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Focusing global political will into action to address climate change is hard. What is depressing is that even when local benefits are present, it is challengin

by jhulla 9y ago

Focusing global political will into action to address climate change is hard. What is depressing is that even when local benefits are present, it is challenging to enact policy. Case in point: the folks over at Citylab periodically write about the loss of urban forests. Here is an article from May'17: McMansions Are Killing L.A.'s Urban Forest. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/05/as-officials-push-for-plantings-remodeled-homes-are-killing-las-trees/525069/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/05/as-officials-push-for... Look at the attached map, even the liberal enclaves of Santa Monica, Venice, Manhattan Beach, BelAir, Hollywood Hills and Beverly Hills show tree cover loss. Sad.

Red_Tarsius 9y ago
We need a new 'Manhattan project' to find and enforce a solution. The best and brightest minds from all over the world in one place, focusing on this issue 24/7. The situation cannot be underestimated anymore. Realistically, we can't expect people to live peacefully in lands without food and water. This is going to kickstart the biggest migratory wave in history.
- kanzure 9y ago
  > We need a new 'Manhattan project' to find and enforce a solution. No, we don't. Large-scale geoengineering proposals have already been made and they are like <$1B each. Many have been calculated to reduce global average temperature by multiple degrees for hundreds of years. It's completely ridiculous that everyone is still complaining about climate change. $1B is significantly less than the total cost spent worrying about these things so far, not to mention the cost of actual damage already incurred and predicted to occur. EDIT: for starters, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_engineering_topics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_engineering_to... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering#Proposed_strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering#Proposed_s...
  - JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
    >Large-scale geoengineering proposals have already been made and they are like <$1B each. Many have been calculated to reduce global average temperature by multiple degrees for hundreds of years. Um, Source please?
  - ClassyJacket 9y ago
    Such as?
  - eropple 9y ago
    If you're going to make staggering, sweeping claims, it would be nice of you to do more than link two Wikipedia articles with a bunch of undifferentiated stuff in them. How about some detailed examples of why this is so not-a-big-deal? Show some work?
- throwanem 9y ago
  > We need a new 'Manhattan project' to find and enforce a solution. "Stop cutting down trees goddammit" doesn't seem all that hard.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Would you preserve a tree at the expense of a large apartment building in a walkable are that would let a few hundred people switch from driving to walking commutes?
    - sapote 9y ago
      It's not an either-or situation. The apartment building can have many large, fast-growing deciduous (ideally fruit-bearing) trees planted on their sunny side. And trees can make a big difference -- just think about the temperature drop when you step into a dense forest from an open meadow.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      It would be nice if that were a dilemma that arose! Instead, at least around here, it's a question of preserving glades at the expense of shitty condos for rich people in the middle of working-class neighborhoods that've been established for decades and have no desire to be overshadowed - literally; the latest specimen is a collection of four-story buildings in a neighborhood of single-story houses - because some assholes with a taste for slumming decided to make a lifestyle out of it. And thank God for erosion! Because without it, there'd be "picturesque new luxury homes starting in the low 400s" right down to the banks of every river, stream, creek, and rivulet of drunken piss for five miles in every direction. All animadversion aside, though, your suggestion of "a few hundred people [switching] from driving to walking commutes", merely upon the erection of a new highrise with good transit access, strikes me as idealistic unto sheer fantasy, at least in the context of current United States culture. I switched back to transit myself a year and a half ago, and remain very glad that I did - but it's not something that's happening on any kind of scale, nor does this situation seem likely to change soon. Getting to work via public transit and shanks' mare? That's something poor people do - poor people, a few goobers trying to make some kind of political point, and weirdos like me who grew up in nowheresville Mississippi and still sound like it after twenty years on the East Coast, and of whom it's therefore not surprising to see deviant, if harmless, behavior such as taking trains to work and following deer trails just to see where they go. (Okay, maybe that wasn't quite all animadversion aside, and I fear I more hardly treat those whom I here sidewise describe than is quite properly their due - certainly they mean no harm, and had I not the experience that I do, I'm sure I would share the same sort of attitude I describe. But I'm having a hard time being evenhanded at the moment, because just last weekend I found one of my favorite verges had been torn up for shitty rich people condos to be defecated upon the place where it was, and this being baseball season, I'm getting a constant gutful of people slumming on my goddam trains. I suppose I should apologize for unburdening myself as I seem to have done, but what the hell? Perhaps it will elicit responses more worthwhile than the comment which inspired their origin.)

