Europe Braces for Serious Crop Losses and Blackouts
LONDON — One of the driest spring seasons on record in northern Europe has sucked soils dry and sharply reduced river levels to the point that governments are starting to fear crop losses and France, in particular, is bracing for blackouts as its river-cooled nuclear power plants may be forced to shut down.
French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire warned this week that the warmest and driest spring in half a century could slash wheat yields and might even push up world prices despite the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s predicting a bumper global crop due to greater plantings.
France has pledged hundreds of millions of euros in aid to its drought-stricken livestock farmers, who have watched feed supplies dwindle and prices rise. Water restrictions are in place in more than half of the country’s administrative regions or departments.
“The situation is serious for French farmers. We wanted to act swiftly and on a large scale,” Le Maire told reporters last week.
And the French government has set up a committee to keep an eye on the country’s electricity supply situation and monitor river levels, as 44 of the 58 nuclear reactors that supply 80 percent of France’s electricity are cooled by river water.
The problem appears to be not that the reactors might overheat because of the lack of water but that the depleted rivers might overheat, creating ecological havoc, when the water returns to them after cooling the reactors.
Father is nature and His wrath is evident in what is occurring in nature.
Deuteronomy 28:22 The LORD will afflict you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat, drought, blight, and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish.
Haggai 1:11 I have summoned a drought on the fields and the hills, on the grain, new wine, olive oil, and whatever the ground yields, on the people and animals, and on all that your hands produce.”
