, and more research on their effects on humans.
"The regulations surrounding pesticides are currently outdated and ineffective," scientists at Emory University wrote in a related commentary, calling on the EPA to get a better grasp on the rising threat.
I wonder if Kamala will "choose" a white male for a running mate?
Maybe you’ve seen the joke permeating the internet this week, as Vice President Kamala Harris begins her 100-day campaign for president. In one variation on X Sunday, someone wrote “Kamala’s VP options” above a lineup of Chablis and Chardonnay bottles on a grocery-store shelf labeled “Exciting Whites.” Another user posted a picture of Harris and a saltine cracker, with the caption: “This will be the ticket.”
The jokes are funny because they’re true: For the first time in a long while, Democrats seem fine expressing the idea that what the presidential ticket really needs is a white guy.
Harris, a woman born to an Indian mother and a Black father, would be a history-making Democratic nominee. That’s enough diversity already, and it rules out a few top vice-presidential contenders, some in her party argue. By this logic, she’s not likely to run with another woman (sorry, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer) or another politician of color (see you in 2028, Governor Wes Moore of Maryland).
The conventional wisdom tells us that Harris will be looking for a running mate with experience in elected office, but ideally, a lawmaker who is also relatively new to the national political scene. She comes to the top of the ticket with a lot of political baggage, given her association with President Joe Biden, the thinking goes, so her partner should be fresh.
Above all, strategists say, Democrats are looking for a VP who appeals to the white working class—to help her win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—which would mean a skilled politician of Irish or perhaps Italian origin. A diversity hire, if you will. Someone named Andy, perhaps, or Mark.
A handful of prominent Democrats who fit the bill have already been asked to submit vetting materials, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump political strategist and the publisher of The Bulwark, and David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, walked me through a few of the options.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
Right now, the 51-year-old governor seems to be Harris’s top contender. As she did in California, Shapiro served as his state’s attorney general; the two have known each other for years. Shapiro became governor in 2023 after campaigning hard on abortion rights, defeating the far-right Trump endorsee Doug Mastriano by almost 15 points. He is a talented public speaker, with diction and mannerisms so Obama-esque that they almost seem studied. “He’s got the stuff,” Longwell told me. “You watch him up close, he’s a pitbull, like [Harris].”
Thanks in part to his quick accomplishment of a major infrastructure project, Shapiro has enjoyed a consistently high approval rating among Pennsylvania voters. “He would give you maybe the most help in winning the most important state,” Axelrod said. “Generally, if you win Pennsylvania, you do well in the other Midwest industrial states.”
This spring, I talked with a group of Republican and independent women in the Philadelphia suburbs who were wavering between Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president. All of them said they wished that Shapiro was running. The governor, who has endorsed Harris for president, seems open to the idea. Still, Axelrod noted that Shapiro, who is Jewish, has been vocal in his support for Israel during its war against Hamas, “and I don’t know how that figures into the Michigan equation,” referencing that swing state’s recent anti-Israel and anti-war protests and its relatively large Arab American population.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper
The 67-year-old, who is in his second term as governor, has held elected office since 1987. Cooper has never lost an election, and in 2020, he was the only Democratic governor to win in a state that Trump also won. He appeals to moderates but has governed, mostly, as a liberal: supporting reproductive rights and criminal-justice reform.
Of all the men on the list, the North Carolina governor is probably closest to Harris. The two overlapped in their terms as state attorneys general, and Cooper has already made a few appearances with Harris on the campaign trail this year. Chemistry counts in a pick like this.
The problem, of course, is that a VP pick from a state such as North Carolina may not be very helpful for the Democratic Party in November. The Tar Heel State has fewer Electoral College votes than Pennsylvania, and the Democrats haven’t won there in a presidential contest since 2008.
But diversity-wise, Cooper could bring the right vibe. “As long as Democrats don’t get distracted with a place like North Carolina,” Longwell said, “he adds a lot.”
Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona
Kelly has been a senator since 2020, but before that, he was a Navy flyer and then an astronaut, like his twin brother, Scott. An identical twin who’s been to space? “You couldn’t create a résumé like that on ChatGPT,” Axelrod told me. “You’ve got to figure [that] if a guy’s been a fighter pilot and an astronaut, that he understands pressure—and can handle it.”
