[HN Gopher] Greening of the Earth Mitigates Surface Warming (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Greening of the Earth Mitigates Surface Warming (2020)
Author : themantra514
Score : 422 points
Date : 2021-11-24 21:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nasa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nasa.gov)
| lucidguppy wrote:
| 77% of agricultural land is devoted to livestock. We could return
| a lot of that land to wilderness if we adopted a whole food plant
| based diet.
|
| https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-...
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| Nah.
|
| The obvious endgame there is that you reduce the amount of land
| required per person and then increase the persons, ending up
| with the same land requirement.
|
| Then we look for the next thing to cut.
|
| I'll just keep my current quality of life and outcompete others
| for resources, thanks. Carbon tax pls.
| colordrops wrote:
| This makes no sense, and is a typical non-sequitur thrown out
| by those who are unwilling to give up meat. There is
| absolutely no evidence that meat eating is the limiting
| factor in population growth.
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| Evidence? It's mathematical, not scientific. Derivable from
| first principles.
|
| I can eat meat as much as I want provided another 7 billion
| people don't also do the same.
|
| The issue is with the number of people, not the activity.
| Literally any use of land is a bad idea at that scale, we
| end up in rabbit hutches.
| colordrops wrote:
| Another non-sensical response. You made the claim, not
| me. It's your responsibility to provide evidence.
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| For more information, please re-read.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| What you've said makes sense, but not as a reply. Unless
| you can explain how it justifies the claim that the other
| person claimed you made?
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Malthus didn't count on people just not wanting to have
| kids.
| earleybird wrote:
| > There is absolutely no evidence that meat eating is the
| limiting factor in population growth.
|
| So you're saying eating meat is fine then?
| colordrops wrote:
| If this comment isn't a joke then you are acting in bad
| faith.
| earleybird wrote:
| Not a joke, just not following your chain of logic
| regarding meat eating.
| colordrops wrote:
| No you aren't, you are replying with a snarky non-
| sequitur. It has nothing to do with any claims or logic
| in my post.
| bliteben wrote:
| I think the response you are replying to meant this
| sentiment: Ranch land can and occasionally does turn back
| into wild land, once its a subdivision its gone forever.
| Over the long run he is certainly right that less
| requirements for ranch land doesn't do anything to ensure
| that we get more land without fences.
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| My argument is that eating vegetarian does not reduce
| land use for agriculture.
|
| It does to first order. Then we just end up with more
| mouths - like what happened after the Haber-Bosch
| process.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| "Chickens actually evolved as a jungle species"
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tree-range-c...
|
| I think I once saw something similar about cattle but I cannot
| find any reference.
| danans wrote:
| > "Chickens actually evolved as a jungle species"
|
| Though that might be true, and despite it working for a small
| community - the scale of meat production required to satisfy
| the world's demands today can't be achieved through forest-
| raised chickens or cattle.
|
| The price of meat would have to skyrocket and/or the
| consumption of it would have to dramatically decrease. Both
| of those would be progress from a climate change and
| environmental perspective, but from the perspective of global
| meat consumer expectations, it would be a serious regression.
| Few people want to go back to pre-industrial diet (mostly
| grains, greens, and a very small amount of meat).
|
| That's why plant based meat substitutes are such a big deal -
| they might be one of the few ways we can thread this needle.
| suyula wrote:
| 'Silvopasture' might be the term you want.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Yes exactly, thanks!
| tomrod wrote:
| Cows in the Texas Piney Woods love the woods. They like
| fields too. But more of often than not I'd find them under
| the cool shade of pines if not in the tanks (ponds).
| blizdiddy wrote:
| 77% if you count land for grazing, otherwise useless to
| agriculture. If you go back 500 years you know what your find
| on that land? Just as many Buffalo as there are cows today.
| Feeding the world means using ruminants to turn grass into
| protein.
| unmole wrote:
| > Feeding the world means using ruminants to turn grass into
| protein.
|
| Beef is not an essential staple. It's probably the worst kind
| of meat in terms of environmental impact.
| crakenzak wrote:
| > Just as many Buffalo as there are cows today.
|
| I'm very skeptical of this. Citation needed please.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Apparently as many as 100 million on the American plains
| once upon a time, according to Google
| alex_young wrote:
| Wikipedia cites ~60M bison pre-1800 [1] USDA ~93M cattle
| currently [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting
| [2] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2021/01-29-2021.php
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Is the 60M figure for what is now the US or for all North
| America ? If that's the latter, you'd need to add
| Canadian cattle as well, around 11M[1].
|
| [1] https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/canadas-agriculture-
| sectors...
| timClicks wrote:
| That's a very US-centric viewpoint. I mean, New Zealand
| didn't have any land-dwelling mammals except for the rat 500
| years ago.
| Aromasin wrote:
| Same in the UK (barring the mammals point). The country was
| 60-80% temperate rainforest before human habitation,
| depending on what research you go by. I grew up in the
| countryside. I cannot tell you how impossible it is to
| convince someone, who is dead set on consuming animal
| products, that we could regenerate that land if only we got
| rid of the cattle/fodder though. It's always "that land
| can't be used for anything else" or "having animals grazing
| there is good for the land", and that is just demonstrably
| false in every way. It's baffling that there can literally
| be old growth forest just on the other side of the hill,
| and the farmers will be adamant that the land they're on
| would be useless and barren if it weren't for them - as
| they continue to staunchly cut back the hedgerows and mow
| their fields every few months.
|
| Having been part of forest regeneration efforts across the
| UK - from southern heathlands to rocky Welsh and Scottish
| outcrops, good for "nothing but sheep" - I can say with all
| certainty that every part of the country except the most
| extreme alpine regions is suitable for reforestation or
| some form of plantation dense rewilding. People are
| completely ignorant to how the country looked before we
| levelled it for grazing, viewing the 70% ecologically
| barren agricultural land (of which 80% of that is used for
| grazing or feeding cattle) as the norm and the 2.5% old
| growth forest as a more novelty, and something strangely
| "unique to that area".
|
| If you're from New Zealand, this video is especially
| poignant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZSJKbzyMc
| throwamon wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there were no buffalo in the Amazon or
| Pantanal 500 years ago.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Giant sloths were a thing
| CyanBird wrote:
| Correct, yet these were not "a thing" 500 years ago, not
| even 5000,try double that and then then "maybe"
| mkoubaa wrote:
| The point in the parent comment was not about the literal
| number 500 but rather about a point in time before humans
| altered the megafauna
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's actually pretty clear from new imagery the Amazon was
| significantly deforested and farmed before European
| diseases wiped out the natives.
|
| And before that, the extinctions mammoths and mastadons (by
| humans) led to a lot of tree cover that was grassland when
| the grazers kept the forests in check.
| pomian wrote:
| There was an interesting discussion on HN not too long
| ago (1-3 months?), that we have been wrong about human
| stress on mammoths etc. We should find it. As usual we
| learn neat things on HN.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| area check
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest
|
| the amazing, Amazon Basin, is far, far larger than any
| previous human terraculture eh?
| lucidguppy wrote:
| Why do you need protein from ruminants? Why not pulses?
| flenserboy wrote:
| Bioavailability. Plants are awful as protein sources for
| humans. Ruminants are awesome as plant processors for the
| providing of protein to humans.
| colordrops wrote:
| You're gonna have to provide a source for that. Just
| because less meat is needed for the same amount of
| protein doesn't make it better or more healthy.
| flenserboy wrote:
| There's a difference between crude protein and quality
| protein. Here's a place to start -- https://link.springer
| .com/article/10.1007/s40279-018-1009-y/....
|
| Compare the DIAAS scores (see a short overview of DIAAS
| here -- https://www.arlafoodsingredients.com/the-whey-
| and-protein-bl...). Plant-based sources of indispensable
| amino acids are lacking; that, combined with the sheer
| amount of water and energy necessary to produce & process
| them make them a very bad choice indeed, especially set
| against pastured ruminants, as (primary) protein sources.
| The suggestions for protein intake in the Mayo article
| cited by blacksmith_tb are _minimal_ levels; more (and
| quality) protein is needed for better health, not merely
| for getting enough.
| euroderf wrote:
| Doesn't rice & beans have all the complementary proteins
| ?
| colordrops wrote:
| It does. It's an easily debunked myth that plants don't
| provide all needed amino acids.
| wumpus wrote:
| Pastured ruminants? In the US, cows are fed corn at
| feedlots to double production. You're comparing to the
| wrong thing.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Nope. Everyone sees feedlot production as the only way to
| raise cows, but it's entirely dependent on using the land
| which could be used for roaming to raise vast quantities
| of unhealthy grains. Get rid of the corn and bring back
| pastures. Not only will there be plenty of room to raise
| excellent & tasty protein from happy cows, the damage
| done to humans from corn will be significantly lessened.
| Then we can turn to the problem of wheat...
| colordrops wrote:
| If you mean "essential amino acids" when you say
| "indispensable amino avids", you are wrong as it is not
| difficult at all to get all essential amino acids from a
| varied plant-based diet. In fact you only need to eat
| soy, or mix other legumes with whole grains to get enough
| of all essential amino acids.
|
| Regarding water and energy needed for plants vs animals,
| I'm flabbergasted that you are even making this argument,
| considering that the vast majority of crops goes into
| feeding animals for meat and dairy. It's far more
| inefficient to eat meat and dairy than it is to eat
| plants when it comes to water and energy usage.
|
| And what do mean mean "more protein is needed for better
| health, not merely for getting enough". Are you saying
| that "getting enough" protein is not enough to maintain
| health? Sounds like a contradiction.
| flenserboy wrote:
| "Indispensable" is the language used in the link I sent,
| so I was shooting for consistency. While it is possible
| to get what is needed through plants, obtaining protein
| from animal sources is far more direct, easy to digest,
| requires less material for the body to work with, and
| does not carry along the antinutrients (lectins,
| oxalates, etc.) plant foods so often deliver and which
| can be quite damaging to humans.
|
| The argument is also not for feedlots, but for pastures
| -- in a post below I argue for getting rid of the grains
| which we use to feed these animals (which isn't great for
| them to eat, either). There is good evidence (see Peter
| Ballerstedt's work for details on this) that pastured
| ruminants end up generating excellent soil that holds in
| water and is actually on the good end of things, methane
| emission-wise (though the problem of emissions from
| feedlots are greatly overblown as the pollution which
| comes from planting, harvesting, processing, and
| distributing plants rarely gets folded into the
| equation). Funny that.
|
| And, finally, as for "getting enough" -- getting enough
| to get by is not optimal for health. More & better
| protein is needed for that, and that comes from renewable
| animal sources which don't require vast expenditures of
| energy, processing, and which prevent the loss of topsoil
| while adding to the vitality of the soil. I want everyone
| to be healthy, and there's a path for that to happen, one
| which won't be taken if we go down the "plant based" path
| instead.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| Sorry wrote a post but accidently erased and hate typing
| on phone so here's a useful link.
|
| https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/44879/does-
| anim...
