4 ms·
This is where i cringed hardest. Wetlands are, as you say, disproportionately valuable in ecological terms. Not just for wildlife, but for nutrient recycling.
by 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 agoMe 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 agoI 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 agoThe 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.