The climate boogeyman is starting to get less scary by the day which has led to it losing its effectiveness as a policy stick to prod the populace with. There h

The climate boogeyman is starting to get less scary by the day which has led to it losing its effectiveness as a policy stick to prod the populace with. There have just been too many dire warnings, too many cries of the wolf coming to the door without the beast showing up. Whatever the climate will do is just too abstract, too far away and too big for any single individual to feel he or she has any influence over it. This is not changed by yet another scary report from the IPCC nor by yet even more dire predictions of coastal flooding, equatorial roasting and other doomsday foretellings. This has led to some politicians setting the climate stick aside to reach for another one, e.g. in the Netherlands 'climate' has had to make way for 'nitrogen' as the main cause for our coming demise. Seeing how as cows farting methane did not rile up the populace enough to force the farmers to get rid of the beasts - they like their cheese and milk after all and feel some national pride in the farmer's prowess in producing ever more of it - politicians in need of a stick thought to have found one in the fact that they not only fart methane but also dump a significant amount of nitrogen [1] - i.e. 'fertiliser' - in the soil and air. And lo, the more you look, the more nitrogen you find, nitrous oxides produced by internal combustion engines (including jet engines) being a major source. With this new-found stick they started whipping up the populace, this time they really meant it, cows-be-gone and don't you dare build a house because that involves diesel-driven machinery which would exceed the nitrogen budget for the area [2]. It seems though that the population, tired of yet another doomsday scare, is not planning on cooperating [3] this time. What is a politician to do when not even a good righteous scare can push the voters in the desired direction? [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Estimated_nitrogen_surplus_across_Europe_2005.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Estimate... [2] https://nos.nl/artikel/2436935-juristen-voorzien-bouwstop-na-de-zomer-door-verwachte-stikstofuitspraak https://nos.nl/artikel/2436935-juristen-voorzien-bouwstop-na... [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64967513 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64967513