4 ms·
it's a bit of an intentionally snarky response but any time anyone talks about machines to do it, I always reply: they already exist, they're called _trees_.
by neurobashing 6y ago
it's a bit of an intentionally snarky response but any time anyone talks about machines to do it, I always reply: they already exist, they're called _trees_.
- foobar1962 6y agoRespectfully ignoring the snark, we have an immediate problem and tress aren't fast enough, take up too much land, and the land needs to be suitable. I've watched the past 30-odd years - and my father for 50-odd years before that - as fertile farmland with good reliable rain (this is not a common combination in Australia) has been built-over with housing. Agriculture has been pushed further out to areas with less fertility and rainfall. Most of the remaining wide open spaces in Australia can support little more than bush and patches of grass. All the good land with rainfall has people living on it.
- samatman 6y agoThis is a problem all over. Before it was Silicon Valley, the Peninsula was said to be the best citrus growing land on Earth. It's a nice place to live, don't get me wrong. But I can't help feeling like growing detached single-family homes instead wasn't a good trade.
- londons_explore 6y agoYou, or anyone else here, can reverse this trade today by buying up homes, demolishing them, and planting citrus trees. You wouldn't make a profit doing so though, which tells you that the collective hivemind that makes up the economy prefers houses over trees.
- prox 6y agoYoucould set up a collective farm, where a neighborhood essentially owns a farm.
- heavenlyblue 6y agoOr you could just grow trees on top of your houses!
- foobar1962 6y agoIndeed. A lot of problems are solved by having less people on the planet, and ultimately that will happen whether planned or not.
- samatman 6y agoThat's true. It's also true that, if I wanted to build a nice subdivision under El Capitan in Yosemite, I would find that I'm quite unable. The collective hivemind that makes up the body politic prefers a national park over houses. So now that we've acknowledged that Mammon isn't the only god in our pantheon, perhaps we can make better decisions on that basis, going forward.
- londons_explore 6y agoYes, thats sucks. For that specific problem, you could imagine policies allowing you some kind of 'zoning swap' - where you get a bit of land in one physical location and swap all laws, covenants, and restrictions for land in another region. Obviously you might not have a 1:1 exchange rate...
- ekianjo 6y ago> take up too much land, Most of the land on Earth is not used by humans. Where are we lacking space, exactly?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adrianN 6y agoMost of the fertile land is in fact used by humans. And planting trees in remote areas is not good either: you need to cut them down and actually sequester the carbon if you want to do something about climate change. Just having stable forests is a far too small carbon sink (and the change in albedo from dark trees actually works against you in many areas of the world). Reforestation is good, but trees alone are not enough.
- owenshen24 6y agoTrees aren't enough to scale up. You can play with toggling deforestation and reforestation here: https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p50=0.7&p55=0.3&p57=0.1&v=2.7.19 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p50=0.... Even in the most optimistic scenarios, it's clear that we'll need additional carbon capture to avoid situations like 3-4 degrees C of warming.