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The Anti-Promethean Backlash
- nickdothutton 4y agoYou can see this in some peoples reactions to “cityscapes of the future” paintings/artwork. Those that are not of the dystopian aesthetic invariably feature tall, slender, delicately constructed, hyper-dense structures. Greenery is everywhere, in winter gardens, on rooftops. Hawks circle, fish can be seen in ponds with ornate bridges crossing. Smoke, pollution, and of course cars… are notably completely absent. And environmentalists hate them.
- zeruch 4y agoWhy do they 'hate' them?
- nickdothutton 4y agoA great question. I’ve never had a coherent explanation from anyone. Maybe they think “more” (people, buildings, technology) necessarily means more destruction of the natural world and “consumption” of nature (ignoring the fact it’s more efficient in almost every way to service a dense population than that same population spread out thinly). Maybe they are somehow generally “anti-future” (strange since our past has been a very dirty one which we are now dealing with). Maybe they don’t believe that gleaming skyscrapers of nanowire and bio-crete, with “living walls” will ever be possible. Maybe they think all of this will only hasten the arrival of the dystopian type of future city. I wish I knew, but the reaction is often quite visceral. This leads me to believe it is driven by something deep and pre-rational. Maybe they feel that they will be alienated, that there is no place for them in such a futuristic place.
- rob74 4y agoI would bet that most environmentalists would prefer skyscrapers (dense housing) over suburban sprawl. The real problem is that your average middle-class citizen would rather have a nice suburban house and the car that must accompany it than an apartment in a skyscraper...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- _dain_ 4y agoIf you're talking about the same genre of concept art as I think you are, this twitter thread has some good reasons to dislike them (and more importantly, offers an alternative future aesthetic): https://nitter.1d4.us/380kmh/status/935965568670273537 https://nitter.1d4.us/380kmh/status/935965568670273537 >if your idea of a future city involves: >- towers inna park >- flying cars >- flashy geometric buildings >- few or no people >then it is not a very serious idea --- >what do people do in these cities? walk around in the Green Space (tm), or sit in their Glass Box (tm) and admire the Futuristic Cityscape (tm) >work? lol of course not --- >as architecturally implausible as they are, one thing I love about Imperial Boy's cityscapes is that they actually look like, you know, SOCIETY >there are shops, there are workers, there are improvisations and decorations, there are cheap structures and ornate ones, etc etc --- > most important of all, they focus on how the city looks from the perspective of the people who live in it --- >The sterile glass renderings earlier in the thread suggest an artist who >1) doesn't understand why people live in cities, and/or >2) doesn't understand what people do for fun ---------- (back to me now) the "towers inna park" quip is really at the heart of it; these kinds of places exist in real life and they're just terrible. it doesn't matter how much grass and greenery there is in between the gigahuge buildings if there's nothing to do there. it's not a new idea[1], we tried it and it sucks[2]. it looks good in concept art until you think about it for five minutes and imagine living in this place at ground level. it's utopia as imagined by some omnipotent top-down planner (literally, we nearly always see these places from above). it really has nothing to do with environmentalism one way or the other; they just look like awful places to be. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Radieuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Radieuse [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia
- kragen 4y agoto a significant extent the modern environmental movement is not only a rebellion against the actual environmental destruction wrought by things like the cuyahoga river getting so polluted it could catch on fire, damming glen canyon, and ddt pushing the bald eagle to the brink of extinction; it is also a rebellion against the unrestrained power to destroy that brought them about when people move to off-grid solar cabins in the mountains, support laws that make it impossible to build nuclear power plants, or take up organic farming, they're not just trying to save the planet; they're seeking refuge from that unrestrained power of destruction, which they have come to see as malignant they are seeking autonomy in which to construct a harmonious life but the power to destroy, pouvoir de nuisance, overlaps greatly with the power to create; you cannot build a hydroelectric power plant without destroying the land upstream, you cannot build pruitt-igoe without bulldozing poor neighborhoods, and you cannot invent nontoxic firesafe refrigerants without taking the risk of destroying the ozone layer so, when these 'environmentalists' seeking autonomy look at high-modernist 'cities of the future' visions of towers in a park whose polyhedral geometry is a boast of the architect's rationality, they correctly see them as the epitome of central planning with the unrestrained power to destroy which, to return to the alternate history imagined at the beginning of the article, really doesn't have a great track record, even aside from environmental damage
- sideshowb 4y agoI suggest because such a cityscape implies a vision where we solve all environmental problems with tech. Whether we can do that or not is a moot point, because - from the opponents view point - 1. numerous historical attempts to solve things with tech have led to more problems down the line 2. "We'll solve it with tech" has also been used as an empty promise and excuse by those with vested interests who want to continue the status quo
- zeruch 4y agoTHis feels like the most salient assessment.
- jitl 4y agoThis sounds like a silly straw man. Here, I am an environmentalist and I would enjoy living in such a city.
- dredmorbius 4y agoWould you care to provide 1--3 examples of what you're describing here?
- polotics 4y agoRarely have I read such unmitigated bullshit, with wordy arrogance as topping. "We" didn't have a "Promethean backlash" in the 1970's, we had the first oil-availability crisis. Same as 2008 when conventional oil peaked, 2016 when... Just read the IEA reports, the IPCC reports...
- wmf 4y agoShouldn't an oil crisis increase investment in nuclear power? Why did we have the opposite?
