Are Rich Children more valuable than Poor Children?

Sri Lankans are impoverished and starving because their government banned nitrogen based fertilizer.  Dutch farmers are now protesting similar regulations.  Most western countries including Canada are considering restrictions on nitrogen fertilizer.  It is obvious what happens when you restrict nitrogen fertilizers; crop yields plummet.  So that is the cost, what is the benefit?

I did an internet search to find the reasoning for the restrictions and was surprised to find it was concerns over nitrogen oxides.  This surprised me because nitrogen is quite stable and only oxidizes at very high temperatures; like those found inside engines.  In my industry we have been dealing with NOx regulations for years.  We need to carefully control our fuel air ratios to minimize nitrogen oxides.  I never questioned these regulations before I just thought it was one more useless thing government forced us to do.  Now that people are starving I think it is time to ask questions.

If it takes high temperatures to form NOx how is fertilizer a problem?  I searched for information but all I found was government and environmental organizations claiming 25% of NOx emissions come from fertilizer.  This is hard to believe but they had a convoluted mechanism that somehow caused this at low temperatures.  I could not find the research behind this so like most environmental claims it is probably bullshit.

To be fair NOx concentrations have been rising and fertilizer could be part of this but let’s keep this in perspective.  The concentration is 330 parts per BILLION more than 1000 times less than the other environmental boogie man CO2.  For those of you keeping score that means the air you breath is now .000033% nitrogen oxides.

Let’s be crazy and believe for once the environmentalists are not lying and fertilizer accounts for 25% of this.  How much of a problem is 330 PPB NOx.  My quick internet search told me some forms of NOx are greenhouse gases while other forms counteract the effect of greenhouse gases.  Doesn’t seem to be much of a problem to me especially when you consider a warm earth is better for life than a cold earth.  The climate cult disputes this but history is clear; warm times are good times for humans.

So nitrogen Oxides may warm or cool the planet.  I hope it is warm but either way it is not much of a problem.  This hardly seems like a reason to starve people so I kept searching.  Next I found that higher NOx concentrations are linked with increased asthma.  I tried to find out how strong the link was but the best I could find was this.

Childhood exposure to nitrogen oxides (NOx) is considered a risk factor for the onset of asthma. 

That is not a very strong statement.  They found higher asthma in areas with higher NOx.  The problem is that these areas also had higher concentrations of other chemicals thought to be linked with asthma.  That is the problem with asthma no one really knows what causes it.

Again let’s give the environmentalist the benefit of the doubt.  Despite the fact that they are habitual liars I will give them this one.  Nitrogen fertilizer will cause NOx and NOx will cause asthma.  So there it is; we can prevent asthma by restricting fertilizer.  Clear cut as this is I still have a problem with it.  When crop yields fall food will become very expensive.  Rich children will still eat while poor children will starve.  We are killing poor children so that rich children can breathe easily.  Am I the only one who finds this obscene?