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| 'Awful' is quite hyperbolic - pulses (aka beans and
| lentils), nuts, and seeds all contain protein[1]. In the
| US, it's not like we're struggling to get enough
| protein[2]. So demanding to eat meat is a little like
| insisting that you don't just need to drive, but that you
| absolutely have to have a V8 diesel pickup for your
| commute to the office.
|
| 1: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-
| should-you...
|
| 2" https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-
| health/speak...
| [deleted]
| perfunctory wrote:
| Unfortunately there is no enough grassland to maintain the
| current levels of beef consumption. Most beef we consume is
| not grass-fed. So if you want to feed the world by converting
| grass into protein, that would mean just the same - radical
| reduction in meat consumption.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > Just as many Buffalo as there are cows today.
|
| is there a citation for that claim?
| redconfetti wrote:
| Maybe we should start raising giraffes instead of cows for
| meat. Then we'd have a need for lots of trees.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I don't want to though.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >77% of agricultural land is devoted to livestock. We could
| return a lot of that land to wilderness if we adopted a whole
| food plant based diet.
|
| You have to be careful here. Livestock is generally carbon
| sinks. Those cow patties are taking co2 into grass and then
| depositing it into the ground.
|
| Flipside, plant based diet has a deadline.
|
| http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/verso2/
|
| We are already 70% degraded and only slowly the process by
| spraying oil byproducts on the land. If we kill the oil
| industry, that erosion increases in speed.
|
| A more recent publication was looking at the moulds vs fungus
| balance and it's even worse than the above proposes.
|
| We have to get into regenerative farming to reverse this
| problem and that includes keeping livestock for those cow
| patties.
| syshum wrote:
| >>whole food plant based diet.
|
| No..
|
| That is all
|
| Edit: Below I am accused of Rules violation, likely due to the
| short response. However I do not believe it is, the OP is
| wanting everyone to either voluntarily give up meat in favor or
| not just a plant based diet but an extreme version of that diet
| a "whole food plant based" diet
|
| While my comment is (was) short, it is all words I needed to
| make my point, that diet is a non-starter, and should not be
| entertained as a feasible solution.
|
| No
|
| Is all I needed, and wanted say,
|
| No
|
| is all that needed to be conveyed
|
| so I say again to the idea of a whole food plant based diet
|
| No
| shkkmo wrote:
| Even your expanded comment doesn't make your point. It never
| explains why you see a "whole food plant based diet" as a non
| starter. Without knowing the basis for your objection, it is
| hard to start a discussion and your comment ends up with
| little power to sway people's opinions. (Just repeatedly
| saying "no" is an especially ineffective argument.)
|
| Personally, I enjoy cheese and meat far too much to adopt
| such a diet on a strict basis.
|
| However, we can gain many of the ecological benefits of such
| a diet by simply increasing the precentage of our caloric
| intake that comes from such sources.
| syshum wrote:
| I have found over the years it is just simply easier to put
| down vegan's and vegetarians quickly. Just now I finished
| my breakfast, it had zero carbs, zero vegetables, zero
| plants, and consisted of meat from 2 animals.
|
| I am not interested in the ecological benefits of "whole
| food plant based diet" nor are most people, the idea that
| people will simply adopt that diet if they learn of the
| "ecological benefits" is frankly absurd IMO.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > it is just simply easier to put down vegan's and
| vegetarians quickly
|
| Then please do that elsewhere. HN strives to be a place
| for constructive discussion, not putting people down as
| fast as possible.
|
| > I am not interested in the ecological benefits
|
| I know plenty of people who limit their meat consumption
| due to ecological concerns. You may not care how the
| planet looks in 50 years but many people do and do so
| strongly enough to male significant changes to their
| lifestyle. (Which of those changes are actually effective
| is a whole different question.)
| colordrops wrote:
| I think comments like this are against HN rules.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is true. Though HN is very big about tone and very
| little about content.
|
| GP would benefit from running their thought through
| http://www.textinflator.com/ and then posting.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I think the tone of the comment is okay, but comment
| itself is lacking actual substance. The original comment
| didn't even state what exactly was being objected to, let
| alone make an argument or attempt to start a discussion.
|
| I would say that commenting "I think this is against the
| rules" is also a very low value comment that doesn't link
| to the guidelines, explain which one was violated, or
| offer any suggestions for improvement.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If we voted on content, it would be a memetic popularity
| contest. Voting on tone also has issues[0], but it also
| keeps the quality of communication high enough that
| people can (sometimes) completely disagree, but still
| learn from each other.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| How much different is that livestock land compared to its wild
| state? I mean, the big county-sized pastures aren't cultivated
| at all, they just have a fence put around them and a drinking
| through, yet they contribute to these statistics that people
| pushing vegetarianism/veganism like to cite a lot.
| Balero wrote:
| In some places not a lot. Some parts of the great plains have
| basically swapped Bison for cattle, and keep a vaguely
| similar ecosystem. However much more of this area is degraded
| due to have far too much cattle there too often. Bison used
| to graze and migrate, churning up the ground and adding
| fertilizer, and then letting things re-grow.
|
| Other livestock land is completely different from its 'wild
| state'. Cattle ranching in what used to be the Amazon. Sheep
| herding in European uplands, also takes place on land that
| used to be forest and temperate rain forest.
|
| Another feed in to the large percentage of land that goes
| towards livestock, is growing animal feed. The majority of
| cattle in the US is not just eating grass. It is eating crops
| that are grown specifically for feeding to cattle. So those
| fields of corn, that are then fed to cattle could also go
| back to their 'wild state'.
| CallMeJim wrote:
| > NASA satellites have been observing increased green cover on
| land, which is thought to be due to intensive agriculture to feed
| growing populations and ambitious tree-planting programs - for
| example, the so-called "Green Great Wall" in China.
|
| > The cooling effect from greening is less significant in
| tropical forests with high leaf areas.
|
| Does this mean that cutting down the Amazon rainforest to use the
| land for farming is net-beneficial for slowing down climate
| change?
| lovemenot wrote:
| >> Does this mean that cutting down the Amazon rainforest to
| use the land for farming is net-beneficial for slowing down
| climate change?
|
| Even if it does, the effect would be temporary. Such land can
| rarely be farmed sustainably. In the medium termt becomes scrub
| and barely contributes to cooling
|
| And anyway, the question is largely moot. Resisting climate
| change is only one of many important services rendered by these
| forests.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| Perhaps I'm dumb, but it sounds like they're saying that it's
| good when China does it but bad when anyone else does.
| vmception wrote:
| Is that really what we need though, atmospheric temperature I
| thought was the main issue
|
| How long heat stays in one area
|
| I get that more plants = good, for other reasons but surface
| temperature wasnt something we have been aiming to optimize for?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's one of the issues though. I think ground temperature is
| about human and animal comfort, desertification, viability of
| certain plants and crops, etc. Not unimportant, but as you
| imply, only part of the equation.
| toto444 wrote:
| I have this pet theory of mine that planting trees could also
| mitigate rising sea levels since trees contain water. Is that
| dumb ?
|
| I have no idea of the order of magnitude we are talking about so
| I might be entirely delusional.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It... kinda is? Trees can't contain that much water and can't
| compensate for the volume of water coming from glaciers and the
| like.
|
| That said, trees do help stabilize the soil, mitigating the
| loss of arable soil in case of heavy rains and flooding or
| things like landslides.
| occz wrote:
| >have this pet theory of mine that planting trees could also
| mitigate rising sea levels since trees Contain water. Is that
| dumb ?
|
| Unfortunately, we would likely have to cover more land than
| there is on the entire surface of the earth to stave off even a
| meter of sea level rise. For reference, the sea to land-ratio
| on earth is around 70/30, and a tree of 15 meters at 60 cm
| diameter is approximately 5 cubic meters in volume, and a tree
| contains around 30-50% of its volume in water. The average
| forest density appears to be about 50-100k trees per square
| kilometer.
|
| We should still plant trees en masse, but as a solution to sea
| level rise it's probably not viable.
| regularfry wrote:
| In terms of raw volume of water no, sibling comment has done
| the maths. But there is another interesting effect that's
| tangentially relevant. Forested areas act as rainwater sponges.
| When you get heavy rainfall, if you've got nothing but tarmac
| or even grass, all that water runs straight off and into the
| nearest river. Which then bursts its banks and floods
| everything nearby, making building on floodplains a bloody
| stupid idea.
|
| With forests, though, the depth of the roots means the water
| can sink more into the ground. It all still ends up in the
| river eventually, but over a much longer time period. Because
| the big pulse of water from the rainfall is attenuated, the
| river has more of a chance to drain away, so you get fewer, and
| less serious, floods.
|
| The net effect is that while we'll lose land to rising sea
| levels, in some areas there's the opportunity to reclaim land
| currently too marginal to occupy. Nowhere near the same land
| area, but it's a worthwhile effect to be aware of where it
| applies.
| cedilla wrote:
| It's not dumb as long as you ask questions (and are interested
| in the answer).
|
| The global ice sheets currently melt at a rate of 1.4 trillion
| tons per year. Biomass of all living things is about 500
| billion tons C. Let's pretend all of that is plant mass on land
| (most if it isn't), and let's just say there's 5 times as much
| water as carbon in plants (an overestimation at least for
| trees), and we arrive at only 2.5 trillion tons of water bound.
|
| So, if I my estimations aren't wildly off, increasing tree
| biomass even by a large factor won't help us significantly. Add
| to that that the rate of the ice melting is accelerating, and
| that the sea levels are also rising due to thermal expansion,
| and I don't think we can more or less discount the bound water
| in trees.
| olivermarks wrote:
| https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankto...
| 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants,
| rainforests are responsible for roughly one-third (28%)
| dahfizz wrote:
| How much of the Earth's surface area is ocean and rain forest?
| olivermarks wrote:
| The ocean is a huge body of saltwater that covers about 71
| percent of Earth's surface.
| https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean/
|
| Rainforests cover 2 percent of the Earth's surface.
| https://quizlet.com/338369119/rainforest-quiz-flash-cards/
| bliteben wrote:
| I live in the PNW and I recently read in this book
| https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Clams-Treasure-Pacific-Northwes...
| that the dominate Phytoplankton that makes up razor clams diet
| has changed to three different species over the course of the
| last 100 years. Really makes you think about how little we
| know, and how long the process of distilling research into
| actual facts or summaries of how things work takes.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That seems like it has to be a gross misrepresentation, that
| only 2% of oxygen comes from other land plants.