- thebooktocome 4y agoHypothesis: Oil crises increase the political power of fossil fuel extractors, which can then use regulatory capture to prevent competition.
- adam_arthur 4y agoBecause every time society figures out how much they depend on Oil, they'd rather go back to it than impoverish themselves
- inglor_cz 4y agoIt had that effect in France and Japan.
- dredmorbius 4y agoOther forces at play. The nuclear energy movement in the 1970s was closely affiliated with the nuclear weapons movement. As one indicator of the latter, the phrase "ban the bomb" was already peaking in 1963, as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was being proposed: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ban+the+bomb&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ban+the+bomb&y...> (Google Ngram viewer) A similar search for "anti-nuclear movement" shows a later peak, in the late 1970s, which would correspond with the Three Mile Island incident (1979): <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-nuclear+movement%2CThree+Mile+Island&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-nuclear+m...> Essentially, nuclear power had a significant public-image problem, and it got markedly worse just as embargo-based oil shortages were peaking for a second (and far more significant) time, with the Iranian Oil Embargo (also 1979): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis>
- empiricus 4y agotldr: the world seems fine, but it could have been so much better if we would have taken advantage of nuclear power. In my opinion the real issue is that all ppl (me included) are incompetent to an incomprehensible degree.
- empiricus 4y agoLet me make this point stronger (im drunk): we just put two rocks together to get free energy (1000 to 1000000 times more energy than other sources) and after 100 years we are still not able to use this. I have no words.
- friend_and_foe 4y agoWhat has the environmental movement accomplished? The oceans are still depleted, oil is still the number one game in town, our environment is awash in a deluge of little understood chemicals. It would seem to me that they're very ineffective. About the only accomplishment I can count is that we no longer clear cut forests, but we rotate logging land as a compromise. But we have damage from them, they've stopped nuclear power. Maybe the risks were too high, maybe they did save us, but we will never know. But we do know that it was the solution to their number one problem for decades and they stopped it.
- User23 4y agoIt’s been fabulous for coastal California real estate prices. Environmental impact studies are a wonderful NIMBY tool and keep housing prices on California’s paradisiacal coast high by restricting density and supply. I’m not even sure that’s a bad thing though. Would our nation really be greatly enriched by having Malibu look like Tijuana?
- mistrial9 4y agothis un-self-critical display of complete absence of knowledge on a large topic, using a politics label, with a topping of "blaming those that made changes" with the worst of what happened, despite real actions to prevent exactly that.. is presented without rebuttal (yet) today.
- friend_and_foe 4y agoSo rebut.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoOur air and water are hugely cleaner than they were when the environmental movement started. I’m guessing you are too young to remember.
- friend_and_foe 4y agoNot too young, no. In particular the problem was largely trash and smog over cities. These were largely resolved due to the inhabitants of the cities wanting to clean up the cities themselves, and movements against littering. I suppose at least the anti littering movement was driven largely by environmentalists.
- throwboi123 4y agoWhat is living agreeably?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- viburnum 4y agothe author: "in the context of climate change, it is only through the continued development of our technological powers that we can hope to arrest and reverse the immense damage we have caused." homer simpson: "Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
- teucris 4y agoThis article commits so many logical errors, it becomes hard to unpack. But here are a few that struck me: 1. Attribution of the slower growth in energy usage to a environmental backlash by showing a correlation but no evidence of causation 2. > Indeed, as is now becoming clear in the context of climate change, it is only through the continued development of our technological powers that we can hope to arrest and reverse the immense damage we have caused. Or, you know, stop continuing to cause damage 3. Somehow, this article seems to ignore “risk-adverse” policies that have great harm to the environment, like not re-regulating fishing and grazing rights I mean, there’s a kernel of something here. We need to be learning what technologies enable us to protect ourselves and the environment, and we’re being too slow to do that. But just building a bunch of nuclear power plants isn’t it - that just doubles down on our expectations of endless growth and increases the likelihood of nuclear proliferation. Instead we could be investigating geothermal or even thorium reactors. Or better yet, figuring out how to end our reliance on a system that requires constant economic growth.
- goatlover 4y ago> Or, you know, stop continuing to cause damage And how do you accomplish that economically? What technological progress helps stop continuing damage? What sort of policies to stop the damage are politically viable? There's 8 billion people who need to work, eat, move about, etc. > But just building a bunch of nuclear power plants isn’t it I would have been better than relying on coal plants, and would have helped electrify economies faster. > Or better yet, figuring out how to end our reliance on a system that requires constant economic growth. The world's population is still growing, and the developing world is still developing. How do you propose handling those two issues, while funding cleaner technologies, and finding an alternative economic system? Why can't growth be sustainable with the right technologies? The sun emits vast amounts of energy. There's tons of resources in the solar system. Human civilization could exist for a very long time. We've hardly achieved everything achievable.
- teucris 4y ago> Why can't growth be sustainable Because resources are finite. Sure, we haven’t tapped all the energy the sun shines on earth. But if we did, we would be doing the equivalent of painting the earth black, absorbing all possible light and making everything a scorched wasteland. Space travel enables a form of sustainable growth, but if you want to stick around here, the growth needs to stop eventually. I, and many people, believe we’re bumping up against the upper limit of humans the earth can support.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoI read this hoping to find a well written essay about why scraping based telemetry is a stupid idea. Man was I disappointed.