The New York Times tried to inject a silver lining into the fertilizer shortage gripping American farmers by telling them to use pee as a substitute to help foster a so-called green transition.
Times climate journalist Catrin Einhorn belched in an absurd news item that the worldwide “shortage of chemical fertilizer” she blamed on “the war in Ukraine” can potentially be solved by human urine. [bold, links added]
“It just so happens that human urine has the very nutrients that crops need,” she claimed, praising how urine “has a lot more [nutrients], in fact, than Number Two, with almost none of the pathogens.”
Einhorn then dismissed the utility of chemical fertilizers because it doesn’t mix with climate wokeism.
“Farmers typically apply those nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium — to crops in the form of chemical fertilizers,” she wrote. “But that comes with a high environmental cost from fossil fuels and mining.”
Einhorn quoted Rich Earth Institute Education Coordinator Julia Cavvichi using a cringe pun, which ironically summed up the silliness of Einhorn’s entire piece: “‘Hashtag PeeTheChange.’”
Einhorn made the “transformative idea” of convincing farmers to abandon chemical fertilizers for pee seems like a virtuous push for people to become woke on climate change:
By reusing something once flushed away, they say, they are taking a revolutionary step toward tackling the biodiversity and climate crises: Moving away from a system that constantly extracts and discards, toward a more circular economy that reuses and recycles [pee] in a continuous loop.
Einhorn slammed toilet-flushing as not being climate-friendly and as an unnecessary removal of urine which she alleges could be repurposed:
Toilets, in fact, are by far the largest source of water use inside homes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Wiser management could save vast amounts of water, an urgent need as climate change worsens drought in places like the American West, [emphasis added.]
But Einhorn conceded that “[c]ollecting urine at scale would, for example, require transformative changes to plumbing infrastructure.”
JunkScience.com founder Steve Milloy — in comments to MRC Business — ripped Einhorn for capitalizing on the fertilizer crisis to push climate nuttiness:
“The notion that we’re going to replace convention toilets with urine collection systems to replace natural gas as feedstock to produce fertilizer is ridiculous,” Milloy said. “We need industrial-scale production of fertilizer to feed a planet with almost 8 billion people.”
Milloy noted that the “modern fertilizers” Einhorn was denigrating were “safe, affordable, can be easily applied in precisely the correct amounts and, most importantly, produce reliably great crop production.”
Milloy said he made story pitches to The Times twice about emerging technologies being created to address some of the environmental issues associated with chemical fertilizers, “and have been twice rebuffed.”
The Times “would rather feed its readers the delusion that recycled human waste can feed the world,” Milloy quipped. [Emphasis added.]
Einhorn buried a key admission in the 33rd paragraph of her piece: “One of the biggest problems, though, is that it doesn’t make environmental or economic sense to truck urine, which is mostly water, from cities to distant farmlands.” [Emphasis added.]
Read more at NewsBusters
Ignorant Flatlander see a pile of Milk Bottles and say LOOK A COWS NEST WHEN WILL THEY HATCH AND PRODUCE A CALF
Ignorant SPURWING PLOVER posts utter drivel. again.
We live in a rural environment out of site of all neighbors. I had some tomato plants that were in poor soil and they had yellow leaves. I peed not on the plants but close enough that their extended root system could pick it up. In three weeks the leaves were a rich deep green. The problem with the New York Times suggestion is that of scale. I would be hard pressed to produce enough for a 160 acre field.
I find it very interesting that this site, allegedly dedicated to “fight junk science” reported this article totally differently to real science sites, not to mention most news outlets.But then this site is purely dedicated to promulgating ill informed political rhetoric, isn’t it.
No-one claimed it was the answer to everything, just a way of reducing our dependance on FF and chemicals.
A science site would have pointed out the real problems, but neither you nor the science illiterate editor understand enough to do that.
Bless, why are you so angry and vitriolic? Why not point out the lies promulgated by this site and other denialists?
Why should anyone take this liberal rag seriously its nothing but leftists propaganda since 1932 when they covered up for Stalin
Twice I have used municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. I inherited my father’s farm, to which he hadn’t applied phosphorus in years. The sludge was free, and the application was included. I was allowed to use the sludge twice in 3 years only because the soil phosphorus level was so low. I still had to apply potash and nitrogen because the sludge lacked sufficient quantities .
Having said that, there’s not enough to feed the crops that feed the world. There’s not enough livestock manure, either. Good luck sourcing manure these days. It’s value has followed the price of chemical fertilizers, double in one year.
Why did you need to spoil that by adopting the usual denier extremist take by intimating anyone was claiming is would feed the world?
You also forgot that most artificial fertilisers are used to grow food for livestock that are then slaughtered for human consumption, thus wasting both fertiliser and crops.
The only real good use fort hat leftists rag the New York Times is to line Birdcage with its totaly worthless when it comes to reading it they already were cutting back in the Tennesee Valley over that worthless Snail Darter and all they get from the new York Pravda is to Pee on their Wheat
Bless, you really do get upset by reality.
Try peeing on a corner of your lawn and gaze in wild wonder when it dies…
Are you canine or feline? You must be for that to happen, or seriously unwell.
Human urine has been used as a fertiliser for millenia.
Take a quick look at Sri Lanka – the president they elected in 2019 banned the use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides, and within 6 months the rice crop (the national staple diet) declined by 20%, food prices went up 50%, they went from being food self-sufficient to importing $450million a year, their main cash crop and currency earner (tea) also crashed and Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt.
No, it was due to Covid restrictions