Germany's Freefall. Hermann Dr. Rochholz

sides by all means. This may have happened in Italy, but Germany has become involved since then.

      In the town of Mals on the Resia Pass, a referendum was held in which the citizens had decided no longer to use any pesticides. The local organic farmers had hitherto been forced to sell their produce conventionally as their produce had received too much insecticide from the “drift” (the toxins are blown onto neighboring properties). In the meantime, the “South Tyrolean War” is being fought out via the Munich Environmental Institute, which has been on the offensive against conventional farmers with its posters. Things have deteriorated to such an extent that the parties involved are spraying each other’s fruit trees with glyphosate.

      Mals lies on the Resia Pass, where the wind blows relatively hard, which is why wind turbines were built there. This makes the area special. Furthermore, the pass is often used by cyclists who aren’t exactly thrilled about riding through toxic clouds. The argument made by the farmers who are aware of the spraying sequence is: “nothing toxic at all is being currently sprayed”. The response to demonstrate the absurdity of the arguments made by this side would have been: “Unfortunately, I don’t have a chem lab in my pocket to determine that”.

      This was preceded by threats against the referendum’s initiators. After the ban passed, it was declared invalid and the spraying resumed. The situation is also such that the farmers must maintain several feet distance from the boundary of their property when spraying. In South Tyrol, however, farmland is so expensive that these regulations are being ignored.

      Regardless how useful “organic” may be, it is still unacceptable for conventional farmers to dump the poison they don’t want onto the plants of organic farmers no matter how they do this, just as nobody really thinks about spraying their neighbor’s white car with red paint. The following year, these organic farmers used plastic sheeting to plant their plants. The apparent reason for this extreme measure was the drift.

      The organic farmers claim “we’re the poor ones”, which they explain with the “drift”. They use this to justify the referendum because a considerable financial loss is involved when things are grown organically, but can’t be sold as such.

      Now, it’s possible to admire the “spraying operations” of these farmers. The apple trees, usually the subject of the discussion, are about 2.5 meters (8 ft) high. But even those farmers who spray correctly in completely calm wind conditions (most of them) are forced to suffer from these spray mists, which can reach heights of 7 m (23 ft) and more. Hence, a technical problem is inevitably involved. Some farmers have even realized this themselves and deactivated the topmost nozzles (about 10 nozzles in a row from bottom to top).

      The spraying equipment use a blower to generate an air stream that carries the spray mixture. This air stream, however, doesn’t only move to the side, but upwards as well. Hence, many are poorly designed. Even on the poster of the Munich Environmental Institute denouncing the “spraying” in South Tyrol, you can see this equipment spraying into the sky and that some technical defect must be involved.

      The faulty design was documented. The construction could have been altered and the drift thus halted in order to settle the dispute between the conventional farmers and the organic farmers. I sent the report to all parties. The mayor of Mals and the Greens had received a copy as well. But the facts didn’t interest them: I received no response and no further inquiries. Obviously, the report ended up in the trash.

      As a last resort, I contacted a “person of public interest” close to the organic farmers (who therefore considered himself an “intellectual”) by telephone. He explained that “his actual objective was to abolish unnatural poisons”.

      But “unnatural” and “natural” poisons don’t exist because how these are produced is irrelevant. When the chemical formula is the same, so is the poison. Moreover, not all poisons found in nature have been discovered yet: Some time ago I read that a poison had been detected in mushrooms that had been used for a long time in the agricultural sector. Perhaps he had meant “naturally produced” poisons, but the same applies here, too: Why should these be more harmless than the poisons made from “unnatural raw materials” (petroleum)? Whichever way you see it: Assertions are made, which can then be taken ad hoc to absurdity.

      This instance shows that it’s not a matter of eliminating defects or deescalation. Rather, you want to indulge in your own world view or post-factual world view as an “environmental religion”. Since you’ve established your own view of things as the only valid one, you want to impose it on others. But in a democratic society this cannot work out in the long run because a democratic society is based on mutual understanding and objective, factual, critical and, above all, tolerant discourse.

      The German Greens acted in a similar manner regarding nitrate readings in water: measuring stations were installed directly under farmsteads on a slope in Poing, Bavaria. Extremely high nitrate concentrations are recorded at this measuring point. Not a single other measuring point exists within a 20 km (12 mile) radius. By the way, there is no European-wide standard on how these measuring points must look like. Furthermore, each country is free to decide how it evaluates the measured values statistically:

       One option is to add up all the measured values and thereby calculate the mean value.

       Another option is to incorporate the geographical distribution of the measuring points. This would give greater significance to the single measuring point in Poing, which has high measured values, since no other measuring points exist in the vicinity.

      No method is “right” or “wrong”. However, the mean value can be influenced by the choice of positioning and evaluation of the measuring points.

      However, the same laws valid throughout Europe are created on the basis of this non-standard evaluation. The only justification for this socially damaging nonsense can be to want to measure the highest possible pollution in order to justify taking action against “environmental pigs”, in this case the farmers, in order to be able to enact new laws. Since they consider themselves to be “such good people”, they think they have the right to argue with manipulated statistics.

      Since everything is now only being played out from all sides on this level, Germany and the rest of Europe are in free fall. People will only wake up when everything is being properly regulated “according to your feeling”. But by then it’ll be too late as other countries govern based on the laws of physics or the natural sciences according to the current state of the art.

      Everything else must fail.