Angry German Farmers Win a Street Fight Over Climate

European farmers have been staging peasants’ revolts for centuries, so you’d think politicians would have learned by now to avoid annoying them. Apparently not, with tractors blocking highways and town squares across Germany this week.

The proximate cause of the unrest in Europe’s largest economy is net-zero climate policy. Berlin is in the grip of a budget crisis after the federal constitutional court in November ruled that politicians’ favorite gimmick for funding the country’s ruinously expensive energy transition violates Germany’s constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. Which means Berlin will have to pay out in the open all the net-zero bills it had hoped to hide off the government’s balance sheet. Ouch.