|
| This link, https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/amazon-doesnt-
| produce-20-o... , seems like it has more reasonable numbers.
| First, it's a bit misleading to talk about what produces
| "oxygen in the atmosphere", because that oxygen was generated
| over many millions of years. Better to discuss what _current_
| percentage of photosynthesis occurs from which sources.
|
| The link I gave says a quarter to a third of photosynthesis on
| land comes from tropical forests, and land vs. marine
| photosynthesis is split about 50/50.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Before life got in the way, I wanted a Bachelor of Science in
| Environmental Resource Management as a foundation for a Master's
| in Urban Planning. I currently run r/UrbanForestry for the same
| reason:
|
| I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate
| from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such
| configurations occur.
|
| It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete
| jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your
| plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the
| land.
|
| I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable
| mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work
| and shop in the same neighborhood. Or at least live and shop if
| they are retirees, teens, or similar groups who aren't seeking a
| job or who already work at home or from home in some capacity.
|
| Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such
| neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is
| a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change. Making it
| possible to skip the long commute makes for a better quality of
| life and less pollution adding to this issue.
|
| We currently frame this issue as a painful choice between short-
| term gratification and current high quality of life with a long-
| term cost of global disaster versus short-term sacrifice for slim
| hope of assuaging our guilt with no guarantee of real improvement
| in the future. I don't think that's necessary.
|
| I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. I
| think you can live that way and live well. I think we can design
| and build a world that provides a high quality of life for people
| and doesn't destroy the environment in the process.
| dylanbfox wrote:
| I agree with all your points - but one thing I think about is:
| how do we fix what we have today? How do you fix the concrete
| jungles that most cities are today in the US. Or is it
| inevitable that more concrete will just be poured over time
| until some major natural disaster allows for a reset?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| local politics is the only way
| presentation wrote:
| Agreed but given American politics this days, a well-placed
| earthquake will probably happen first.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The Netherlands has reversed course from a car-centric
| culture to a more pedestrian- and bike-friendly culture. They
| did that very intentionally. As far as I can tell, there is
| no magic about it being The Netherlands -- except possibly
| the influence on the culture of the polder.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder
|
| From what I gather, protecting the polder so everyone
| survives is so important that it has, at times, required
| people at war to cooperate in keeping the water out.
|
| Today, globally, everyone knows we need solutions here or we
| are all doomed. We can stop quibbling about what various
| factions want for personal gain and start seeking answers
| that help some group live lighter on the land so we all
| benefit.
|
| Rinse and repeat.
|
| Start with low-hanging fruit. As that gets done, other things
| will become more reachable.
| unmole wrote:
| > As far as I can tell, there is no magic about it being
| The Netherlands
|
| While not quite magic, a famously flat terrain and a mild
| climate surely had an impact?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think the Netherlands is still one of the more car-
| centric cultures in Europe though. And I've lived in
| several countries. Perhaps the inner cities aren't, but
| outside of them it's very hard to do without a car.
|
| In many small villages/towns there is only a bus service
| during peak hours now. When I visit it's really a royal
| pain (and taxies are unaffordable as an alternative). And
| when you work in the Netherlands you're usually required to
| work nationwide which means countless hours in the car
| visiting clients. Public transport takes several times as
| long as car travel.
|
| I really hated it when I worked there (I'm from there as
| you might have guessed). All these hours driving in frantic
| traffic were so stressful. I work in Barcelona now where
| public transport is much better (rural is still worse than
| inner-city but both are much better than the Netherlands'
| services). It's the first place I've lived where I
| genuinely don't need a car, it would only be a burden to
| me. Time between metros is counted in seconds and the
| network is so big. As well as that there's buses and trams
| and regional trains passing through that can be used to hop
| from one side of the city to the other.
|
| The only thing that's genuinely better in the Netherlands
| is the bike lane network IMO :) That really is amazing. But
| I just don't see the feasibility of doing without a car
| completely there.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I think your argument only strengthens mine. It sounds
| like you are saying "The Netherlands was kind of the
| America of Europe in terms of being crazy car-centric and
| they sucked so much worse than they do currently."
|
| To which I say "So you're telling me if they can become
| the global poster child for doing this better, anyone can
| do this better -- even the US."
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I work in Barcelona now where public transport is much
| better...
|
| Barcelona is one of the most stressful, if not _the_ most
| stressful city, to use public transport in in Europe. If
| anything it should serve as an example for other cities
| as to what to not do. Public transports are full of
| thieves and scammers. It is simply beyond belief. It is
| known that if you ever dare to retaliate when you catch
| people stealing you, it can quickly degenerate very
| badly... For you.
|
| I don't want to hear the typical: _" If you look like a
| local and know what not to do, you'll be fine"_. I want
| public transports to be very safe otherwise I won't use
| them.
|
| Several people mentioned Tokyo already: I spent close to
| a year there. Now _that_ is a city with working and safe
| public transports.
| krageon wrote:
| > Public transports are full of thieves and scammers
|
| This is true in the overwhelming majority of public
| transport around the world.
|
| > Several people mentioned Tokyo
|
| Yes, Japan is one of the safest nations in this regard.
| That's cool, but definitely not achievable everywhere
| because it is due to a _lot_ of environmental factors
| (like the culture and the incredible conviction rates).
| dylan604 wrote:
| It also helps that the country is old enough to have
| developed before the automobile. Kinda hard to put the
| toothpaste back in the tube when you've designed entire
| cities around support the automobile.
| occz wrote:
| >It also helps that the country is old enough to have
| developed before the automobile. Kinda hard to put the
| toothpaste back in the tube when you've designed entire
| cities around support the automobile.
|
| I think this is a misconception for sure - the
| netherlands used to have much more car-oriented
| development but saw the issues with it and started
| retrofitting their built environments.
|
| The same goes for the U.S in reverse, actually, with a
| lot of cities not having been designed with the car in
| mind and then subsequently having been demolished and
| retrofitted for the car. The transition is totally
| possible to do in both directions.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Somerville, Massachusetts had a large Italian population a
| generation or two back and it seems damn near all of them
| considered "making it" covering every square inch of their
| land with concrete. Then putting up a 2 foot high brick wall
| topped with a few-feet-tall wrought iron fence.
|
| The city has been working to undo it by providing financial
| incentives for removal, and partnering with an informal group
| of volunteers to make it cheap to do. They put out a call for
| public volunteers to have a sort of reverse-barn-raising. A
| big bunch of people show up and help rip apart and load up
| the concrete.
|
| Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston, used to have a group
| of volunteers that worked with local nurseries to plant a
| tree and take care of the initial critical care (watering
| regularly) for free. All you had to do was email them, and
| then point when the crew showed up.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > how do we fix what we have today? How do you fix the
| concrete jungles that most cities are today in the US.
|
| Elbow grease. Break the concrete and plant shit, pay people
| to maintain these things every once in a while. I mean most
| amenity planting is low maintenance and only needs looking
| after once or twice a year to avoid it growing wild.
|
| The US has the solutions already - a lot of money, and a lot
| of people looking for a steady job. All it takes is for
| people to stop hoarding said money and Decide to solve the
| issue.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| How do you think extended family housing complexes fit into
| this story? It's a norm in many cultures and for much or human
| history but an oddity in the US. Of course you can use as loose
| a definition of family as you like.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that though I
| would like to figure out where that fits.
|
| Our current housing crisis is rooted in building housing
| designed for our standard nuclear family with a breadwinner
| father, homemaker mother and 2.5 minor kids. This became our
| standard post-WW2 with the birth of the suburbs and was
| avidly embraced because it worked to solve our housing crisis
| at that time.
|
| That was never the majority of the US population but it was a
| larger percentage of the population than it is currently and
| there were other housing options available if you were
| single. We have torn down a million SROs and largely
| eliminated the practice of boarding houses. Now we see such
| things as aimed at homeless people who can't make their lives
| work. At one time, that was normal housing for normal people.
|
| We have a higher percentage of households with one to three
| people and we mostly don't build housing for such households.
| This has driven an interest in alternatives like Tiny Homes,
| RV living and trailer courts.
|
| We really need to focus on building Missing Middle Housing
| and SROs. That would include duplexes which are a potential
| sensible option for living with extended family in some
| cases.
|
| SRO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
| earleybird wrote:
| That same time period (post WWII) saw a large shift from
| rural to city (suburb or otherwise). How does that factor
| into your view of normal housing?
| nine_k wrote:
| Cities had (and have) more and better jobs.
|
| Suburbs are, imho, the anti-city environment.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I don't think that's all that important. There has been a
| general trend for a long time globally towards people
| leaving rural areas and moving to cities and suburbs. It
| is sometime in the past thirty years that I heard the
| announcement that global populations officially passed
| the fifty percent mark for human populations inhabiting
| cities more than rural areas for the first time in human
| history.
|
| Suburbs got thrown up at breathtaking speed in part
| because it was greenfield development, which lowered some
| barriers to development. There is some saying about
| "Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two."
|
| At the time that they were carpeting the US at high
| speed, they were seen as good, cheap and fast. We are now
| seeing what the myriad hidden costs were, from cutting
| out lower income people to forcing people to be dependent
| on cars to cutting out people of color and also having
| environmental costs that were not factored in at the
| time.
|
| The birth of the suburb predates the environmental
| movement.
|
| The birth of the suburb is generally traced to Levittown
| in the late 1940s-early 1950s. The environmental movement
| is generally traced to the publication of a book called
| _Silent Spring_ in 1962.
|
| https://frontlineielts.com/the-birth-of-suburbia/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
| earleybird wrote:
| For continental US, I believe it was around the 1920's[0]
| while globally, yes it wasn't until 2007 or thereabouts.
| From an admittedly superficial review, it has been
| Africa, India and perhaps(?) China that have been
| undergoing the most urbanization over the last 100 years.
| Then again, perhaps it's not urbanization per se, maybe
| it's more total population size. Homeostasis will find a
| balance point (if one exists).
|
| [0]https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-
| gilded...
|
| [1]https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#share-of-
| populations...
|
| granted this only goes back to 1960
| presentation wrote:
| Agreed - a beautiful part of living in Tokyo is that if
| you're a single young person, you can rent a <$500/mo, 20m2
| or smaller apartment in the heart of the city; and if you
| need more house you can rent/buy more house. People
| typically live in small living spaces, so public spaces
| become that much more vibrant, since people are mostly out
| of the home. The USA has next to no choice for those sorts
| of tradeoffs.
| BrianHenryIE wrote:
| A man after my own heart!
|
| I've been living in California (Sac) for five years, I'm 37,
| I've never learned to drive.
|
| I've been in a car only twice in the past 500+ days (both times
| to bring my dog to the vet).
|
| I feel good because of it. I evangalise.
