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”Making more land” requires destruction of relatively rare marine habitats. Sure, there’s a lot of ocean out there, but many species thrive where the land natur

• BurningFrog 7y ago
  Land would still meet the sea. Just in a different location.
  • hnruss 7y ago
    It is not equivalent. Ecosystems take many years to develop and often host unique species that don’t just pack up their bags and move where we want them to. When habitat is lost, extinction occurs— maybe not all at once, and maybe not species that we know of, but habitat loss contributes significantly to extinction.
• generalpass 7y ago
  The Seastead Institute promotes that newly created flotillas in the open ocean create habitat that was previously non-existent.
  • hnruss 7y ago
    That’s not the topic of the article and not what I’m arguing against, just to be clear.
• tengbretson 7y ago
  There seems to be no such thing as a marine habitat that is not rare.
  • eranima 7y ago
    That's simply false. There are many different kinds of marine habitats, and as the above comment points out, this one is rare.
    • beerandt 7y ago
      The parent comment self-defined it as "where the land naturally meets the sea." That's called the coast. So all coastline is rare and off limits? If we create a new island, what about that new coastline? Is it worth preserving for the sake of it's "rarity"?
      • hnruss 7y ago
        I'm referring to coastlines, estuaries, river deltas, wetlands, etc. In terms of surface area of the Earth, it seems easy to make the argument that those places are relatively rare. Development of this land hasn't been off-limits historically, although many of these places in the U.S. are now (rightfully) preserved. Certain types of development are more detrimental to ecosystems than other types. If something is rare and good, it should probably be preserved, regardless of how natural it is. In this case, we're talking about natural landscapes and living beings that cannot be re-created once they are gone.
        • beerandt 7y ago
          >In terms of surface area of the Earth...relatively rare Using that definition, anything and everything could be justified as rare. Coastlines are the most dynamic places on Earth. They change, they adapt, they are a constantly shifting equilibrium. Geologically, they are the youngest and most easily replaceable features on Earth. They're not fragile things. What isn't natural is how static we've tried to keep them. >If something is rare and good You're romanticizing things. Coastlines serve an important ecological purpose, and we shouldn't ignore that, but the vast majority isn't irreplaceable. There's no reason to believe that newly created (ecologically engineered) coast wouldn't be just as, if not more, biologically productive than what is being replaced.
          • hnruss 7y ago
            When natural habit is destroyed by human development, it is not replaced by something "better". It is replaced by something different, which benefits some species over others (mainly humans). Coastlines and wetlands are never "moved", they're simply destroyed. The life that was there dies and species go extinct, one after the other. Sure, it's possible for people to create new and better habitat for endangered species. The problem is that we usually don't. The "make more land" article doesn't even offer that as a suggested environmental offset. I imagine that the cost of doing so in a way that would actually be beneficial to the environment would nullify any gains to the developers. I agree that coastlines aren't fragile on geologic time scales. The living things which depend on them are. There are millions of species that we haven't even cataloged, so how many are going extinct because of human development? We'll never know.
• throwaway1777 7y ago
  Industrial salt ponds are not a rare marine habitat