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>As I understand it, the conservative attitude is that environmental concerns are either overplayed As someone who left a part of the country that votes Republ

by fiblye 9y ago

>As I understand it, the conservative attitude is that environmental concerns are either overplayed As someone who left a part of the country that votes Republican to Dem 9:1, this is the mindset of most rural voters (where I'm from at least). They think pollution and grime are "city problems" because city people are just "dirty sons of bitches". These are people who, once their car breaks down, they just put it into the woods/a creek and forget about it. Old tires? Do the same. Loads of plastic garbage? Slow burn it outside since they don't want to pay the monthly garbage fee. These people think they're clean, but they never stop talking about how it's getting dirtier these days because "those city people are buying up houses here and bringing their shit with em", and not that their waste has just accumulated. In my chunk of rural America, the only reason it's not a total wasteland is because the population density is so low. For how many people live in cities, they're pretty clean. If they were to adopt more rural lifestyles, waste would be everywhere.

clipperton 9y ago
You seem to be painting a nice over-the-top caricature of all people who live in a rural area much in the same way you're claiming that they're making bad stereotypes about those who live in the city. As someone who still lives in a rural area I can say that I've never participated/been familiar with those that participate in mass garbage burning, dumping cars/tires into the woods, etc.
- LyndsySimon 9y ago
  I'm definitely on the libertarian/conservative side of this issue, but I generally agree with the GP. Every farm here has a few old cars in a field somewhere, and every house with a bit of land has a "junk pile" somewhere off in a corner. To be frank, I just don't think it's as big a problem as GP. It doesn't hurt me if my neighbor has a pile of broken down pallets and yard waste in the corner of his yard - his property is not my problem. If I don't like the way it looks I'll build a fence. I recently bought a house, and there's a concrete pad in one corner of the property that was once a basketball court. It's mostly buried in a thin layer of dirt now and there's everything from old plumping to odd pieces of granite from the previous owner's construction business piled on it. I'm looking forward to cleaning all of that up this spring and building a shop building on the pad. Part of the reason for this is that it's quite expensive to deal with it. Even doing the work myself - collecting, hauling it to the dump, and unloading it there - it will still likely cost me a few hundred dollars to deal with it. People here don't have a few hundred dollars to spare for things that aren't necessities, so you end up with what are effectively personal/family dumps on every small piece of property.

by fiblye 9y ago

clipperton 9y ago

You seem to be painting a nice over-the-top caricature of all people who live in a rural area much in the same way you're claiming that they're making bad stereotypes about those who live in the city. As someone who still lives in a rural area I can say that I've never participated/been familiar with those that participate in mass garbage burning, dumping cars/tires into the woods, etc.

LyndsySimon 9y ago
I'm definitely on the libertarian/conservative side of this issue, but I generally agree with the GP. Every farm here has a few old cars in a field somewhere, and every house with a bit of land has a "junk pile" somewhere off in a corner. To be frank, I just don't think it's as big a problem as GP. It doesn't hurt me if my neighbor has a pile of broken down pallets and yard waste in the corner of his yard - his property is not my problem. If I don't like the way it looks I'll build a fence. I recently bought a house, and there's a concrete pad in one corner of the property that was once a basketball court. It's mostly buried in a thin layer of dirt now and there's everything from old plumping to odd pieces of granite from the previous owner's construction business piled on it. I'm looking forward to cleaning all of that up this spring and building a shop building on the pad. Part of the reason for this is that it's quite expensive to deal with it. Even doing the work myself - collecting, hauling it to the dump, and unloading it there - it will still likely cost me a few hundred dollars to deal with it. People here don't have a few hundred dollars to spare for things that aren't necessities, so you end up with what are effectively personal/family dumps on every small piece of property.