|
| The world will be better without private cars.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Why oh why has it become some sort of a religion to deny
| yourself the comfort of having your own private space? The joy
| of taking care of your own garden. The discipline of
| maintaining your roof, driveway and a million other small
| things. The peacefulness of not hearing your neighbors talk
| when you are trying to fall asleep...
|
| Humanity has found a way to split atom, to defeat the plague,
| to send people to the Moon, and now we cheerfully celebrate
| turning ourselves into caged animals.
|
| I just don't get it, really. We have the smarts and the
| technology to make comfortable living eco-friendly. We see the
| birth rates decline, implying that people's satisfaction with
| their life quality is not worth sharing it with the next
| generation. And we stubbornly do everything we can to lower it
| further.
|
| For common sense's sake, please look at the big picture. Your
| guilt is someone else's profit margin. You are being taught to
| hate yourself because this way you will settle for a lower
| salary and won't have a family to distract you from your work.
| Please, don't get yourself manipulated.
| kodah wrote:
| Living without a car is a privilege of those who live in cities
| or _some_ suburbs. I 've never actually seen real plans or
| ideas to extend this stuff to the country side. Mostly just
| folks shrugging their shoulders and hoping that end of the
| problem will go away.
| bllguo wrote:
| does it need to extend to the countryside? what percentage of
| cars are in rural areas vs. urban?
| kodah wrote:
| Yes. What folks that champion less cars often include as an
| incentive is a punishment for using cars. That punishment
| would likely be a tax that would disproportionately affect
| folks in the countryside, so any benefits made for cities
| would need to scale there as well. The total amount of cars
| is a red herring, it's the importance of vehicles. The
| story of what happened in France was very telling.
| stephen_g wrote:
| That doesn't necessarily follow, though. Congestion
| pricing, for example, can penalise car use where it's
| causing the problems like traffic and where alternatives
| exist (assuming good public transport, cycling
| infrastructure, etc., which you need to make any of this
| work), but not where it's less avoidable and not causing
| the same kind of issues and alternatives aren't there,
| like in the countryside.
| xmprt wrote:
| Do people within the country side travel to cities often? In
| any case, trains still exist and if that doesn't work, the
| interstate roads probably aren't going away because trucks
| still need to make trips.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Living without a car is a privilege
|
| Whatthewhat? Such a privilege postion to be able to say that.
| Owning a car is a luxury that not all can afford. The fact
| that you think living without a car is a privilege shows how
| backwards we've gotten.
| ketzo wrote:
| Okay -- but tell that to the people living within the
| system today.
|
| I'm from a smaller American city with abysmal public
| transportation. Cars are how you get to work, end of
| sentence. They are required for life.
|
| Yes, the city should be doing more to make that better.
| Yes, the system is backwards. But the woman driving to work
| in a beat-up 2009 Civic that she bought for $1500 certainly
| doesn't feel luxurious or privileged.
|
| In many places in America, the ability to live without a
| car implies 1) the ability to work from home 2) a greater
| amount of time to devote to travel 3) the ability to have
| someone else take care of "car-required" things 4) the
| ability to get access to a car if you really need one.
|
| You can see where I'm going with this. Privilege is a
| factor of the system, and that system is a car-based one
| for most people.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >In many places in America, the ability to live without a
| car implies
|
| These are not necessarily true. 1)There are plenty of
| people that have low paying jobs that barely allows for
| food/rent, so a car+insurance is just out of the
| question. 2)I don't know what not having a car has to do
| with devoting to travel. If you can't afford a car, how
| are they going to afford traveling? 3) again, just not
| true for a large number of people. 4)Not sure what you
| are implying here. Stealing a car?
|
| It really sounds like you're not appreciating the
| situation of very low income situations.
| [deleted]
| presentation wrote:
| Agreed, it's not like transit riders have to pay tens of
| thousands of dollars up front + hundreds more every month
| to ride the train or bus, for a minimum wage job in an
| expensive city that they felt compelled to move to because
| their hometown was economically (and culturally)
| unproductive. The only reason suburbs and towns require
| cars is because they're designed extraordinarily poorly,
| for the interests of car/oil corporations, with their
| residents constantly demanding the government to subsidize
| their incredibly wasteful lifestyles.
| Iv wrote:
| I live in the Japanese countryside and I absolutely need a car
| for living, but it makes me sad to realize that it would take
| almost nothing for me to get rid of the car. I spend my driving
| time 90% on a single road where all the places I need are. I
| spend 9% on another similar big axis. I occasionally go to
| Tokyo but to do so I park my car at the free parking on the
| highway bus station.
|
| A regular bus on the two axis I use would allow me to totally
| get rig of a car. I am pretty sure we could automate such a bus
| given today's tech.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Your experience is relevant to me.
|
| I cannot drive but am about to move from Tokyo to Nagano.
| It's close to a local station, so I may be able to manage.
| Until I try though I won't know.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > A regular bus on the two axis I use would allow me to
| totally get rig of a car.
|
| Not if you need to carry a lot of stuff like groceries for a
| whole family. Unless you decide to do a bus trip every single
| day, losing time while waiting for the next bus the arrive.
| n4r9 wrote:
| You just need better equipment. In the UK you often see
| older people going around the shops with their own trolley-
| bag like this:
|
| https://c8.alamy.com/comp/PXXDEM/elderly-woman-walking-
| while...
| Scarblac wrote:
| This is why it's so nice to have supermarkets at walking or
| at least short cycling distance from where people live. You
| don't need to get groceries for a week at a time then.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Grocery delivery has been a great help, and I think
| probably makes more sense in general, but definitely so in
| cities/downtowns.
|
| Still, I can get most, if not all, shopping for one done
| with a backpack and two feet. I don't think it would be
| that different with a small family, and you can reasonably
| recruit family members to help. Growing up, my mom would
| take me shopping and I was always desperate to help (or
| "help" in the case of wanting to push the carriage). I
| think most kids at least start out this way and would be
| happy to carry a few bags assuming the journey isn't too
| arduous, and it will make them healthier than spending that
| time with the PlayStation.
| dylan604 wrote:
| For me, the closest retail of any value is right around 3
| miles each way. Not a convenient walk if wanting to buy
| more than a backpack's worth. I picked up an eBike, and
| now I can get there just as fast as if I had a car. I
| tried the grocery delivery for awhile. It was great at
| first until they all switched to Instacart, and now it's
| more expensive and less quality service. This was the
| main factor in deciding on getting an eBike to just stop
| using Instacart.
| nativeit wrote:
| I admit that your point is valid in the scope of modern
| living. I do think this is reflective of some of what has
| been lost in the last century, however. With greater
| routine access to artisans, shops and grocers, the ability
| to obtain fresher, healthier ingredients in smaller
| quantities more frequently is a natural consequence. The
| sort of diets and lifestyles that we (American culture
| specifically) still sort of fetishizes through Food
| Network, A&E, and YouTube food entertainment series are
| enabled through the greater availability and access to Main
| Street shops that cater to narrower markets like bakers,
| delicatessens, butchers, farmers' markets, and general
| stores. Granted this isn't automatically a panacea, and may
| not necessarily scale to modern populaces effectively, but
| I am of the opinion that it's a component of a healthier
| and more sustainable way of living in areas that could
| support it.
| SECProto wrote:
| Lots of people all over the world do shopping for multiple
| days of groceries without having a car. It's not that hard
| - a large bag for veg, a somewhat smaller bag for protein,
| maybe a third bag for miscellaneous. Especially if you eat
| a reasonably traditional Japanese diet, it'd be easy - rice
| and miso you only buy once a month or so depending.
|
| Groceries in the West take up so much space because they
| are all prepackaged. A couple boxes of cereal and a loaf of
| bread takes up as much space as a week worth of veg. Using
| dishclothes and a washlet instead of paper towels or (most)
| toilet paper and you've got another couple volumetrically
| huge items off your shopping list
| riffraff wrote:
| I shop more than once a week (it's part of my morning
| walk/routine), and I concur that it's perfectly doable
| without a car, so I agree with you on the general point.
|
| But: why would a loaf of bread take up much space? The
| "packaging" there is just a bit of paper, and it has much
| higher density than most vegetables, I think?
|
| I.e. a loaf is enough bread for 4 people for a couple
| days, the equivalent amount of "non-compressed"
| vegetables like fennel/lettuce/zucchini would be much
| larger. Only some crucifers or large pumpkins would be
| comparable, and potatoes/yams.
|
| Maybe it's a US thing about packaged bread? I live in the
| EU, so I might be thinkinf of something else.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| For me, size of American groceries isn't a problem. Heat
| is the main problem.
|
| But when rarely it's cool, stores along heavy foot-
| trafficked routes are extremely hostile to carrying bags,
| which makes it inefficient to bother.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The other thing that happens is that as you walk more and
| get healthier, it gets easier over time to carry the
| groceries and you tend to eat less. I experienced this
| firsthand when I gave up my car: Over time, I had more
| strength and stamina and also less appetite.
|
| America has an epidemic of obesity and I think for some
| people that fact makes it unimaginable to live without a
| car. But I think cause and effect run the other way: So
| many Americans are overweight and frustrated with their
| lives in part because we have made it so hard in this
| country to run errands on foot.
|
| It has become a vicious cycle.
|
| You reverse it by just starting. Let some people run
| errands on foot and by car. Target the low-hanging fruit,
| the people (like lv) who say "I could do that if I only
| had this small bit of help."
|
| Let them take the leap. Take the gains you can access
| instead of quibbling about "But that doesn't work for
| everyone!"
|
| Nothing works for everyone and ruining our planet is
| working for no one.
| xwdv wrote:
| Not everyone lives in pleasant climates for walking
| around on foot and doing errands. Sure, maybe in the Bay
| Area or New England it's fine, but you do not want to go
| run errands outside in the sweltering heat of the south.
| And do you even know what the Midwest is? Young and
| restless.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Is "young and restless" your signature? Name calling? A
| favorite TV show?
| latortuga wrote:
| It's a combination of "do you understand that weather in
| the Midwest has huge swings" combined with a line from
| Kanye West's song "Jesus Walks".
