This correspondent at Unherd tries to separate the current Dutch farming protest over nitrogen restrictions from more sweeping global pushback against climate and other environmental strictures. Sure, there’s generally a more localized context to every “global” story. But it’s nonetheless true that what are being presented as planetary urgencies are beginning to impinge on large numbers of people, especially at this time of fuel and food crises in so many lands. The fact is that gains on pollution in the past few decades were greatly made from engineering tweaks that made the vehicles, appliances and industrial processes of modern societies much more efficiently clean and therefore recaptured much of the cost of legislation before it was imposed on the public. Now we are reaching a point when living standards–or at least, chosen ways of life–must bend if green science is to be applied through mandates. This will not just be an American political crucible.
Tim W. Ferguson 