UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect comments from Pete Earle, economist for the American Institute for Economic Research.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested sending video clips of unrest in Sri Lanka to Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to show her the likely outcome of “Green New Deal” policies Monday.
“That is what the Green New Deal looks like in Sri Lanka,” Carlson said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” after playing a clip of the protests that forced the resignations of the country’s president and prime minister. “Now we know what you’re thinking, ‘Oh, so pampered lifestyle liberals in the United States just destroyed something else. They did to Sri Lanka what bussing did to American education, just absolutely wrecked it and then walked away like it never happened.’” (RELATED: Farmers Launch Revolt Against Climate Rules Threatening To End Their Livelihoods)
“I wish I had Sandy Cortez’s cell,” Carlson said. “I would text her those videos and say, ‘The Green New Deal comes to Sri Lanka. Are you psyched?’”
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Carlson then turned his attention to Environmental, Social, and (Corporate) Governance (ESG) standards, which some experts claim were responsible for wrecking the Sri Lankan economy. One notable measure was a ban on chemical fertilizers from April 2021 to November 2021 that cut crop yields up to 50%.
“A view that has grown over the last decade or so is that chemical fertilizers are bad for the environment and accelerate climate change,” Pete Earle, an economist for the American Institute for Economic Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “That has led to a push to more organic farming, which may or may not be possible given the type and volume of agriculture required for export and domestic use. In the case of Sri Lanka, a ten year transition from synthetic to organic fertilizer was quickly turned into an overnight diktat, and the outcome has been disastrous.”
“Sri Lanka’s score is 98 on the ESG scale,” Carlson said. “That is more than double our score here in the United States, so we’ll need to step up our efforts to shut down farms.”
ESG has prompted a backlash in the United States, with the launch of an asset management company that seeks to counter “woke” capital in May and the formation of the Boardroom
Initiative in April.
“What you see here is what is really happening in a lot of places, which is where you have ideologies, and in particular woke ideologies, replacing prices and markets,” Peter Earle of the American Institute for Economic Research told Carlson.
Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
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