Wow, it's refreshing to see a Dutch person write down the impact of nitrogen as facts. Around me, its seems like slowly everyone is starting to doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and whether it's something we need to care about. I'm starting to feel less at home in this country by the day because of it (and all the upside down flags consequently).
It's a worldwide thing. An urbanized population does not care about nature. At all. Modern life is almost fully abstracted away from it, and it seems fine to destroy it for as long as our delicate lifestyle remains intact.
Every once in a while, we watch a documentary like Planet Earth. It inspires even the most cynical stoic. And we feel terrible about our negative role.
But the next day we go on as usual. And as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the course, we resist like a maniac.
> An urbanized population does not care about nature. At all.
My experience has been the exact opposite. Growing up in rural areas, most people seemed to treat nature as an endless resource to be exploited for personal enrichment. Any discussion of ecological regulation was met with harsh rebuke about "jobs" and "freedom" (i.e. the freedom to extract value by exploiting nature).
As I moved to more urban areas, people were more and more ecologically focused on the long-term impacts of natural exploitation. Today I live in a dense metro area (Seattle) where I've never been around a greater concentration of nature-focused people.
You're quite right. And it's even worse than that. I had this part in my earlier comment but deleted it as I did not want to distract from my main message by causing a political stir.
The controversial statement being that the issue extends into (many) indigenous communities. We have this pristine idea of them, as original peoples living in harmony with nature.
That's not the reality on the ground. I've traveled to a lot of remote areas where we frequently encountered illegal activity by locals and even park rangers. Poaching...anything and everything, including rare flowers. Logging. Gold mining. Hunting critically extinct species even when alternatives (for food) are widely available.
You can't explain it by poverty alone, there's a general sense of total carelessness. A very clear example of that is people dumping their trash in the river, in forests, everywhere. Many good faith reforestation attempts soon are gamed and corrupted.
> as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the course
Well, I also see a lot of people who do the tiny thing but not the big thing. Plenty of people around me are reducing their meat intake (and are vocal about it), because climate change, but still fly on airplanes, some multiple times a year. It's so incredibly frustrating that many people are just green washing their lives, but are oblivious to the fact they're not really doing much at all.
I do have massive respect for the people I do know that have quit eating meat and are now doing all their travels by train.
Respectfully, I think your take on this does not work.
If before you have a frequent flyer that regularly eats meat, and next they stop eating meat, that is to be celebrated. It's still massive progress. Further, their footprint from flying may improve over time as airlines are investing in sustainability.
From flying 3 times a year to 2 times a year is big progress. From eating lots of meat to somewhat less, is progress.
By implying footprint perfection, it all becomes very reductive and people will reject it. With that mindset, you'll be able to find "dirt" on anyone. I mean, how very polluting must David Attenborough be?
As for bettering the course regarding insects, I wasn't even suggesting CO2 reduction. Just introducing some small spaces where wildflowers can grow, and they will come. It takes almost nothing.
> From flying 3 times a year to 2 times a year is big progress.
These people are going from 0-1 time a year to 2-3 times a year, because they're starting to earn more and can therefore take more trips. They are ignorant to the fact that's more wasteful than eating meat. This is typical personal green-washing, which is the part that annoys me.
I understand that perfect is the enemy of good and I'm not implying that everyone should be perfect.
> Around me, its seems like slowly everyone is starting to doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and whether it's something we need to care about.
I'm not sure why that's surprising. Our food supply depends on using nitrogen at the moment. You can't just ban it cold-turkey without transitioning to an alternative that doesn't threaten the food supply. Particularly with inflation issues, further destabilizing the food supply is insane at this time. The whole climate change agenda will be in jeopardy if this isn't handled well.
They could define and enforce environmental laws that would make the current way of farming that is destroying nature impossible. The farmers would need to adapt or go bankrupt.
Instead they get offered millions. And in response they terrorize our society.
