5 ms·

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going to remember us for this, much like we remember our grandparents for leaded gasoline and DDT.

tony_cannistra 3y ago
This is most definitely the case. It has also caused enormous problems for places where flooding was already a threat, by removing the natural buffering capabilities that places like wetlands have. In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this.
- schiffern 3y ago
  > In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.
  - tony_cannistra 3y ago
    I don't really know. I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds.
    - schiffern 3y ago
      Thanks. Hey it's a start! Village Homes in Davis has an interesting distributed stormwater system, which was specifically designed to maximize infiltration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_05oRQxssQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_05oRQxssQ
    - grogenaut 3y ago
      I'm out duck hunting right now and there's quite a lot of very very damp farmland in the Seattle/Tacoma/Everett metroplex. The river valley behind microsoft would be idiotic to build anything bu farms and golf courses on (and the golf course is unplayable half the year). The term colloidal substance describes these areas well. Also a ton of water retention areas on the hills, otherwise stuff would wash out very easily.
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      > I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds. I can think of some spots where four or five adjacent suburban developments will all have their own pond/catchment tucked away, although their appearance and attractiveness varies.
    - VintageCool 3y ago
      I love to bike around the city and listen to the frogs in the Stormwater Ponds.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    So the answer to this is HOA's.... Um, what? you say. So here in the hill country of Texas housing developments/cities need to build so many feet of storage retention ponds per house built and impermeable roadway laid. Depending on the size of the development these are decently sizes structures and an off the cuff guess on costs is between 500k and a few million (+lost land to build more houses on) so it's a sizeable expense of developing. Cities themselves don't want to pay for and maintain these structures so they instead farm it off to a MUD/PUD. https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=227010 https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=22701... The MUD wraps up the expense of the roads, things like this water settlement area, and pools and puts the expenses on an HOA.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      By now, I assume everywhere in the developed world requires retention ponds to be built to offset whatever land gets paved and/or is no longer permeable due to development. Usually among the most costly line items of construction.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Litost 3y ago
    This drain, drain, faster faster is a question I've been keen to get to the bottom off as I live in an area covered by upcoming River Thames Scheme to help prevent flooding. As I'm doing a rewilding course I wanted to find out how much natural flood management techniques they were using as nature's solution is to generally hold water as long as possible in the landscape to slow down peak flow, as peak flow is generally what causes the worst flooding events. This also has knock on benefits helping mitigate pollution and soil erosion etc. I've been to two consultations and am still none the wiser, though I've another consultation to go to. Whether this is tree/vegetation cover or beavers (despite being in the middle of surburban sprawl, Ealing have secured funding for beavers as a potentially cheaper solution than hard infrastructure for flood mitigation and a significant amount of the beaver costs were the fencing to keep them in despite England having some wild beavers). Similarly I've seen the Pennine Way in the South Pennines turn into a fast flowing stream during one period of wet weather due to the inability of the land to hold all the water and houses there get flooded as well. Obviously the clash here is between the human and natural ways of doing things, building static houses on floodplains doesn't fit with more chaotic natural solutions in a dynamicly changing landscape with increasingly erratic weather patterns...
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    At least recently there are a lot of projects in various places to essentially build long pipe tunnels to hold water for treatment in storms and not overwhelm treatment plants. DC is building one, London is building one, Paris is building one to make the Seine swimmable for the Olympics, etc.
- iambateman 3y ago
  “A field exists to mitigate this” is a great way to end that comment. :)
- Log_out_ 3y ago
  It's In huge troubles as the old models do not hold up against new realities and all incentives are aligned against acknowledging that. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/floods-then-and-now-photographs-germany-ahr-valley-flooding-disaster-july-2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/floods-then-an... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65632655 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65632655 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/europe/greece-floods-storm-rescue-climate-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/europe/greece-floods-stor... https://www.climatechangepost.com/austria/river-floods/ https://www.climatechangepost.com/austria/river-floods/ The again, neither insurance nor building pricing wants to reflect the new reality. A whole generation has invested "safe" in buildings and companies along "virtual flash flood funels" and embracing truth is like accepting your life's saving burning away. One wonders when the first realistic model based tax write off ahead of time goes to court and pokes a hole into that reality. As in "I pay no taxes for what is most likely destroyed over the next ten years and will repay if it doesn't happen"..
explaininjs 3y ago
> much like we remember our grandparents for leaded gasoline and DDT What? I associate DDT and leaded gasoline with my grandparents not-at-all. Is anyone here really holding their grandparents feet to the fire over these?
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I don’t literally associate my grandparents with leaded gasoline. It was meant to be metonymic.
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    I don’t think dissolving the blame is particularly helpful here. A minuscule number of individuals had full control over the use and knowledge of the impact of leaded gasoline, and everyone else had absolutely none. For 99.999% of folks those people have no relation to their grandparents, and “blaming” an entire generation for the malice of a few is ill guided at best.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      Blame is your phrasing, not mine. I agree with your point about knowledge and agency; I think future generations will look back on us with disbelief and shock at our shortsightedness, not blame.
