It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going to remember us for this, much like we remember our grandparents for leaded gasoline and DDT.
In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/floods-then-an...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65632655
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/europe/greece-floods-stor...
https://www.climatechangepost.com/austria/river-floods/
The again, neither insurance nor building pricing wants to reflect the new reality. A whole generation has invested "safe" in buildings and companies along "virtual flash flood funels" and embracing truth is like accepting your life's saving burning away.
One wonders when the first realistic model based tax write off ahead of time goes to court and pokes a hole into that reality. As in "I pay no taxes for what is most likely destroyed over the next ten years and will repay if it doesn't happen"..
> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this.
This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.
:)
Some insights:
* traffic noise (soundscape pollution) is actually suspected to be the biggest ecological destructor affecting all levels of life from insects, to birds, to mammals.
* Traffic-related noise accounts for over 1 million healthy years of life lost annually to ill health, disability or early death in the western countries in the WHO European Region. (a)
a) https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/30-03-2011-new-evidence...
Looking at Sweden, there was a major movement in the last century to drain wetlands in order to improve timber production. This forestry policy is argued to currently produce about 1/4 of all green house gases released in this region, and a major cause to lower ecological diversity.
(The larger observation is that, while we use more land for agriculture than we need, there is at least a prima facie argument that industrial agriculture feeds our planet. Whereas a 6 lane highway through a drained wetland to a low-density suburb does very little for our planet.)
In warm regions, wetlands were also drained to control malaria, particularly in Brazil and the American South.
“We will still need roads” is true, but the amount and size of those roads are important details. Not all roads are created equal - just ask your local bike path how many animals were killed in collisions.
But there are at least two problems with such a deceptively simple statement:
1) Road construction is constantly expanding. They create their own demand by diverting resources away from many things including affordable housing -- the number of people I know that commute for over an hour because they cannot afford to live near their work is non-negligible. At some point this becomes a planning/resource issue and at the moment the decision is to carry on as usual with a system that is causing major problems.
2) The amount of traffic makes a huge difference. It is well documented that roads create ecological bubbles affecting animal populations negatively. The speed and frequencey of the traffic (type of vehicle) makes a difference.
What? I associate DDT and leaded gasoline with my grandparents not-at-all. Is anyone here really holding their grandparents feet to the fire over these?
Engineering practices in new development and redevelopment have adapted to prioritize retention of stormwater. We have some of the finest and most sophisticated hydraulic engineering in the history of the world, be happy for what you've got.
I'm exceedingly thankful for my high quality of life. I would like my grandchildren to share a similar quality of life.
I think most of the Great Plains disagrees[1].
I'm pro-technology and pro-development. But I don't think we should kid ourselves about what we have, and about the limits of our ability to geo-engineer ourselves into global homeostasis, versus out of it.
The overwhelming majority of environmental degradation is not being caused by cutting edge technological development. Wasteful and destructive development patterns are not what’s driving technological growth.
Sites like this one like to browbeat hardworking Americans, but the reality is that not everyone can live an eco-friendly lifestyle. I'm not sure what the solution is but shaming people isn't it.
Scenario 1: dense urban living, somehow you can afford an apartment big enough for everyone. No car, just good transit (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo). Grocery store is <3 minutes walk from the front door of your apartment, so you get 2 gallons every day. With a family that big, you're probably picking several items up, but you'd use a trolley (like this: https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8653909?clickPR=plp:4:6 or bigger: https://www.kmart.co.nz/product/foldable-beach-trolley-42365...)
Scenario 2: big terraced/row/town-house (shared walls on two sides), has a 1-2 car garage. Suburban-ish living, car dependent, but definitely not rural or outskirts of a city. You own a van, which you'd need anyway if your family is big enough to need 12 gallons of milk a week, and then you have your big chest freezer in the garage and you go once a week to the grocery store and get 12 gallons of milk.
The US isn't the only country in the world with big families; there's seemingly nothing exceptional about us (in that regard) that requires the pickup truck and 3-space garage where other countries get along fine. Part of the reason they get along fine is because they allow grocery stores to be built on residential corners, so that you buy 3 gallons of milk every other night on your way home rather than driving X miles to load up weekly.
If you live in a city you can just pick up milk at a convenience store as you walk by, when you need it. There will probably be one within a 5 minute walk of your house.
I would also like to know more about this milk consumption. Median consumed by US milk drinkers is 1/3rd gallon per week - your family is drinking as much milk as 36 people do every week.
But anyway, we go through a lot of milk (significantly less than 12 gallons) and have it delivered. Same thing applies to anything large that I'd rather not rent a truck for.
the American car dependent lifestyle has mostly happened by making other lifestyles impossible. In other places you don't buy your milk for the whole week in one go, there are convenient supermarkets where you can walk in and out on your way to and from work on foot or public transport, so stopping in more frequently is a lot easier if you're not driving 15-20 minutes on arterial roads to the big box store. In most of America, it is illegal to open even slightly smaller grocery stores in areas outside big box arterial roads.
Besides the simple idea of neighbours building and maintaining small roads, I argue that I wouldn't want the highway.
Between the ecological damage, the noise, air pollution, increased reliance on shipping things from far away vs buying local - are we really sure building the massive road network in the US was the best option? Consumerism may be good for the economy, but I argue it's not in our best interest.
Sure, I love the freedom to drive fast anywhere but at what cost?
And who knows, maybe if we didn't have a central entity redistributing resources in an arbitrary way and shaping the market, some entrepreneur would have worked on flying cars and skipped the road altogether.
In practice, a society without a government is just a collection of local warlords depleting all the resources in a violent struggle for power.
For example, consider the history of Somalia or the general concept of a power vacuum.
So I'd think the chances of such an environment supporting an entrepreneur working on flying cars to be near zero.
