5 ms·

> The world is very large, and cities are a very small portion of it. The land we set aside for animals should be outside of cities, where far more land is avai

> The world is very large, and cities are a very small portion of it. The land we set aside for animals should be outside of cities, where far more land is available at far less impact to people. Wetlands in particular are pretty rare and environmentally valuable places though. The fact that you would fill them in and "set aside" some probably less valuable land somewhere else is not very reassuring.

ummonk 7y ago
Right, especially when practically every major ever delta is populated by a large city due to historical ports.
twic 7y ago
This is where i cringed hardest. Wetlands are, as you say, disproportionately valuable in ecological terms. Not just for wildlife, but for nutrient recycling. Wetlands are mostly found around bays and estuaries. Now, where are major cities found? That's right, around bays and estuaries! Because that's where you can build ports and lowest bridging points, and those are fundamental drivers of the development of cities. There's something about this failure to consider basic geography and ecology that complicates an otherwise shockingly bold and simple plan that is characteristically LessWrong.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Me too. I stopped reading the article after that "who cares, the birds can just move somewhere else" kind of thinking. It's supremely ironic that the author copped this attitude about land use in the Bay Area, of all places.
  - gfodor 7y ago
    I mean, you either accept the plan or not. The author clearly accepts the plan. Instead of writing reams of text about how much they care about the birds, they state clearly that's one negative characteristic of the plan: the birds are fucked. You may disagree, but you have to commend the honestly and lack of trying to weasel out of it as we've come to expect. And frankly, the behavior of stopping reading of a proposal when you get to a point of disagreement is the root cause for why people have to do such weaseling: otherwise, people who do that would just stop listening or leave the room. So what we get are leaders who are forced to come up with ornate, wishy-washy language to lead people to the end of the argument so they can, maybe, digest the whole thing at the end.
    - jschwartzi 7y ago
      The reason I stopped reading is that the author didn't care enough to find out why the birds even have a protected area to begin with. His argument basically boiled down to "the birds can move" and he didn't appear to have done basic research to understand why they can't. If he's not going to dig into one of his major premises then it's not a very strong argument to be making and I think I'm better off moving on. That's why.
pas 7y ago
The idea is sound though. Calculate how much that particular wetland is worth ecologically and find a low-price equivalent somewhere, buy that. The Bay gets more space to sprawl their ugly single family madness and the wetlands (or more precisely the wetland equivalents) are safe too. Furthermore, it's possible to simply incrementally move the wetlands toward north by filling in a southern patch and wetland-ifying some of the southern parts of the Bay's open water. And ... this modest proposal is very much the mirror that the Valley needs. Not that it will help much, but still. It would eradicate the wetlands and the Bay itself before allowing proper high-density development and mass transit.
- numtel 7y ago
  So we've already destroyed 99% of wetlands in California in the last 150 years, let's play hot potato with the small patch that's left? The entire central valley was a marsh. The delta is the small part that still slightly resembles its natural state. Look at this picture of Sacramento from 1857 surrounded by ponds and wetlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sacramento,_California#/media/File:Birds-eye_view_of_Sacramento_1857.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sacramento,_Califor...
  - julianapostate 7y ago
    so wait i thought wetlands were super special and important?.. but apparently we got rid of 99% all the ones in the bay area 100 years ago with no ecological catastrophe to attribute to it?
  - pas 7y ago
    This seems like a straw-man argument. I'm simply recommending that doing something that increases density and reduces commute time and sprawl while also accounting for environmental factors is strictly better than doing nothing and waiting for people to just stop moving toward the Bay Area. Rehabilitation of wetlands is a very important goal in itself. Now that 99% is already gone and fucked up (virtually beyond repair) ... well, it means it's almost irrelevant what happens to the remaining 1% if the other 99% will be "restored" somewhere else, then that 1% can be "moved" too. Not to mention that it the fugly plain of endless mansions sitting where the wetlands were would be replaced with a few high rises, there would be ample space to recultivate a big chunk of it.

ummonk 7y ago

Right, especially when practically every major ever delta is populated by a large city due to historical ports.

twic 7y ago

This is where i cringed hardest. Wetlands are, as you say, disproportionately valuable in ecological terms. Not just for wildlife, but for nutrient recycling. Wetlands are mostly found around bays and estuaries. Now, where are major cities found? That's right, around bays and estuaries! Because that's where you can build ports and lowest bridging points, and those are fundamental drivers of the development of cities. There's something about this failure to consider basic geography and ecology that complicates an otherwise shockingly bold and simple plan that is characteristically LessWrong.

jschwartzi 7y ago
Me too. I stopped reading the article after that "who cares, the birds can just move somewhere else" kind of thinking. It's supremely ironic that the author copped this attitude about land use in the Bay Area, of all places.
- gfodor 7y ago
  I mean, you either accept the plan or not. The author clearly accepts the plan. Instead of writing reams of text about how much they care about the birds, they state clearly that's one negative characteristic of the plan: the birds are fucked. You may disagree, but you have to commend the honestly and lack of trying to weasel out of it as we've come to expect. And frankly, the behavior of stopping reading of a proposal when you get to a point of disagreement is the root cause for why people have to do such weaseling: otherwise, people who do that would just stop listening or leave the room. So what we get are leaders who are forced to come up with ornate, wishy-washy language to lead people to the end of the argument so they can, maybe, digest the whole thing at the end.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    The reason I stopped reading is that the author didn't care enough to find out why the birds even have a protected area to begin with. His argument basically boiled down to "the birds can move" and he didn't appear to have done basic research to understand why they can't. If he's not going to dig into one of his major premises then it's not a very strong argument to be making and I think I'm better off moving on. That's why.

pas 7y ago

The idea is sound though. Calculate how much that particular wetland is worth ecologically and find a low-price equivalent somewhere, buy that. The Bay gets more space to sprawl their ugly single family madness and the wetlands (or more precisely the wetland equivalents) are safe too. Furthermore, it's possible to simply incrementally move the wetlands toward north by filling in a southern patch and wetland-ifying some of the southern parts of the Bay's open water. And ... this modest proposal is very much the mirror that the Valley needs. Not that it will help much, but still. It would eradicate the wetlands and the Bay itself before allowing proper high-density development and mass transit.

numtel 7y ago
So we've already destroyed 99% of wetlands in California in the last 150 years, let's play hot potato with the small patch that's left? The entire central valley was a marsh. The delta is the small part that still slightly resembles its natural state. Look at this picture of Sacramento from 1857 surrounded by ponds and wetlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sacramento,_California#/media/File:Birds-eye_view_of_Sacramento_1857.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sacramento,_Califor...
- julianapostate 7y ago
  so wait i thought wetlands were super special and important?.. but apparently we got rid of 99% all the ones in the bay area 100 years ago with no ecological catastrophe to attribute to it?
- pas 7y ago
  This seems like a straw-man argument. I'm simply recommending that doing something that increases density and reduces commute time and sprawl while also accounting for environmental factors is strictly better than doing nothing and waiting for people to just stop moving toward the Bay Area. Rehabilitation of wetlands is a very important goal in itself. Now that 99% is already gone and fucked up (virtually beyond repair) ... well, it means it's almost irrelevant what happens to the remaining 1% if the other 99% will be "restored" somewhere else, then that 1% can be "moved" too. Not to mention that it the fugly plain of endless mansions sitting where the wetlands were would be replaced with a few high rises, there would be ample space to recultivate a big chunk of it.