Can the World Find Solutions to the Nitrogen Pollution Crisis?
The world is using nitrogen fertilizer less and less efficiently.
A greater proportion than ever before is washing into rivers and oceans. An environmental catastrophe looms, nitrogen scientists say, and the world urgently needs to develop strategies to prevent it.Post-war physicists fearing nuclear apocalypse came up with the Doomsday Clock.
In the 1980s, biologists contemplating ecological meltdown began talking about “biodiversity” loss as a way to tag and measure the crisis. Soon after, climate scientists recast concern over global warming with a warning that within a century it would lead to temperatures greater than any in human history.
Now, it is nitrogen’s turn.Last month, in a seminar room at New York University, a score of nitrogen experts from around the world began drawing up scenarios of what a future nitrogen-soaked planet might look like – and to devise simple metrics for encouraging a global effort to head off disaster.
photo credit: Ramon Oromí Farré