Car-centric design sits in competition with pedestrian-centric design, and the bias towards road over-construction has ruined a lot of urban spaces. At the very least, rolling back government involvement in road construction would be helpful.
First of all, they'd always need more energy because staying in the air doesn't come free. Lifting a whole car for the usual 1.2 people in it seems wasteful.
Secondly, the noise problem would be huge. I don't see how flying cars could ever be more quiet than road-using cars (again, more power needed to overcome the drag that's generated by the lift, and propellers, jet engines or whatever aren't exactly quiet on their own). They'd also produce their noise up in the air where it can spread over a much larger area compared to land-based transportation, where even a small line of greenery reduces noise levels quite nicely.
Finally, even perfectly self flying cars (and obviously, I wouldn't want to have the average car driver handle a 3 ton flying machine over my head) would need a big amount of space around them in all directions. I doubt that there's enough air space to handle the amount of car traffic that even smaller cities currently have.
There's a reason we only see helicopters used in a small niche, and I don't think flying cars or the currently worked on drones are ultimately that different from helicopters.
> There's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?"
You hit the nail on the head workout realizing it. The real problem is mass property ownership in remote areas. The huge uptick in car travelers and according roads are a result of that.
The classic "road trueism" is If you build them, they will fill.
Four lane highways with occassional gridlock when expanded become six lane highways with occassional gridlock.
The connection corollary that follows is roads | train lines built to connect A and B will often be followed by small townsites along the way and the spread of "off the grid" living at blocks T junctioning dirt road access from the new A <--> B route.
JTNP draws massive numbers of tourists. Plus the main road through my neck of the Mojave (62 and Amboy Rd.) is a popular alternate route linking LA and Las Vegas. You wouldn't believe how much traffic blasts through on weekends and holidays, most without even stopping. It's a lot of city folks driving like they're passing through an uninhabitable wasteland where speed limits don't exist.
The actual number of owners/residents like me out by my hood is on the order of hundreds, and most drive exceptionally slow in the hood because those roads are unpaved washboard insanity.
Airbnb/VHRs becoming a thing there and catering to the national park has made things much worse in terms of local vehicle traffic even on the dirt roads... but the Tortoises were already gone long before Airbnb even existed.
TL;DR: Tourism by automobile is the main problem, exacerbated by the draw of a popular national park. But even without it there's too much thanks to LA<->Vegas traffic.
Government roads effectively subsidies access to land.
The rhetorical title is absurd, however, and I'd argue even Ben Goldfarb would agree with that.
Habitat loss is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss, as a result of many, many drivers. You've heard of all of them. The presence and proliferation of roads is, of course, one of those drivers.
I'm really not trying to be a car stan here, I don't really care about cars. But focusing on cars is kindof a dumb distraction, in my opinion.
1. Roads being inextricably linked with car-dependence and urban development is clearly part of the implication
2. It is a pun!
It seems a bit needlessly nitpick to call it absurd, in my book.
1. Last Easter my wife and I were travelling across the country. We drive reasonably slow, mostly about 100km/h. I guess it was a special time of the year because we must've killed at least several thousand insects in the first two hours alone. It was non stop. One car out of thousands on the road. Made us feel pretty bad.
2. Second story is about four years old. Travelling on a brand new highway around Easter. I guess wildlife was not used to the road because the asphalt was - i kid you not - littered with squashed snakes and birds. I couldn't believe what I was seeing - several kilometres of straight road covered with untold amount of bodies. One of ugliest things I have seen.
Roads are absolutely horrible and I very much hate travelling because of stuff like this. I think some countries don't have such problems problems because they barely have any wildlife left.
It's a tragedy and barely anyone I know cares enough to even consider what we are doing.
Where I live, there are frogs everywhere at certain times of the year after rain, people literally drive over hundreds of baby frogs per hour. I avoid driving after rain now.
But yeah, nice to hear from someone who has similar feelings about driving. I hate it for the damage it does. Tyre dust is another one.
I was recently doing a renovation and would only drive to the store unless absolutely necessary. I'd batch my shopping jobs. For me it's about emissions, I have a real problem with burning fossil fuels.
This really resonates. It's kind of obvious once it's stated, but the aural environment is part of the habitat. I bet the examples they give, such as owls listening for the sound of mice, are only a tiny subset of the ecological disruption caused by the noise of civilization, which is primarily road noise. Hopefully there will be more studies in the future like the phantom road noise experiment they mention.
And the desire for recreation. The explosion of cars isn't necessarily that cars are so useful. Certainly they did have utility. But really they were kind of liberating. In the late 19th century, nobody ever heard of a vacation
We can see examples of other places where railways were the "liberating" technology that allowed people to go on holiday. For example:
Up to about forty or fifty years ago travelling was a solemn act, not to be enterprised nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly,’ so writes the Belfast News-Letter in September 1888. But all of this had changed; from the inception of the railways ‘day excursions’ had become ‘entirely modern pleasures,’ the British seaside and countryside opened up to visitors who could travel there easily by train.
https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/12/how-th...
The "cars are liberating, what a shame they destroy the wild place I went to meditate in" schtick seems like a deep-seated cultural echo of all the automobile advertising that has been consumed for about a century.
2) Animals are relatively quick to adapt. It might take a few generations but they will. There are street dogs in India that live their entire life on the busiest streets and manage avoid getting hit. Kangaroo's, Deer, and squirrels learned to avoid roads too for the most part.
3) While human development is bad for some species. Others thrive around humans. More Deer live now than ever before, for example.
4) Not really convinced that we have a net negative on the total biomass of animals on the planet. Lots of evidence that CO2 promotes plant growth. Greening the planet. More trees, would equate to more forrest habitat for larger animals.
5) Do spoons make you fat? ... Kent Brockman reporting