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I was born and raised in Georgia. I am a former military
| wife. I have lived in Kansas, Texas, Germany, California
| and Washington state.
|
| I currently live without a car in an area that gets 76
| inches of rain annually. I typically describe it as
| _biblical flood levels of rain._ It 's a lot of rain.
|
| I routinely go outside in a t-shirt and sweatpants in all
| kinds of weather, including freezing temps and snow.
|
| Weather is intimidating to people who spend almost all
| their time indoors and in a vehicle. If you actually
| spend time outside, you know how to stay warm enough, how
| to mitigate exposure to wind, rain, etc.
|
| And I'm seriously handicapped by a condition that is
| known to negatively impact my ability to effectively
| modulate my body temperature. So I'm not especially
| impressed by such arguments. I don't think they have
| much, if any, merit.
|
| Though I would like to see more awnings in the downtown
| area where I live. I would appreciate that as a means to
| limit my exposure to rain and I think it's very doable.
| stavros wrote:
| I live in Greece and our weather ranges from 40 C to -20
| C. We walk to get groceries in all kinds of weather.
| Sure, you won't go in the middle of the day during a heat
| wave, but after the sun is set is not bad.
|
| As you said, you just learn to handle the weather.
| Walking to the super market is a very everyday thing for
| us.
| ido wrote:
| Unrelated but where in Greece does it routinely get to
| -20c?
|
| I'm wondering because was born and raised in Israel
| (similar climate to Greece) and even at the mountain tops
| -20c would be very rare (and there are generally no
| settlements of significant size at the peak of the
| tallest mountains, most people live in the valleys or
| coasts).
|
| Even in Germany where we live now (1000s of kilometers
| further north) -20c is very rare.
| stavros wrote:
| It routinely goes to -20 C every winter in my hometown,
| near Florina. Granted, that's in the night, but we do
| walk around in that kind of weather. Luckily, it's not
| very humid, or it would have been extremely hard to go
| out.
|
| AFAIK Israel is quite a bit warmer than Greece, since you
| guys are much closer to Cyprus (and Cyprus has a
| noticeably warmer climate than us), no?
| ido wrote:
| I think on the greek coasts the climate would be quite
| similar to both Cyprus and (coastal) Israel. And either
| way closer to that than where I now live (northern
| Germany)!
| stavros wrote:
| In general, Cyprus has much warmer summers than even
| Crete, for example, and much warmer seas. This is all
| anecdotal, but everyone I've heard (and from when I've
| traveled there), they're always having more and longer
| heat waves than us, and everyone comments about how warm
| the sea there is.
| ido wrote:
| I looked it up and it seems you're right! The summer
| highs in Nicosia[0] really are significantly warmer than
| in Heraklion[1]. I assumed it will be the same as Crete
| and Cyprus are at the same latitude and both are islands
| but there must be some other effects in play.
|
| In Germany in comparison you can go almost 1000km from
| south to north and the only difference in climate would
| be if you're on a mountain or the coast (two German
| cities at the same altitude will have more or less the
| same climate even if they are 100s of kilometers apart on
| the south-north axis).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicosia#Climate
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraklion#Climate
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, I suspect there's something about the location that
| affects them, though I don't know what. Maybe just the
| position in the sea? Who knows...
|
| Also, you have been downvoted, no idea why though. I
| counter-upvoted.
| necovek wrote:
| The best way to gain support is to extrapolate from your
| own situation. /s
|
| Don't get me wrong: I believe your case, and I believe
| it's roughly on the path to reducing the effect we have
| on the planet. But you are missing few practical
| considerations.
|
| The immediate case that you are obviously ignoring is
| parents with babies. Babies are known not to regulate
| their body temperature well, nor to have strong immune
| systems, nor can they walk long distances on their own.
| So what do parents do? Move between places with temperate
| climate and clean(er) air (home with AC/heating, cars,
| malls...). How do they do that? Driving cars (you've also
| got your mobile "locker" where you can put a stroller or
| any other necessities in).
|
| At the same time, parents with small children (as a
| category) probably spend the most time outdoors walking
| in our society today, but that's usually walking "without
| a purpose." When they live in non-walkable areas, they'll
| _drive_ to a walkable area first.
|
| (Sure, we could subject our babies to all the extremes,
| but we'll have a higher infant/child mortality rate.
| We've long stopped subscribing to the "only the fittest
| survive" mantra.)
|
| Since having a baby is a big investment today, if you are
| at the same time investing in a house, you'll look for
| (slightly) cheaper housing options. So, walkable
| neighbourhoods -- I can't imagine anyone not wanting to
| live in one -- are usually priced out of their range.
|
| You are right that this is a loop: parents can't tell
| when they can stop being so vigilant, especially as
| children (and parents) are now unused to extreme
| climates, so they easily fall sick (parents included).
| And if they've invested in a home outside a walkable
| area, it's costly to move.
|
| While you say breaking that loop is easy, I don't think
| it is. Moving places is hard and expensive (and harder
| and more expensive with children). Accepting higher
| sickness rates while your kids and you develop your
| immune and cardiovascular (to better manage body heat)
| systems is costly too (leave from work, paid help...).
| You should consider yourself privileged to have been able
| to do so!
|
| This points at a number of problems: financial incentives
| for home builders are misplaced, missing regulatory
| requirements... and sure, insufficiently motivated
| people. And this is only when constrained with one thing
| (having a baby): there are plenty other constraints
| people might have (job availability, care availability,
| friends proximity...). Basically, people might have to
| compromise a _lot_.
|
| If you only focus on insufficient motivation, I don't
| think you'll get many to "sign up".
| frobozz wrote:
| The immediate point that you are obviously ignoring is
| that no one you are replying to has even suggested
| anything that you seem to be arguing against.
|
| It looks like you are responding to someone saying "ban
| all cars, anyone living somewhere unwalkable just has to
| suck it up, regardless of any extenuating circumstances"
|
| What was actually said was "LET people run errands by
| foot and by car", and "I'd like more awnings"
|
| Basically - make places more walkable. "Low hanging
| fruit" meaning focus on making nearly walkable places
| into very walkable places.
|
| I am a parent with small children. We walk to school.
| With a baby, I would walk to the supermarket, no one got
| ill any more than the occasional sniffle. Combining a
| pram and a backpack meant I could easily bring home the
| weekly shop, much easier than I can now that I have to
| carry everything.
|
| It's also about places that are wantonly and deliberately
| hostile to pedestrians. Don't make people drive between
| adjacent destinations, don't force people to walk 2 miles
| to get somewhere half a mile away.
|
| If you live in a village with a baby and an elderly
| parent and your nearest city is Timbuktu or Nuuk, this is
| not about you.
| necovek wrote:
| That's not all they were saying in either this or their
| _other_ comments.
|
| The comment I replied to had this in response to
| someone's question about walking in "sweltering heat":
|
| > _(talks a lot about personal experiences and hardships
| and then concludes with...)_ So I 'm not especially
| impressed by such arguments. I don't think they have
| much, if any, merit.
|
| The entire tone of the comment is "if I can do it, anyone
| can". While it's not as strong as "anyone living
| somewhere unwalkable just has to suck it up", there is
| definitely an implication of something along those lines.
| bserge wrote:
| Damn settlers and their air conditioned cars, those
| natives never stood a chance :D
| krageon wrote:
| > in the sweltering heat of the south
|
| Do you imagine that folks living in the tropics always go
| and get their food by car?
| detaro wrote:
| really, your response to parent comment is ... "but it
| doesn't work for everyone"?
| SECProto wrote:
| > Sure, maybe in the Bay Area or New England it's fine,
| but you do not want to go run errands outside in the
| sweltering heat of the south. And do you even know what
| the Midwest is?
|
| This thread was talking (in part) about the weather in
| Japan. Atlanta would be a similar climate to Fukuoka or
| Kagoshima - even Tokyo isn't too far off, it routinely
| gets into the high 30s with 75% humidity, yet somehow
| everyone still manages to get around just fine without a
| car.
|
| The only thing that makes a car seem so mandatory in
| north america is because we've built whole cities around
| the assumption that everyone has one and it's the only
| way to get around - this damage will take decades to fix.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Novosibirsk is a walkable city and people routinely walk
| to school, buy groceries and run errands on foot.
|
| Yes you do need some winter clothing.
| simiones wrote:
| You're greatly overestimating the difficulty of living
| car-less in a city designed for it. Even in all the
| places you are discussing, people used to do this all the
| time in the times before AC was invented. It's true that
| there are places like Phoenix, AZ, where it's not really
| possible to survive (or at least thrive) without constant
| AC, but this is currently the exception even in the
| South.
| nativeit wrote:
| Plus, we could go back to having our milk delivered! What a
| weird notion that is in these modern times.
| puchatek wrote:
| Getting your groceries delivered is quite normal here in
| NL. We like to order larger quantities of things in cans
| or dry stuff like legumes delivered, then still go to the
| neighborhood supermarket for fresh produce, either on
| foot or by bike. I never owned a car and always saw it as
| a tremendous waste of money. But it can be handy
| sometimes and in such occasions i use car sharing
| services which have a similar level it convenience: i can
| reach 2 cars on foot and two more by bike within 5-7
| minutes and while i need to reserve upfront, 99% of the
| time i decide i need one there will be one available.
| Worst case is i have to ride my bike a little further.
| krageon wrote:
| I've always been able to buy groceries for a whole family
| while walking (back when going to a supermarket was still
| normal), what exactly do you see as the major roadblock for
| something like that? Bring bags or maybe a (large) backpack
| and some packing skills, you will be fine. You can even
| take one of those bag on wheels type things if you cannot
| or will not carry heavy weights - I certainly have if I
| knew I needed a lot of drinks for a party or something
| similar.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Where I live (Paris) , people use 'bag on wheels'. I'm
| able to do almost all my grocery shopping with it.
| naravara wrote:
| When you live in a walkable area your grocery bags become
| smaller and your trips more frequent. You go to smaller
| neighborhood markets for your day to day things like milk,
| meat, and produce. You get dry goods a little at a time
| during your other more frequent trips.
|
| You make bus trips to get to work or do stuff anyway so
| it's just a stop on your way home, not a big deal.
| presentation wrote:
| How far apart are the places you typically go to? Sounds like
| an e-bike might do the trick for most days.
| Iv wrote:
| e-bikes dont drive by themselves, are slow, dangerous (the
| roads are very narrow with no sidewalk) open to the rain
| and have shit carrying capacity. And I say that as a fan of
| e-bikes.
| presentation wrote:
| I mean, are you intending to carry a ton of stuff on the
| bus? If cargo is that big a deal you can also look for a
| cargo bike. And buses aren't exactly known for being
| super duper speedy, when I ride my normal bike around
| Tokyo I'm generally faster from point A to B than actual
| personal cars (to be fair its super dense and slow here
| for cars). Agreed that it does suck in the rain though,
| and maybe people drive faster out where you live (I
| personally prefer biking on the road here in Tokyo, way
| more hazardous weaving through people on the sidewalks).
| chapium wrote:
| You might want to check out a pedelelec to see if it fits
| your need.
| [deleted]
| haroldp wrote:
| > I also think America has a lot of room for adding back
| walkable mixed-use neighborhoods
|
| Euclid v Ambler was the wellspring of bad urban planning and a
| watershed of horrific outcomes. We need to return to people
| owning the property they own, and developing (and redeveloping)
| it in any way that doesn't hurt or endanger other people.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > permeable surfaces
|
| To minimize the size of the driveway at my house, but provide
| overflow parking, I decided to try "grasscrete". Grasscrete is
| essentially concrete blocks with holes in them so the grass can
| grow through. The concrete will support cars so they don't sink
| into the muck. After a while, enough grass grows through it to
| hide the whole thing and it looks like more lawn instead of
| more concrete.
