Europe’s Suicide

Some questions put to Europe’s parliamentarians and bureaucrats who have decided, with the new protectionism, to allow the European Union to commit suicide

The choice by the EU to eliminate palm oil from biodiesels by 2030 is suicide, both social and economic. There will be chain reactions, because of this new protectionism, for which Europe will pay most dearly.

European members of parliament want to save the planet with the REDII directive. It’s an illusion. With the ban on palm oil they have decided to devastate the planet.

We have some questions for them. We’d like them answer us publicly, even if we know that they won’t, in as much as we are not an ideological NGO that pursues unattainable utopias such those that declare a perfect world, ignoring reality and the diversity.

We are engaged in diagnosing the problems and being able to process the attainable and sustainable solutions for everyone, that improve the coexistence of the world and increase our freedoms. Europe’s choice to eliminate palm oil from biofuels by 2020 ditches cooperation, abandoning African and Asian countries to their own fate, after having ransacked and exploited them for centuries. We’re sorry that it is, above all, Liberals who support this decision. Liberalism in Europe is in a comatose state, as is clearly highlighted by the advance of populist movements.

Here are our questions for the European Parliament.

• How will the major palm oil producing countries react to your decision? To whom will they sell the oil that Europe will no longer buy?
• Will there commercial, protectionist consequences, against European products by producing countries? This ban is the equivalent of the protectionist measures of the “nasty” Mr Trump. Are there good protectionisms (the European ones) and bad protectionisms (those of others)?
• If palm oil plantations were to diminish in number, what would grow in their place? The forest? Are you sure about this? Or will other crops, that are less sustainable than palm oil, take their place?
• Along with the palm oil supply chain a process sustainability and certification has been started, linked to administrative reforms in producer countries, with the aim of protecting the forests and biodiversity.  Do you think this will also continue with other crops?
• If the demand for palm oil were to fall and with it production, who would be the first to lose out? The few large multinationals that already invest in other activities, or the small producers in Asia and Africa, who only have their land and their work? Will they be in a position to quickly switch production? Are you sure that local governments will be able – in the short term – to sustain this transition?
• If small growers are DEPRIVED OF THEIR RIGHT TO WORK – something that is so dear to you European parliamentarians, – how will they find the resources to survive?
• During a recent conference at the Vatican, missionaries and members of religious orders who live with the small farmers in Africa and Asia, raised an alarm that the reduction in palm oil could unleash even more radical migratory processes. How do you, who are already handling this issue of migration so brilliantly, envisage finding a remedy for this risk?
• In his last encyclical, Pope Francis, who is committed himself to protecting the environment, wrote that sustainability is the product of maintaining a delicate balance between different social and economic factors. Did he do so by referring to deforestation? Do you think that your choice is a delicate balance?
• We understand that many of you, above all French, English (have you not left the EU?), Dutch and Belgians, have a guilty conscience about the massacres and plundering carried out by your forefathers in Africa and Asia. Don’t you think this policy of yours, is a form of colonialism that manifests itself through protectionism?

DON’T YOU BELIEVE THAT THE BEST CHOICE IS THAT OF PROMOTING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN? Instead, you have chosen to reward the European and American lobbies of less sustainable supply chains.

These are some questions to which you will not provide answers. Why? They are based on the experimental method and engaged in finding achievable solutions. You, on the other hand are engaged in pursuing the dream of a perfect world in the worst historicist and Marxist traditions (even you among Liberals and Conservatives) that today find renewed vigour in a continent that is afraid and incapable of coming up with concrete solutions to increase their freedoms and coexistence. Ignore the real facts and you will not achieve attainable solutions. You will make the world a worse place, even if your intentions were those that Europe had lived through last century. You already know how this story ends, don’t you?

With ever decreasing respect and trust.