IT is never too late to discover a talent, in my case the ability to give things a miss. Take the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This week it was named as the biggest and best attraction the UK has to offer, “the greatest show of arts and culture on Earth” according to the Lonely Planet travel guide which compiled the list of unmissable attractions.

Unmissable. Funny that. Every year I like to know what is on at the festivals and I enjoy reading the reviews. But buying a ticket, going the whole nine plus yards from home to the capital? I somehow manage to resist. It helps that ScotRail makes such sterling efforts to assist reluctant travellers by cancelling services so often, but even if a door to door limo service was laid on the response would be the same: ta, but no ta. No to the crowds and sweaty clamour as the city doubles in size.

Wha’s like us when it comes to moaning? The world’s most successful arts festival on our doorstep and some of us, okay, this moaning Minnie, plays right into the hands of the Wodehousian stereotype. But there is reasoning behind the stance. Consider how much better life would be for many if more people adopted the ta, but no ta, attitude.

Edinburgh at festival time is a perennial grumble. Lately, the complaints list has been extended to cover other tourist attractions. The North Coast 500 has become a haven for boy (and girl) racers; the Fairy Pools on Skye are more like Buchanan Galleries on a Saturday. The negative effects of “over-tourism” are being felt not just in Scotland. We have seen the snaking queue to get to the summit of Everest, the Venice river boat crushed by a cruise liner, the packed vans of camera-wielding tourists descending on wildlife. Too many people wanting to do the same thing at the same time.

There is a lot of it about, and not just at tourist hotspots. Of course the boom in tourism has brought benefits. Jobs have been created, wealth shared, communities kept in existence which might otherwise have disappeared. There is much to be said for laying out the welcome mat, for resisting the temptation to say “Enjoy yourself, just not in my back yard”.

Ah, the dreaded Nimbyism, a shorthand for selfishness, for exclusivity, for shutting the door in other people’s faces. It is behaviour often associated with England’s green belt, but it has spread much wider. Far from always being a bad thing it can, in certain cases and places, be a force for good.

There is a theory about human behaviour which holds that given a choice, most people want to do the right thing. We give, we take, on the understanding that it works out for the best that way. The story of the modern world is of a species, humankind, grabbing too much and returning too little. At the risk of sounding like a Caledonian Gwyneth Paltrow, we have lost that sense of balance which kept things on an even keel. On a global scale we are paying for this in a planet that is cooking itself alive. On a smaller level, the failure to heed what is going on in our own backyards, to plan long term, is making life more difficult than it has to be.

To take an example close to home, a couple of years ago a study by the National Centre for Social Research named East Dunbartonshire as the best place for a woman to live in Britain (the analysis of income levels, education, etc, was done for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour). Presenter Jane Garvey was despatched to report from the front line of Bishopbriggs.

I wrote about the study at the time, saying East Dunbartonshire was indeed a terrific place to live, we were very lucky to do so at a time when too many other parts of the city were blighted by poverty, but that signs of strain were beginning to show. This was before two large housing developments appeared, one so big it looks like a small village.

No problem with that, one might think. Plenty of space to go around. But the roads surrounding the new developments are the same. Always busy before, the tailbacks now, particularly with the cycle lanes, make getting anywhere a trial. No problem, either, with the large retail developments setting up shop in the area. Except they offer free parking while the council charges to park close to the town centre. Result: the smaller shops in the village are struggling to survive.

Another consequence of the developments is increased demand for water, locally and throughout the city. Scottish Water is having to lay a new pipeline from the reservoir at Milngavie, which involves the closure of a local car park. Again, don’t sweat the small stuff you might think.

But then comes the response of people faced with a temporary change to their ways. Rather than find somewhere else to walk or run of an evening they turn the streets near the reservoir into a car park, leaving vehicles on pavements, blocking access for pedestrians, pushchairs and people with disabilities. Others take their cars up the single track access road. One driver, presumably reluctant to have their way blocked, shot up at such a speed I thought Steve Coogan was visiting the area. Then there is the litter left behind. From initially being grateful at the closure of a road too often used as a rat run, it is a case of count the days till the works are over.

Preserving a balance is easy for nature but, it seems, increasingly difficult for humans. It is not a hard concept to grasp. At its most basic, it is about leaving a place in the same, if not better, condition than you find it. It is finding another place to go, or not going at all.

If you are Greta Thunberg it is sailing to New York for a summit on climate change rather than taking a plane. For some reason, the 16-year old Swede gets right up the noses of a certain sort, usually the middle aged and grumpy. Her scowling can be a trial – we have plenty of our own teenagers to provide that service – but she is right in what she says and does. To give the planet a chance we have to give things a miss, big and small. Stop behaving like we own the place in perpetuity. Consider those coming along after us. Yes, even if they do want to go to the Fringe.