|
| The results are very good.
| altcognito wrote:
| This is a curious idea, I'm wondering how that holds up since
| it would retain so much water. In cold areas, any water
| caught in the gaps would break up the concrete when it gets
| cold enough to ice over.
| modo_mario wrote:
| the blocks creating the gaps generally aren't connected to
| eachother so they can't really be broken open like that
| WalterBright wrote:
| Right. They're put down like paving stones are. How much
| support they need underneath depends on the weight put on
| it, and the frequency of use. Mine is used for occasional
| parking of random cars, which isn't hard on the blocks.
| afandian wrote:
| Also voided concrete. Same idea with rebar.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voided_biaxial_slab
| nickpp wrote:
| I did something similar for my driveway, using some thin
| plastic honeycomb-shaped pavers in which I put dirt and grass
| seed. Unfortunately, for car traffic, they still needed a
| strong support underneath: crushed rock stabilized with
| concrete. This is not very permeable for either water or
| roots, so the grass is limited to the little dirt inside
| those honeycombs. That dirt dries out very fast too, so I
| have to water a lot in the summer.
|
| It does look much better and is feels much cooler than
| pavement though.
| npsomaratna wrote:
| Thank you for bringing this up. I didn't realize that an
| option like this existed; and I'll be considering it the next
| time I have to redo a parking area.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Just don't let unsuspecting kids play on it :)
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| > I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as
| separate from nature
|
| Sounds like heidegger and marx! I agree
| signal11 wrote:
| > I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade.
|
| Is there a post/blog/thread/AMA about this? This sounds super
| interesting in itself!
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| I think this would be very much based on where you live. I
| went 10+ years without a car while I was living in cities and
| it only made life simpler.
|
| I now live on a farm and life would be near impossible
| without a vehicle unless I went Armish style with horse and
| cart and buggy.
|
| If this person lived NY vs back country Montana it would be 2
| very different stores.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as
| separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within
| which such configurations occur.
|
| For sure we are not. If we put a bubble(mars dome) around
| Toronto. Everyone dies in a very short period of time. Nature
| outside of Toronto is required for Toronto to survive. The more
| you push nature away by urban sprawl, the worse it becomes for
| the people living there.
|
| >It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete
| jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your
| plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on
| the land.
|
| A requirement in the long run. I suppose my example of Toronto
| is a bad one because of the giant boreal forest to the north is
| mitigating the problem. Similarly oceanic cities like NYC are
| also mitigated.
|
| >I also think America has a lot of room for adding back
| walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can
| live, work and shop in the same neighborhood.
|
| I understand but I doubt it'll happen.
|
| >Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such
| neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic
| is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change.
|
| Let's not forget such a huge cost to society. We have how much
| debt and capital tied up in transportation which the majority
| of the time sits idle in a driveway? Let's not forget how
| transportation is one of our only high energy sinks. You can
| charge your phone off a wall outlet in 30 minutes but it takes
| days to charge a car off the same outlet.
|
| The urban sprawl and death of small towns is because the cost
| of energy became so high and you cant compete. Naturally
| influencing why politicians then set policy to intentionally
| harm small towns.
| abledon wrote:
| I can't fathom how people grow up in cities with no access to
| nature, (the only nature available is hyper populated parks
| with dogshit and cigarette butts routinely cleaned up when the
| sanitation workers comb over the grounds). When the mind is
| developing, to have no access to real nature outside of
| cities,... how does it affect the mind, adhd, anxiety etc...
| seems like a no brainer to design heavy nature exposure into
| the cities of the future
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I can't fathom how people grow up in cities with no access
| to nature,
|
| They don't, in general. compared to suburban or even heavily
| utilized rural areas. Neither farms nor manicured suburban
| parks are any more nature than cities are.
|
| And cities can be as proximate to natural preserves as
| anything else can be.
|
| If you don't mean _actual_ nature, just green outdoor spaces,
| cities often incorporate and provide access to them.
| euroderf wrote:
| I agree, and I think part of the answer is to have access to
| unmanaged (or very lightly managed) land. For a kid, a
| wildflower meadow is a thing of wonder. Related, how many US
| states have a "right to roam" ?
| jerrysievert wrote:
| > the only nature available is hyper populated parks with
| dogshit and cigarette butts
|
| wow, that's a hyper negative view of cities. am I spoiled by
| knowing that there are large "parks" around me, ranging from
| 200 acres to 1300+ acres that are within walking or bus
| distance? hardly the dogshit and cigarette butt filled parks
| that some others are describing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't think that's negative at all. I find it pretty
| accurate. Cities are so desperate for parks, that they call
| concrete paved areas named as parks with a minimum amount
| of green. Parks !== nature. If your only experience with
| nature is a city park, then you haven't really experienced
| nature.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| I grew up in SE Utah and have lived in DC/Maryland for some
| years of my adult life. To people like me, the 1300 acre
| parks a a very far cry from "nature". Probably just that
| perspective.
| presentation wrote:
| I grew up in the Midwest, experienced a lot of great
| nature and hiking around the US and Asia, but live in
| Tokyo and enjoy big cities. From my perspective--if the
| city is clean and quiet (my Apple watch says 95% of my
| neighborhood has an ambient noise level of 35dB, and I
| live near a popular central Tokyo station), and has
| enough nice parks near me (definitely don't need anywhere
| close to 1300 acres for that), that does the job--I don't
| feel any need whatsoever to live in immediate proximity
| to amazing natural amenities, and when I do go to them, a
| couple days is more than I need.
|
| Personally I think that Americans just don't realize that
| it's not cities that suck, it's American cities that
| suck. Plenty of pleasant cities to live in in the world.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| > Personally I think that Americans just don't realize
| that it's not cities that suck, it's American cities that
| suck. Plenty of pleasant cities to live in in the world.
|
| The YouTube channel "Not just bikes" talks about this. In
| the USA, it is commonly seen that there are only two
| possible configurations for human settlements: sprawling
| suburbs, or Manhattan-style high-density towers. The
| medium-density style of city common across a lot of
| Europe and Asia is not very well known in the USA and
| Canada outside of a select few older cities which
| developed to a large enough size before the automobile
| took over.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Cities are great for preserving nature because the
| alternative is suburban sprawl. However, we definitely need
| greener cities and better car-free access to nature. Good
| train links with local buses are a proven solution.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > However, we definitely need greener cities and better
| car-free access to nature.
|
| Access to nature and preserving nature are opposed goals.
| Access to nature is destruction facilitating further
| destruction.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Sort of... ultimately you can't provide access to nature
| and destroy nature. However, policy in most developed
| countries is exactly this. I am advocating a balanced
| approach where people have access to nature in a way that
| is less damaging.
|
| e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2021/nov/14/tourists-car...
| presentation wrote:
| I personally think that it's OK to view human development as
| separate from nature. I don't really care if the land within
| city limits is polluted or overexploited, so long as it's just
| the that city and the area outside of it is well preserved, and
| the city doesn't sprawl out like they do in the USA
| (suburbs...). Ultra dense city centers like Hong Kong are far
| more preferable to preserving the environment to sparse, but
| enormous settlements like Los Angeles, which are far more
| wasteful and harmful to the environment per-capita. While I
| agree it would be nice to have greener cities as a resident of
| a major city (Tokyo), it's not a requirement for a high quality
| of urban life, nor is it a requirement for preserving the
| environment.
| option wrote:
| and/or we can make cars clean
| occz wrote:
| Exhaust from ICEs is hardly the only negative externality
| that cars bring, though.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's fine for people to also work on that but the reality is
| that our car-centric design means seniors, handicapped
| people, minors too young to drive and poor people are still
| sidelined unnecessarily. As we live longer and continue to
| actively create a world that unnecessarily hampers our
| elderly, we actively flush resources down the drain
| unnecessarily.
|
| We cut people out of being productive members of society and
| turn them into a burden that has to be tended to and we
| actively interfere with them maintaining their physical
| mobility and ability to participate and contribute.
|
| I'm handicapped. I live without a car because I can't drive.
| Walking has helped rehabilitate my defective body. America
| being so car-centric unnecessarily interferes with people
| like me making an adequate living and making their lives work
| and turns us into a burden on society when we don't have to
| be.
|
| I'm not remotely the only one negatively impacted by our
| general lack of walkable mixed-use development, but I'm
| reluctant to start talking about other people I know who may
| not want their stories and their opinions being publicized.
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| Tree cover also decreases albedo, which increases the total solar
| energy absorbed. [0]
|
| I wonder if tree cover decreases local surface temperature (as
| described in this article) while actually increasing global
| warming because less light is reflected back to space.
|
| [0] https://www.climate-policy-
| watcher.org/vegetation/deforestat...
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Plant cover also increases evaporation (because the water get
| trapped by the plants on the surface), which increases warming
| (because water vapour is a very powerful greenhouse gas), but
| also reduces local temperatures (evaporation removes heat), and
| increases cloud cover (which reduces warming by increasing
| albedo).
|
| It's a very complex system, and working out the net effect is
| very difficult (as the paper says).