by jhulla 9y ago

Red_Tarsius 9y ago

We need a new 'Manhattan project' to find and enforce a solution. The best and brightest minds from all over the world in one place, focusing on this issue 24/7. The situation cannot be underestimated anymore. Realistically, we can't expect people to live peacefully in lands without food and water. This is going to kickstart the biggest migratory wave in history.

kanzure 9y ago
> We need a new 'Manhattan project' to find and enforce a solution. No, we don't. Large-scale geoengineering proposals have already been made and they are like <$1B each. Many have been calculated to reduce global average temperature by multiple degrees for hundreds of years. It's completely ridiculous that everyone is still complaining about climate change. $1B is significantly less than the total cost spent worrying about these things so far, not to mention the cost of actual damage already incurred and predicted to occur. EDIT: for starters, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_engineering_topics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_engineering_to... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering#Proposed_strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering#Proposed_s...
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  >Large-scale geoengineering proposals have already been made and they are like <$1B each. Many have been calculated to reduce global average temperature by multiple degrees for hundreds of years. Um, Source please?
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  Such as?
- eropple 9y ago
  If you're going to make staggering, sweeping claims, it would be nice of you to do more than link two Wikipedia articles with a bunch of undifferentiated stuff in them. How about some detailed examples of why this is so not-a-big-deal? Show some work?
throwanem 9y ago
> We need a new 'Manhattan project' to find and enforce a solution. "Stop cutting down trees goddammit" doesn't seem all that hard.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Would you preserve a tree at the expense of a large apartment building in a walkable are that would let a few hundred people switch from driving to walking commutes?
  - sapote 9y ago
    It's not an either-or situation. The apartment building can have many large, fast-growing deciduous (ideally fruit-bearing) trees planted on their sunny side. And trees can make a big difference -- just think about the temperature drop when you step into a dense forest from an open meadow.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    It would be nice if that were a dilemma that arose! Instead, at least around here, it's a question of preserving glades at the expense of shitty condos for rich people in the middle of working-class neighborhoods that've been established for decades and have no desire to be overshadowed - literally; the latest specimen is a collection of four-story buildings in a neighborhood of single-story houses - because some assholes with a taste for slumming decided to make a lifestyle out of it. And thank God for erosion! Because without it, there'd be "picturesque new luxury homes starting in the low 400s" right down to the banks of every river, stream, creek, and rivulet of drunken piss for five miles in every direction. All animadversion aside, though, your suggestion of "a few hundred people [switching] from driving to walking commutes", merely upon the erection of a new highrise with good transit access, strikes me as idealistic unto sheer fantasy, at least in the context of current United States culture. I switched back to transit myself a year and a half ago, and remain very glad that I did - but it's not something that's happening on any kind of scale, nor does this situation seem likely to change soon. Getting to work via public transit and shanks' mare? That's something poor people do - poor people, a few goobers trying to make some kind of political point, and weirdos like me who grew up in nowheresville Mississippi and still sound like it after twenty years on the East Coast, and of whom it's therefore not surprising to see deviant, if harmless, behavior such as taking trains to work and following deer trails just to see where they go. (Okay, maybe that wasn't quite all animadversion aside, and I fear I more hardly treat those whom I here sidewise describe than is quite properly their due - certainly they mean no harm, and had I not the experience that I do, I'm sure I would share the same sort of attitude I describe. But I'm having a hard time being evenhanded at the moment, because just last weekend I found one of my favorite verges had been torn up for shitty rich people condos to be defecated upon the place where it was, and this being baseball season, I'm getting a constant gutful of people slumming on my goddam trains. I suppose I should apologize for unburdening myself as I seem to have done, but what the hell? Perhaps it will elicit responses more worthwhile than the comment which inspired their origin.)