Wildfires and Conspiracy Theories

Wildfires and Conspiracy Theories

International and Arab News

Some extreme skeptics of environmental devastation and climate change have developed a hobby of seizing opportunities to interpret reports and events to suit their own distorted illusions. Sometimes they do this by attributing fictitious statements to some officials, and other times by interpreting statements in stark contradiction to their actual content.

These cases have increased recently in our region and the world, prompted by events that populists considered a lifeline for their vanishing conspiracy theories.

US media service Fox News described livestock farmers' protests in the Netherlands against new environmental requirements targeting agricultural production as just the beginning of a global farmers' revolution against harsh environment laws and "climate tyranny". Soon after, former US President Donald Trump supported what he called the Dutch farmers' resistance against "climate fanatics" and the "climate tyranny of the Dutch government".

However, reality is completely different from this distorted interpretation.

The Dutch measures were not against food production, but rather in favor of substituting some items for others, which might result in increasing food supply. Cattle and pig farms have witnessed significant expansion in recent decades, in response to growing export demand, whether for meat or dairy products. Large areas were thus converted to grow fodder,