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| But wouldn't the plants and trees convert the sun's energy
| through photosynthesis into chemical energy? That energy
| conversion removes the heat.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Some, but 'removes the heat' is overly simplistic. They're
| not 100% efficient.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Planting Trees and shrubs is not a substitute for phasing out
| fossil fuel emissions in case you were confused by this and many
| other similar headlines.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Moreover forests are carbon neutral - that's why it's called a
| carbon CYCLE.
|
| New trees only sequester within the new biomass.
|
| The real solution is not to emit CO2 from mined fossil fuels.
|
| I do wonder how much more lush land will become with higher CO2
| levels.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| What about carbon capture in the soil? Genuine question, I'm
| not at all familiar with the science.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Depends on the forest and specific local ecology.
|
| Planting forests definitely is a carbon sink, but the
| carbon goes into the living biomass. Whether or not you get
| long term buildup of soil carbon just depends. In other
| words there's a sizable one time bonus to planting forests
| and a conditional long term continuous sink.
|
| People tend to simplify one way or the other.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I was thinking about peat soils - as we know, they're
| great at preserving organic matter thanks to high
| acidity, to the extent that they're dug for fuel.
|
| A lot of peats in my country have been drained (and the
| drainage requires continual maintenance) for pasture, but
| well, it's rather hard to farm without harming the
| environment.[1]
|
| But I'm assuming that healthy peat bogs are fixing
| carbon/ritual sacrifices in a net-negative manner until
| someone digs it up and burns it.
|
| I just wonder if allowing peatlands to revert for carbon
| credits would offset the loss of the pasture.
|
| [1]:https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/dairy-news/dairy-
| management...
| titzer wrote:
| Just a PSA, the term "carbon capture" people are throwing
| around now almost always means capturing CO2 at emission
| sources like fossil fuel-fired power plants. It generally
| does not mean capturing CO2 from the air at large. There
| really is no viable technology for that. Except trees.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Iirc, that's an old forest thing, and goes away pretty much
| as soon as the trees do.
| bliteben wrote:
| I have never understood this argument with respect to
| industrial forests. We move all this carbon into lumber,
| paper and other products, yet somehow it magically returns to
| the air.
|
| Even industrial forests sequester some carbon in the soil as
| it seems from my experiences that there is easily 10% of the
| tree mass that never gets harvested before wind damage or
| other reasons.
|
| A natural forest is constantly losing trees which turn into
| soil. Some forests have soil that you literally can sink feet
| into decomposing trees that you can't even see before falling
| into them. I might buy the argument that the termites etc
| recycle the fallen trees back into carbon, except for the
| fact, that it seems to accrete.
| jjcon wrote:
| > Moreover forests are carbon neutral - that's why it's
| called a carbon CYCLE
|
| As is the meat industry despite many citations of a retracted
| paper - the cows aren't emitting anything that wasn't already
| in the grass (at least not in the long term). Both however to
| act as temporary buffers/reservoirs and emitters that can
| affect things if they are kept around in perpetuity.
| 8note wrote:
| Does the time spent in the cow make up for the cow re-
| releasing the carbon as methane instead of carbon dioxide?
|
| The same carbon was in the air, but not necessarily causing
| the same greenhouse effect
| jjcon wrote:
| The methane is only temporary and still maintains
| equalibrium in the long term - the issue is when we
| extract/introduce entirely new greenhouse gases to the
| system (notably oil)
| wumpus wrote:
| > the cows aren't emitting anything that wasn't already in
| the grass
|
| This is not true; fertilizer and farm machinery to
| fertilize and harvest the corn that creates 1/2 the mass of
| feedlot meat burns a lot of oil. And almost all of American
| beef goes through feedlots.
| jjcon wrote:
| >burns a lot of oil
|
| Oil isn't emitted from cows
| [deleted]
| pabs3 wrote:
| Sounds like the real solution is to stop extracting
| gas/oil/coal from the ground entirely and also plant new
| fast-growing carbon-rich trees, cut them down, convert them
| to inert carbon (timber? charcoal? oil?), store the result
| (underground? as furniture/housing? somewhere?) and repeat
| the cycle as many times as possible in as many places as
| possible.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It needs to be a multi pronged attack. One of my current pet
| peeves is that there's a ton of green energy projects -
| offshore wind farms, solar panels at home, etc - but at the
| same time, new massive datacenters are built left and right. So
| instead of converting to renewables, renewables are added on
| top of existing energy production, and we'll never be able to
| get rid of carbon emitting energy production.
|
| That is, we need to reduce energy consumption AND convert to
| renewable energy AND have more green everywhere AND a bunch of
| other things.
| cedilla wrote:
| Data centres account for only a few percent of energy usage,
| and energy use in developed countries increases quite slowly.
| Since renewable energy is so much cheaper than energy
| generated by nuclear or fossil fuel plants it can easily
| outpace the increase in demand.
| crawsome wrote:
| Nov 23, 2020
| good8675309 wrote:
| Ah yes, National Eat a Cranberry Day. My favorite holiday.
| Thanks for contributing to the conversation.
| grouphugs wrote:
| we've really underestimated how difficult it is to get green back
| on the surface. using kenya as a case-study, we see that we
| fundamentally changed earth, the conditions under which forests
| grew are no longer present. kenya has had a lot of difficulty
| getting tree's from reforestation campaigns to survive. this
| issue shows up all over the world.
| tootahe45 wrote:
| You have been banned from r/science.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| There was a similar report two years ago from NASA that the world
| had gone greener over 20 years primarily due to India and China.
| But I couldn't find the breakdown of it by country.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an...
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-in...
| vixen99 wrote:
| No it isn't primarily due to India and China. The greening of
| the earth is a universal phenomenon caused by the global
| increase in carbon dioxide. Carbon for plant growth has to come
| from somewhere and in general there are very limited carbon
| sources within the soil.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-
| fer....
|
| https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
|
| The massive increase in agricultural productivity due to this
| greening has not been a widely advertised observation. NASA has
| pointed out the pros and cons of this (i.e., the greening).
| mrjangles wrote:
| Not surprising considering all life on earth evolved when the
| atmosphere had between 5 and 10 times as much CO2 as today.
| At the current levels plants are, essentially, suffocating
| from lock of CO2, so I small increase can have a huge affect
| on their growth rates (as greenhouse operators know).
|
| I remember reading that CO2 levels have been dropping for the
| last 500 million years, and, during the last Ice age, CO2
| level dropped as low as 180ppm. Had they reached 150ppm, all
| surface life would have died, and humans wouldn't have made
| it.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I wonder if it also has to do with the massive decrease in
| the need for paper due to an increase in computers at the end
| of the 20th century. "The paperless office."
|
| Also other sources of fuel other than wood for burning.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Nah I don't think so, because demand for paper has shifted
| to things like cardboard. And of course, global population
| has gone up by a lot.
|
| Wood hasn't been a popular choice for a long time, things
| like coal, peat, oil, petroleum and gas have been more
| prevalent for the hundreds of years before the current
| systems of gas or electric heating. Wood is more of a last
| resort, or something more idyllic.
| [deleted]
| andrewstuart wrote:
| This is not the answer the Australian government is looking for.
|
| The solution needed by politicians is highly technological,
| expensive, allows us to keep selling coal, and isn't understood
| by people so can be easily spun into ridiculous tales by
| politicians.
|
| "Just plant trees" would be ridiculously expensive and is totally
| impractical, the politicians would say.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >This is not the answer the Australian government is looking
| for.
|
| Which blows my mind. Australia has the opportunity to do very
| large outback scale energy capture projects that would
| effectively drop the cost of energy to 0 in the long run.
| Develop and bring the auto industry back as EVs. As a society
| you could effectively eliminate one of the highest costs to
| your people.
|
| >The solution needed by politicians is highly technological,
| expensive, allows us to keep selling coal, and isn't understood
| by people so can be easily spun into ridiculous tales by
| politicians.
|
| I'm not aussie and only vaguely follow their politics.
| Australia has to export. If they drop back down into a losing
| balance of trade it'll be very bad news.
|
| >"Just plant trees" would be ridiculously expensive and is
| totally impractical, the politicians would say.
|
| It also isnt a solution. Us Canadians have 10,000 trees per
| person. We ought to be considered carbon neutral but we dont
| because our boreal forest is considered a pollutor. So trees
| aren't a solution.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| To be fair, based on the action were currently seeing from
| governments worldwide, everyone is simply hoping for the
| technological answer.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Many people want an answer so long as other people do things
| to solve it.
| 14 wrote:
| Let's plant trees and have everyone of them e be connected via
| Bluetooth sensor next to them in the soil providing real time
| twitter updates. Would that suffice for the Australian
| government? If not maybe we suggest 5g.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Where is the part in your solution that captures the coal
| emissions?
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| That'd be the actual trees themselves.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The aus governments "Future technology will save us, not latte
| sipping inner city greenies" is such a sad state of affairs.
| Basically lets them do nothing while pretending to have a plan.
| But they won't even fund implementation of the technology we
| already have and that works.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Cause they never, ever even believed in global heating.
|
| It's just a straight cynical political manipulation that aims
| to prevent any real action and keep selling coal. Australian
| government literally does not want to solve this.
| denkmoon wrote:
| >Cause they never, ever even believed in global heating.
|
| Sure some of them do. They're just not willing to lift a
| finger to do anything about it.
| JimTheMan wrote:
| The last guy who tried (Turnbull) got knifed. It's a sad
| world we live in.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Why lift one little finger when you can be king of the
| ashes?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the cynical move is to let the effort of others build your
| own safety net, while maximizing your own network control
| and immediate income
|
| lots of finger pointing about this, yet so many are guilty
| at once right?
| Ma8ee wrote:
| They do believe in global heating. They just don't care.
| They reckon they, their kids, and their friends will be
| fine anyway. Who care what happens to billions dirty, poor
| foreigners?
|
| It high time that we realise that it never was a good faith
| discussion about facts. It's only about power. The rich
| people that have a lot invested in fossil fuels risk
| becoming less rich, and they are using all means necessary
| to not let that happen, or at least delay it as much as
| possible
| csee wrote:
| They'll be perfectly happy with that solution because they
| don't have to stop burning coal and it's funded by small fish
| taxpayers.
| pjc50 wrote:
| A problem in Australia is the risk of climate change induced
| fires burning down all the trees.
| danans wrote:
| "Just plant trees" won't remove the need to stop the burning of
| coal either. Nothing short of changing out the fuel sources for
| the vast majority of human energy demands for zero-carbon
| versions will suffice.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yeah, but all our major party politicians in Australia get
| _big donations_ from the coal and oil & gas lobbies, and a
| lot of the conservative politicians have direct or indirect
| business links. So the whole "net zero" thing isn't something
| their hearts are really in.
|
| Hopefully things will change a bit with the election early
| next year - the opposition party that actually did legislate
| an effective and workable price on carbon back in 2011 looks
| like they might get back in (the scheme was repealed by the
| conservatives as soon as they got back into Government in
| 2013).
| labster wrote:
| It's funny you mention that because "just plant trees" was
| the solution to get coal for hundreds of years; forestry was
| invented as a way to get sustainable, (incidentally) carbon-
| neutral (char)coal for iron furnaces.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, and to a great extent the industrial revolution kicked
| off because coal was available in greater quantities than
| forestry charcoal! Its production is also somewhat labour-
| intensive.
|
| Early coal was referred to as "sea-coal" in many places
| because the easiest way to get it was from veins close to
| the sea where it washed up. Deep mining of coal required
| the industrial revolution. There was a huge circular
| dependency between iron production, steam engines made from
| iron, and using the steam engines to pump out the iron and
| coal mines and draw up the mined resources.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's not even based on needs anymore. Australia does not
| _need_ to burn nearly as much coal as it does. Sure, the last
| bit might be tricky to remove, but the fact that they do not
| even remove the amount that they can shows that they have no
| interest in getting rid of coal.
| danans wrote:
| The need I was referring to was the need to _stop_ coal
| burning, but your point is taken about Australia 's foot
| dragging on that.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| How does this comment relate to the article? What answer, and
| what was the question being asked?
|
| Australian government _has_ tree planting programs as part of
| its climate policy, doesn 't it?