A southwestern senator, Kelly has been critical of the Biden administration’s approach to security along the U.S.-Mexico border. If Kelly is somewhat hawkish on immigration control, he can appeal to the party’s progressive wing through his record as an outspoken gun-control advocate after his wife, former Representative Gabby Giffords, was permanently injured in an assassination attempt in 2011.
Kelly’s candidacy does have two obvious problems. First, the senator is not a particularly charismatic speaker. That has not hurt him and other less-than-scintillating Democrats in Arizona, but it doesn’t necessarily bode well for a national campaign. The second potential complication is that, if Harris chooses him as her running mate, Kelly would have to give up his Senate seat. Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs would then appoint a replacement, who would serve out the rest of Kelly’s term and then presumably compete in a special election in 2026.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear
Beshear seems to want it bad. In the days after Biden dropped out of the race, the Kentucky Democrat was all over TV and social media with his folksy accent and choice words for Trump’s vice-presidential pick. “Let me just tell you, J. D. Vance ain’t from here,” Beshear said yesterday in an interview on Morning Joe. “I mean, the problem with J. D. Vance is, he has no conviction, but I guess his running mate has 34,” he said in another, with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Beshear, whose father is former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, spent a few years as his state’s attorney general before being elected to its highest office in 2019. “He’s getting so much attention because his team showed that they could win in the reddest of places,” Longwell told me. “They knew how to prosecute a case on abortion and how to pick up swing voters”—skills the Harris campaign needs.
Tornadoes and severe flooding have marked Beshear’s first few years in office, giving him opportunities to show how he handles a crisis. “A lot of Americans have seen him under the most arduous of circumstances,” Axelrod told me, “and what you see on the screen is very, very clear, pronounced empathy.” Plus, Kentucky Democrats love him. He’s good-looking and relatively young for a state leader at only 46. During the coronavirus pandemic, when Beshear delivered nightly addresses to the state, people made fan fiction and memes about him.
Still, Beshear is more of a newbie than the others. And he says that, so far, no one from the campaign has asked him to send over his credentials.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz
Walz is another candidate who could help Harris wrangle the Midwest. Now in his second term as governor, Walz is a former educator, congressman, and member of the Army National Guard. During his tenure, Minnesota has moved sharply to the left; the state legislature enacted several major progressive priorities, including codifying abortion rights, requiring paid leave, legalizing marijuana, and passing stricter gun laws. In his own Minnesota way, Walz has also expressed willingness to serve as VP. “She mentioned she would need my help. And I said she has it in any way that she sees fit,” he told a local reporter. “If that’s the direction she goes, I guess that’s fine.”
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker
The 59-year-old, who became his state’s governor in 2019, has championed progressive causes during his term. But he seems most comfortable when he’s trolling right-wing politicians, including Trump himself and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
One crucial thing to know about the Prairie State governor is that he’s an actual billionaire—and America’s wealthiest elected official. The Pritzker family owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and the governor has launched his own successful venture-capital start-ups. Choose him as a campaign running mate, and “your financial problems might be solved in one fell swoop,” Axelrod said. So far, though, Pritzker apparently hasn’t been asked to file paperwork with the Harris team.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor is perhaps one of the most qualified candidates to be VP. A military veteran from the Midwest with experience campaigning on a national scale, he’s held a top post in the Biden administration. In addition, he’s a solid defender of his party’s agenda, and has demonstrated a talent for tangling with conservatives on TV.
So Buttigieg is battle-tested—but he’s also gay, Axelrod noted, asking: “Is that too much diversity on the ticket?”
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
Whitmer is probably not going to be the VP, given many Democrats’ concerns about making too much history. Still, the governor deserves mention on the outside chance that the party decides to lean in for a two-woman ticket. A self-described progressive Democrat, Whitmer was elected in 2018 after campaigning to “fix the damn roads” in Michigan. In office, she’s been a supporter of abortion rights and gun control, and has remained popular among voters. Tapping her as VP could be a major boon for Democrats who aim to win her crucial “blue wall” state.
Almost everyone expects Whitmer to run for president eventually, and running with Harris now could set her up for success in 2028. Even though the Harris campaign is reportedly considering Whitmer, she has so far shown no obvious enthusiasm for joining the race.
The good news for Democrats is that America has been cranking out white male politicians for several hundred years. If Harris is looking for a conventional running mate, she has an embarrassment of riches.
