There's a huge variety of electronic music styles. I'd really recommend trying some without the substances. Maybe the extremes are your thing? Or the highly melodic euphoric ones? Or dark stuff? Etc..
The nice thing if you find something is that it's also sustainable - as in: can do this for the rest of your life - which at least for me is definitely not the case with mdma.
Well, I'm a lifelong Metal fan. I like, for example, Goa Trance well enough, but I don't think I'll ever be able to enjoy just listening to EDM for pleasure the way I can with say, Technical Death Metal.
Amongst the money and power seeking it definitely is but I'm not sure how prevailing that really is among the general population. I think for starters many don't even realize there's a biodiversity crisis (doesn't exactly appear on mainstream media that often, plus there's the shifting baseline). And those that do realize there are some issues might give a damn but don't know what to do about it.
Anyway: if there's anything I'd weep about it's that measures like these are needed in the first place. Far too little, far too late. But to be honest I stopped weeping and just do whatever I can personally such that the day I die I can at least have some peace with my life.
both times absolutely amazing. Highly recommended.
Saw them last year in Brussels. And while I agree with this and would go again and would recommend it to others, the side note for me is: I've listened to a lot of electronic music old and new and for my personal taste almost everything Kraftwerk makes is on the mediocre side. I'd never play it at home to listen to. But to see them in concert with pretty nice visuals and at the same time realizing they basically pioneered all of this 50 years ago does remain sort of mindblowing.
Surprisingly, The Netherlands is missing on this map too.
Very strange indeed.
It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area.
Isn't that, just like in Belgium, mostly so for meat and derived products? Which also happens to be one of the worst situations (of natural food production) ecologically: grow and import a ton of corn and soy, export again, and in the meantime all the pesticides and methane and nitrogen and manure etc are left in your country.
The Netherlands is almost legendary for its agricultural productivity. Its greenhouse operations were the model for NZ capsicum production and other efforts. It also leads food science research in some areas. Wageningen is perhaps the best in that field.
Worldwide, dairy & meat are big drivers in climate change, as well as other ecological problems. The NL has a front row seat there. :-( Eg. quality of surface waters is about the worst among EU countries.
Imho the NL would be a better country without its dairy industry: land to re-purpose for growing other crops, increase nature and/or recreational areas, reduce a host of ecological issues, etc. At the cost of a vanishingly small part of our GDP.
But alas - dairy industry, its suppliers & their lobby is a powerful one. So change is slow to come and only if/where absolutely necessary.
So you supplement with non natives that provide something
I get the sentiment but tend to I disagree. Maybe some very specific species might benefit somewhat, but in general the principle makes little sense. Whatever native fauna there is in your area spent thousands of years in relationships with other native flora and fauna. So not just plants, also the soil life, the combination of plants, the terrain variation and so on. Hence replicating that as close as possible should be what works best. Which a far as nectar/pollen goes means not a single species but a combination providing it throughout the seasons. Whereas 'long blooming and nectar rich' completely ignores specialist insects which only get nectar and pollen from one particular species or group of species, insects laying eggs on specific species only, and so on. Butterfly bush is considered a McDonalds for insects, and that's actually a pretty good metaphor. Red valerian is in the same ballpark.
Pesticides form the backbone of crop protection. Without them, we're looking at at least a 40% reduction in global yield
Such numbers might be ballpark correct, but I think the "without them" here literally means "if we take current industrial agriculture and simply drop pesticides" i.e. without any other change. Pretty obvious that yes, doing so will easily get you to numbers of that magnitude.
So it's a bit strange not considering the various root causes of what requires those pesticieds in the first place: monocultures on dead soil and nothing which even begins to resemble a normal ecosystem in sight. Those causes happen to be exactly among the causes of the massive insect/more general biodiversity decline we're witnessing. Along with pesticides, sure, but habitat loss is likely an even bigger factor.
So while those biopesticides are probably a net win over what is used now, it's rather unclear if they'll have a meaningful impact on that decline. Which is why reports on solutions for the decline also always include adressing at least part of the root causes, like partial shifts back to landscapes which are a mix of nature and agriculture. Where there's at least a bush/tree line between fields, for instance. Which also helps keeping certain pests in control.
Vegans are constantly using dog meat in a xenophobic way
You apparently have never heard or seen the fairly widespread 'the only difference is your perception' line of vegan merchandise which uses dog meat it in the opposite way: it calls out the hypocrisy of all meat-but-not-dog people. Not of a select group of people eating dog meat.
The nice thing if you find something is that it's also sustainable - as in: can do this for the rest of your life - which at least for me is definitely not the case with mdma.
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