| keyle wrote:
| To answer your first question, the relative timezone at which
| this article has been posted helps triggers the local anger
| regarding climate change and our politicians taking the piss
| of it for profit.
|
| To answer your second question, I doubt it, and if it does,
| it's probably an insignificant joke.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| I asked 3 questions and this did not answer any of them. I
| assume your second answer actually relates to my third
| question, but really if you don't know the answer then
| speculating about it is not answering it. My first and
| second questions were also pretty specific, I appreciate
| there is anger about climate change issues but that is not
| what I was specifically asking about either.
|
| Let's wait for OP to clarify what they meant.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > but really if you don't know the answer then
| speculating about it is not answering it.
|
| There is a tendency for people who are knowledgeable in
| one thing to believe they have enough knowledge and
| discernment to answer on any other thing.
| roenxi wrote:
| > "Just plant trees" would be ridiculously expensive and is
| totally impractical, the politicians would say.
|
| There is a 1 billion trees initiative currently in progress in
| Australia. I'm not sure of the details but I have talked to
| some of the people involved.
|
| https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/australia-will-plan...
| marsdepinski wrote:
| Duh.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Well yeah. The best carbon capture technology we have is planting
| trees.
|
| Thankfully it happens all by itself.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Not quite and even if, on a too slow scale. While trees try
| hard to spread, to survive they need minimum environmental
| conditions and e.g. protection from plant eaters while they are
| small. Take the extension of the Sahara to the south in the
| 70ies. There were droughts, trees being cut and new trees being
| eaten by goats. Once the soil had become unprotected, the
| desert would extend. Fortunately, there are now efforts to
| create the "great green wall" where new trees are planted and
| protected until they are strong enough to stand for themselves.
| This seems to be quite successful.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Mitigation as in hitting a wall at 180 mph instead of 200? Or
| hitting the wall in 32 years instead of 30?
|
| Everything helps, but in the end the solution to the problem is
| elsewhere. Not tackling the problem and only going to partial
| mitigations is almost as bad as doing nothing, because it is just
| a delay to avoid solving the problem until is too late or doesn't
| matter anymore for you in particular.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Where's this solid "wall" you speak of?
|
| It's more like falling into Jupiter, getting immersed in a
| thicker and thicker soup...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| This is the logic that led to people recommending against
| masks: wearing masks would give people a false sense of
| security, and they'd start touching each others' eyeballs.
|
| Turns out, that's not how human psychology works. If people are
| doing _something_ , then other people feel like they can, too;
| if everybody's waiting for the big solution that will
| _actually_ be worth doing (but won 't ever happen, for
| political reasons)?
| playpause wrote:
| "Turns out, that's not how human psychology works." - source?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Source: the great experiment that we all did. People who
| wore masks over the past couple of years were generally
| _more_ cautious if anything, not less.
| playpause wrote:
| What makes you think the causation is that way round?
| krageon wrote:
| What makes you think that it is not?
| playpause wrote:
| My guess would be that cautious people are more likely to
| wear masks in the first place, and this would explain the
| correlation you've noticed between mask-wearing and being
| cautious. But I don't know for sure. Perhaps mask-wearing
| also makes uncautious people become more cautious, but I
| haven't seen anything to support that.
| lovemenot wrote:
| If you have some suggestions, feel free.
|
| Meanwhile, please don't decry partial solutions for being
| partial. It's a very difficult problem and there will not be a
| silver bullet.
|
| Many partials might provide some respite. There's no guarantee,
| but something is better than nothing.
|
| I think the thing you miss is the shifting Overton Window. The
| more people get used to current partial solutions, the more
| they can accept the next more painful necessary changes. It's
| as if the effectiveness of braking is inversely proportional to
| speed. Those 20mph of deceleration are better than you imagine.
| gmuslera wrote:
| I'm not saying that the mitigation shouldn't be done. What I
| am against is doing the side mitigation instead of going for
| the core problem solutions, or delaying them because your
| budget is focused by now on them, or first this, then that.
|
| If you have an bad infection on one leg, taking an aspirin to
| lower your fever is a mitigation, but if you don't address
| the infection, you will lose your leg or your life. And
| taking an aspirin is fast, simple and painless, if it were
| complicated, and expensive and time consuming you should
| probably address the infection first, unless the fever was
| already life threatening.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| Wasn't Trump derided for wanting to plant a billion trees or
| something (I'm going by memory)?
|
| edit https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-touts-
| tree-...
| alliao wrote:
| you got new zealand mixed up with trump
|
| https://www.mpi.govt.nz/forestry/funding-tree-planting-resea...
| good8675309 wrote:
| Seems like it was a good idea but we couldn't afford to give a
| fascist a win. For the sake of democracy or something.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It was the political equivalent of switching over to LED
| light bulbs to justify continuing to drive a 10mpg SUV an
| hour a day commuting to work.
|
| It was literally greenwashing his work to undo decades of
| environmental protection regulations and laws, while also
| forking over tons of public land to oil/gas/coal companies.
| 8note wrote:
| I think that was mr beast with TeamTrees.
|
| I don't remember the derision though
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Mr Beast is a rich prick that likes to show off his wealth to
| susceptive kids.
| [deleted]
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| Get over yourself.
| hasmanean wrote:
| The surface area of a lawn is several times that of a concrete
| surface.
|
| Walking into a forest, I notice the air is several degrees cooler
| than outside.
|
| Even a house made of clay will be a few degrees cooler in certain
| weather than one made of concrete due to the increased surface
| area and evaporation causing cooling.
|
| It isn't rocket science. Greenery makes the earth a much better
| place.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Same with trees, that block a lot of sunlight from hitting the
| surface and instead keep it up there, where the wind can come
| in and take it away (and cool it through evaporation).
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| If you search youtube for "desertification" you will find many
| videos on the horrors of this problem being shared by school
| teachers as if it where a fact.
|
| E.g. "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to
| desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And
| terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's
| grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional
| grazing societies to descend into social chaos."
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
|
| Back on planet Earth, a review of the current scientific
| literature firmly disproves this thesis. Nasa satellite images
| clearly show the deserts are retreating, and on average there is
| a strong trend to global greening...
|
| Greening of the globe and its drivers - Nature 2016
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 "Satellite records
| from 1982-2009 show a persistent and widespread increase of leaf
| area (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area,
| whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing leaf area
| (browning). Ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilisation
| effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by
| nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover
| change (4%)."
|
| Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening - Nature 2016
| https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 "Recent regional scale
| analyses using satellite based vegetation indices such as the
| Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), have found
| extensive areas of "greening" in dryland areas of the
| Mediterranean, the Sahel, the Middle East and Northern China, as
| well as greening trends in Mongolia and South America. More
| recently, a global synthesis from 1982-2007 showed an overall
| "greening-up" trend over the Sahel belt, Mediterranean basin,
| China-Mongolia region and the drylands of South America."
|
| Global Greening Is Firm, Drivers Are Mixed - Harvard 2014
| http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K "Evidence for
| global greening is converging, asserting an increase in CO2
| uptake and biomass of the terrestrial biosphere. Global greening
| refers to global net increases in the area of green canopy,
| stocks of carbon, and the duration of the growing season. The
| growing seasons in general have prolonged while the stock of
| biomass carbon has increased and the rate of deforestation has
| decelerated. Evidence for these trends comes from firm empirical
| data obtained through atmospheric CO2 observations, remote
| sensing, forest inventories and land use statistics."
|
| Rise in CO2 has 'greened Planet Earth'
| http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 Prof
| Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences
| at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: "It is
| inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called
| contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects
| conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e. what
| has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e. what is
| projected from climate models).
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >Back on planet Earth, a review of the current scientific
| literature firmly disproves this thesis. Nasa satellite images
| clearly show the deserts are retreating, and on average there
| is a strong trend to global greening...
|
| Canada is one of the few countries which pulled out of the
| United nations desertification action. For which Canada was
| penalized heavily. This is the same initiative that plans to
| plant trees across africa.
|
| IPCC 2019 makes it quite clear that greenification is not
| happening and desertification is absolutely a huge problem.
|
| You will also see on pages like:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
|
| Greenification isn't even a consideration for climate change.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change
|
| Greenification isn't a word you will find in the effects of
| climate change wiki page.
|
| Why is it do you think that they exclude this?
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| They are ignoring the LAI (Leaf Area Index) data. You would
| have to ask them why they do that. While you are at it, ask
| them why they always start at 1850, like that wiki article.
| And ask geologists what is significant about that year.
|
| I will give you a clue. It is an anagram of LAI.
| nend wrote:
| I mean, I get that this needs to be studied in order to
| understand Earth's climate better, but I feel like the title
| would be more accurate and responsibly written if they said
| "partially mitigates".
| HPsquared wrote:
| "mitigate /'mItIgeIt/ Late Middle English: from Latin mitigat-
| 'softened, alleviated', from the verb mitigare, from mitis
| 'mild'."
|
| It doesn't mean to eliminate negative effects, just to lessen
| them.
| carom wrote:
| Mitigate means to make less severe. It does not mean prevent.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| I was going to comment that it has both means, i. e. partial
| as well as full mit.. aehm, let's say "reduction (in harmful
| effects of)".
|
| But the dictionary is somewhat disappointing in only
| mentioning the gradual/partial reduction in harms. Here are
| the examples: * make (something bad) less
| severe, serious, or painful: drainage schemes have helped to
| mitigate this problem. * lessen the gravity of (an
| offence or mistake): there had been a provocation that
| mitigated the offence to a degree.
|
| What's interesting is that both examples seem to use the term
| in a way that suggests that it _does_ mean full-and-complete
| mitigation, otherwise the specifications "to a degree" and
| "have helped to" would not be needed.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I've never understood mitigate to mean a complete reduction
| of harm. In that case, you would use a word like "solved"
| or "fixed". "Mitigate" is used when the fixing is only
| partial.
|
| > What's interesting is that both examples seem to use the
| term in a way that suggests that it does mean full-and-
| complete mitigation
|
| I think that is for extra clarity. Both definitions say
| that mitigation is a partial effect "less severe" or
| "lessen the gravity of".
| wumpus wrote:
| You might take a survey amongst your friends before claiming
| that the dictionary tells you all you need to know about the
| word "mitigate".
| foxhop wrote:
| If you are into this sort of thing, I have a youtube channel
| where I grow food on 1/3 acre. I've a 6 year old food forest, my
| first year flock of 6 leghorn chickens, and very close access to
| a lot of water. Connecticut Zone 6b. Links in profile.
| peter_retief wrote:
| If you establish a few trees and vegetation in an area it creates
| an oasis that is cooler than the surroundings as well as
| retaining water. This is definitely the way to cool the earth as
| well as absorb CO2
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