Nitrogen Crisis + Asylum Crisis = Cabinet Crisis

Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this article from the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad with the latest on the political crisis in The Netherlands:

Rutte and Hoekstra: Cabinet crisis not ruled out over nitrogen or asylum

Vice Premier Wopke Hoekstra (CDA [Christian Democrats]) and Prime Minister Mark Rutte are dealing with the possibility that the cabinet will fall over the nitrogen or asylum crises. When asked, they gave air to that scenario on the Buitenhof television program on WNL [public broadcaster] on Sunday.

by Jan Hoedeman
March 12, 2023

The two politically-sensitive subjects, nitrogen and asylum, hold the Netherlands in their grip en route to the Provincial State elections next Wednesday. Progress on both fronts is extremely difficult, but must be made in the coming months. It is remarkable that the leaders of both coalition parties openly discuss the possibility of a cabinet crisis.

Totally did not see it coming

Rutte spoke out about a possible crisis on WNL on Sunday. He doesn’t assume it in the least, but, “You never know for sure.” He referred to his second and third cabinets, which succeeded. But in his first cabinet with the support of [Geert] Wilders, it failed. “I totally didn’t see that coming.”

Hoekstra stated on Buitenhof [program on state TV] that the polarization has been greatest on the nitrogen issue, but the emissions must be reduced by half by 2030. “ I think that in the Netherlands we must find solutions with a base of support,” said Hoekstra. “It is not the goal to let the cabinet collapse, but that may very well be the consequence.”

“Not lightly”

Hoekstra admitted that in the summer of 2022, he had thought about a possible cabinet crisis. It was in the summer that he declared that the year 2030 was not sacred. For assurance, Hoekstra added, “ You don’t throw the towel in the ring lightly over nitrogen or migration.”

D-66 Vice-Premier Sigrid Kaag, also a guest on Buitenhof, noted the nitrogen discussion: “We have had a policy of standstill. Do we go forward to 2030 or do we allow ourselves to be hostage to a policy of standstill?” She also sees the interim calibration times of 2025 and 2028 as a possibility to accelerate the nitrogen approach in different provinces where things are difficult.

Consequences if necessary

Another thorny point in the nitrogen discussion is the possible expropriation from farmers by the government, who would then be forcibly bought out. On that, VVD-Chairperson Sophie Hermans said on Buitenhof that in the provinces, they are not heading toward expropriation. But: “Eventually, if you don’t take responsibility for a national problem, then necessary consequences follow. We are not quite there yet.”

CDA leader Hoekstra agreed with her: “The reality is that in the Netherlands, practically nobody will be bought out. But none of us 17.5 million has the guarantee that it will never happen.”

7 thoughts on “Nitrogen Crisis + Asylum Crisis = Cabinet Crisis

  1. Who would have thunk it!
    Make the lives of taxpaying citizens miserable by importing violent hate filled savages who go straight onto the dole ,and make the price of food ,fuel ,heat and electricity go thru the roof because of “green ” idiotic policies brought about by woke government policies? The people running the show might have their heads stuck on pitchforks never mind being thrown out of office if they do not reverse the direction their countries are going in.

  2. Why don’t you send the asylum seekers back to where they came from and have them pack the excess nitrogen with them? Thus, both problems are solved with a single directive.

  3. I suggest the dutch farmers read about the ancestors and how they resisted Nazi tyranny. Including the methods that were employed.

  4. This whole “Nitrogen thing” is nothing but realisation by the perpetrators that CO2 is not poison, so now they had to come up with a new “poison” – NOx and stuff – yet just like CO2 – it’s still a gas that the plants and fungi “eat”, and it makes them grow better.

    So – these “green bastards” are really fighting “life on Earth”, IMHO, or at the very least “life in the West”, because the green policies are nothing but a sabotage – sabotage of the lifecycle of the plants, and of animals.

    How else can we explain that they fight the very chemicals that make plants grow better, Carbon and Nitrogen oxides, while at the same time, the very same people promote GMO’s and industrial chemicals that kill life?

    That, and the immigration, all evidence points to the conclusion that this is actually an ideological subversion attack on the Western civilisation.

    “Growing evidence suggests that as humanity pumps more nitrogen into the environment, forests could become bigger carbon sinks”
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-nitrogen-be-used-to-combat-climate-change/

    • The problem is not nitrogen in the atmosphere, but fertilizers based on nitrogen compounds. They make crops grow faster, bigger, and increase yields but an excess of it seeping into our drinking water is a problem. Purifying plants have to get it out again and that’s not too easy. In many areas with intensive agriculture the levels exceed healthy limits. I grew up in one of those areas named country-wide as having the highest levels of nitrate in their ground water. The wine and fruits were wonderful, the water not so much. How the current dictatorships react to this is one thing, but there actually is a problem at the bottom of it.

      • Ok, I get it.

        I was more or less reacting like I did because we were just bombarded by the Czech mainstream with articles about how cars produce too much NOx’s in the cities and how this needs to stop and that we need more electric cars.

        I am a mountain person, we don’t have problems with clean water over here, but I know that water further downstream – like in Danmark or Sweden, usually sucks compared to what we dring up here from small streams.

        But I know that Agriculture in general “creates” bad water for drinking, but a reed bed cleans it out, at least in our part of the woods.

        And while we used to have “dirty green lakes and ponds” overhere, from agriculture and loundry washing, curiously enough just recently “our” lake got cleaned up by this beast from Canada:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pectinatella_magnifica

        Anyhow – If I wanted glacier lake water in Netherlands, I’d just get the water from somewhere else. Like the Romans did. Maybe the Norwegians could supply some 🙂

        • Those zebra mussels do a heck of a job filtering out pollutants including some pretty nasty heavy metals, but they come with their own set of issues.

          I guess it all comes down to there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But destroying food and meat production for some nebulous goal is a terrible idea. Force the anuses who are pushing this to designate which population will starve due to their actions.

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