This is just one small story, one example, one person being ignorant. But to me this was the encounter, that finally made me realize, this world cannot be saved. We are all going down. Because: Assholes.

Yesterday we went for a walk. We live near a beautiful river, in fact the land we live on borders the river. As we walked out we saw our landlord was mixing some fluids for his bright yellow pressure sprayer. He then proceeded to spray this mixture onto the stinging nettles in the field bordering the river.

At first we went into denial. This can’t be. There are super strict laws in this country, that forbid the use of herbicides or pesticides near open water, meaning rivers, lakes, canals.

We shook our heads and walked on for a while, then looked at each other, he really is spraying herbicide, isn’t he? Again we kept walking. Shouldn’t we say something? Of course this is tricky, this is our landlord, you don’t want to piss him off.

After a few minutes we stopped, I could not let this go. We have to go say something, this is not okay. At the very least we have to tell him that we disapprove.

Finally we gathered our courage and went and talked to him. We asked him what he was spraying, Garlon 120, a herbicide. We told him that we did not like this one bit, that it was against the law, that this would poison the river, as well as probably insects and other animals. He asked, well, what would you have me do to combat the stinging nettles.

Erm.

We pay rent here, in fact there are four parties here all paying rent. He could easily hire a garden crew to manually take out the stinging nettles once a year. Plus, what harm do they do? Stinging nettles are food, medicine. It’s a pioneer plant, that shows up where the ground has been depleted. In creates great manure, and you can make an excellent natural fertilizer by placing stinging nettles in a bucket full of water for a few months.

I kept saying, but it’s a against the law. That was stupid. But we also tried to explain… One rainfall and this herbicide gets flushed into the river, our beautiful river, our clean river, people already start to swim in it and will do so all summer.

All this time he did not seem phased at all and kept preparing the next batch of poison WHILE we were standing right next to him trying to speak to him. Eventually we walked away.

We then looked up the herbicide on the internet. As it turns out even the company producing this poison warns against using it close to open water. We also found out that it is very harmful to bees, to pregnant mammals (causing miscarriages), to sea weed, and many more things. It also said the product should not be used where kids play, and every day there are many kids walking past this land. Every few months a farmer brings his sheep to graze on this patch of land. There are fruit trees in the meadow there.

And even on a personal level. I get asthma some times, inhaling herbicides can’t be good for that. He sprayed this product close to where we sleep, to where we keep our tomatoes, our balcony herbs. We often walk through the land he sprayed to reach the river. In fall we would have enjoyed collecting some fruit from the orchard, which of course won’t happen now. It affects us.

I could not sleep last night. I kept replaying the conversation in my head. Did we express it wrong? Did we not explain ourselves? It was so frustrating. But then I realized, this guy is just part of the problem. And there is nothing we can do about it.

We had overcome our shyness, our fears, to talk to someone, trying to convince him that he is in the process of harming the environment. But he just laughed it off and kept going.

And while this is just one small story, one small example, it does have huge implications. I mean, this guy, he is intelligent, he is an architect, he understands our language, he even seems reasonable in other things.

I had plans to approach him about the heating situation in our house. The heater runs on oil, and I felt horrible all winter, contributing to climate change by simply turning on the heat. I wanted to approach the landlord and ask him to change to solar, or an other ecological system, as soon as possible. Please. But then why should I have to beg. Shouldn’t I be allowed to demand this? I kept thinking about it, how to convince him, what tactics to employ. But after the experience yesterday, why should I even bother?