Organic agriculture is where it belong. Mom and pop farms sold in stores where it costs 3x as much for no particular increase in nutritional value. Fertilizers are tangentially bad for the environment but not directly, only in that it causes algal blooms in water bodies. Pesticides are bad yes but the research should concentrate on finding pesticides that work well with the environment. We got close with glyphosate but we’re finding out that we didn’t.
The nutrients in soil are a non-renewable resource. You can’t grow on the same piece of land and expect a bumper crop every year if you don’t use fertilizers.
Plants grown in healthy soil that does not require short term synthetic inputs are more resistant to pests. The organic fertilizers and composts that build up suitable topsoil are literally the "pesticides that with well with the environment" that you are looking for.
No one is expecting bumper crops without any nutrient inputs. Synthetic fertilizers are not the only possible nutrient inputs.
>The nutrients in soil are a non-renewable resource.
I'm sorry but they actually are. Every time you do tillage you start from scratch. Hence you run out of nutrients much faster than if you used no till. Most of the fertilizer in tillage operations just gets washed away during rain which results in an over application of fertilizer and the runoff results in algae blooms.
If you use fertilizers and expect a bumper crop every harvest, eventually the soil gets fucked to a point where amendments to make it viable are too expensive, getting to a point where the soil loses integrity and is unusable.
To keep land arable in the longer term, you need to do crop/usage rotation, no-till farming, etc.
> only in that it causes algal blooms in water bodies
...which results in water that's so clogged it can't support fish, aquatic arthropods and so on.
Perhaps that doesn't matter, if the river rolling past your window is the Mississippi; but in this country, our longest rivers are only 100 miles or so.
In my experience, the number one thing that makes driving harder is other drivers, not the government. Drivers full roads to over-capacity and then I sit in gridlock.
But Paris already has amazing public transit that is only getting expanded more (line E to Mantes through La Défense, Grand Paris Express, line 14, a bunch of trams, etc.). And the point of the road closures was to make walking and mostly cycling more enjoyable. You can see that it worked, because places like Rivoli, quais de Seine, bd Sébastopol are full with bikes. Making driving more of a pain thus inciting more use of public transit or bikes is just a bonus.
Don't know about Chatelet but the last time I was to London (which is not more than a year ago), the tunnels and trains seemed fine. Yes, it gets crowded during the morning peak hours in some of the busy routes but apart from that, they seem to be really good. Makes me sad that most other cities do not provide that kind of easily accessible public transport.
Sorry I was talking about Paris. London is a much more pleasant experience, despite the tube being so much older, the tunnels narrower and the temperature very hot in the summer. I avoid taking the metro in Paris, I have no problem taking the tube in London. Not the least because the brits have preserved a form of courtesy without which there would be deads every day in the tube (if people were pushing on overcrowded platforms like they do in Paris).
London's transport system is extremely well run, despite the national governments political hostility towards it.
TfL (Transport for London) do a lot of interesting things to manage traffic (rerouting people on foot through stations in interesting ways) to manage traffic/congestion.
Its also rather heavily surveilled and policed by the British Transport Police (a fully fledged police force specifically for the UK public transport networks).
Nah, i really dislike Paris and wouldn't come back ever, but in fairness, those measure really had an impact on the pollution and the public transportation useage.
