Nitrogen is destroying the biosphere as much as carbon.

It is rarely mentioned in the media yet, but production of reactive nitrogen is already at catastrophic levels.  Its main contributors are vehicles and farming for the gross quantities of fuel they consume.  The consequence of emitting massive excesses is destruction of habitats and food chains.  As with other identifiable culprits of planetary destruction, the ultimate cause is human consumption and the solution is for people to eat less, and for there to be less people.  While the second solution will take a generation at minimum (if it happens at all) the option of consuming less is available to us all – eat less, and eat less meat.

While these choices seem drastic and unpalatable, they do exist.  It will not be long before we do not have the choice to change behaviour to fix the planet because biospherical homeostasis will have been excessively disrupted.  Optimistically, humanity has become addicted to excessive consumption only in the past 100 years with the advent of the “oil age”, the ballooning of armaments in the Second World War and subsequent conversion of munitions production to agricultural additives and a consequent disconnect between humanity and nature.   So presumably we can wean ourselves from these addictions in a short space of time, if we indiviually choose to do so.

This report from the BBC discusses the science behind nitrogen pollution and references research published in Science.