      - grogenaut 3y ago
        Then when they're 50 they'll look back on stuff they thought was fine when they were young, and is bad now. If they're introspective they'll look at the stuff that their parents or grand parents or further back thought was fine and turned out to be bad. As people say, it's easy with hindsight and it's really hard in the moment. Many second and third order effects aren't obvious or testable. Then add profit motive. The real question is do you change when you realize you were wrong or double down.
    - 0xfae 3y ago
woah 3y ago
It's simply not possible for many families to live in the cramped environments of a city. How am I going to pick up 12 gallons of milk on my weekly grocery shopping trip without a pickup truck? That's about 125lb of milk. Not going to be able to get that onto a fixie in the city. How am I going to park the truck without a garage? The garage needs 3 spaces, one for the truck, one for the car, and one for my garage refrigerator to hold the 12 gallons of milk. You're not going to find a house with a 3 car garage that hasn't been built on marshland. Sites like this one like to browbeat hardworking Americans, but the reality is that not everyone can live an eco-friendly lifestyle. I'm not sure what the solution is but shaming people isn't it.
- maeil 3y ago
  The reality is that the rest of the developed world manages just fine living in houses without such garages, driving smaller cars. And having a family isn't a uniquely American concept. Of course everyone can live an eco-friendly lifestyle; for all but a tiny speck of human existence, everyone did indeed do so, and the majority of people on the earth actually still do so to a reasonable extent. It's not a "not everyone can" or "not possible", it's a "not everyone wants to".
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  usually, when people are promoting alternatives to the car, these things need not be in exclusion to the car. In general, when a road is over a hundred feet wide, it is really not a big deal to provide an additional twelve feet for an ADA sidewalk, and maybe another twelve for a bike lane with more protection than a strip of fading paint. the American car dependent lifestyle has mostly happened by making other lifestyles impossible. In other places you don't buy your milk for the whole week in one go, there are convenient supermarkets where you can walk in and out on your way to and from work on foot or public transport, so stopping in more frequently is a lot easier if you're not driving 15-20 minutes on arterial roads to the big box store. In most of America, it is illegal to open even slightly smaller grocery stores in areas outside big box arterial roads.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  There's no shame in my statement. The US isn't the only country in the world with big families; there's seemingly nothing exceptional about us (in that regard) that requires the pickup truck and 3-space garage where other countries get along fine. Part of the reason they get along fine is because they allow grocery stores to be built on residential corners, so that you buy 3 gallons of milk every other night on your way home rather than driving X miles to load up weekly.
belorn 3y ago
How much of that swamp, marsh, and wetlands was drained in order to enable/improve farming and forestry? To me this has less to do with living patterns and more to do with commercial exploitation of land. I am unsure how much of a reduction in draining we would see if we remove cars and roads from the equation. Looking at Sweden, there was a major movement in the last century to drain wetlands in order to improve timber production. This forestry policy is argued to currently produce about 1/4 of all green house gases released in this region, and a major cause to lower ecological diversity.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Much, much more. Industrial-scale agriculture is by far one of the most devastating things that humans do to the environment; my focus on roads wasn't meant to imply otherwise. (The larger observation is that, while we use more land for agriculture than we need, there is at least a prima facie argument that industrial agriculture feeds our planet. Whereas a 6 lane highway through a drained wetland to a low-density suburb does very little for our planet.)
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Not all agriculture even feeds the planet. E.g. cotton grown in the central valley of california makes its way to mexico to become budget metal spring mattresses. Does the world need more metal/wood/cotton boxes that end up on the side of the road at some point in their lifetime? State economic planners seem to think so at least.
- scythe 3y ago
  A lot of farming would not be viable without roads. It's something of a blind men and the elephant question. Roads weren't originally developed for cars; the US Constitution prescribed the authority to build roads for the postal service. Roads, especially paved roads, make it possible to send fresh produce to markets in cities hundreds of miles away, to collect grains at mills, and to distribute and maintain farm equipment. In warm regions, wetlands were also drained to control malaria, particularly in Brazil and the American South.
engineer_22 3y ago
USA has plentiful water resources. Engineering practices in new development and redevelopment have adapted to prioritize retention of stormwater. We have some of the finest and most sophisticated hydraulic engineering in the history of the world, be happy for what you've got.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  All three of "we have plentiful water resources," "we have advanced ground- and storm-water management systems," and "we are disastrously compromising our water resources" can be simultaneously true. I'm exceedingly thankful for my high quality of life. I would like my grandchildren to share a similar quality of life.
  - engineer_22 3y ago
    Since you're a fellow New Yorker, I'm also puzzled how you conclude there is a water scarcity problem? My first reaction was that you might be living in a water-stressed area. I'm sorry if my first comment sounds trite, it wasn't my intention. (Maybe I have social media fatigue?)
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
EnigmaFlare 3y ago
There's a trade-off between preserving the environment and having human development. We already remember our grandparents for the contributions they made to human development. Our lives are vastly better now because of it. Future generations will also benefit from our contributions, including the things we did using roads. They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential. We can always get water from other places if we pay more, and we can afford to pay more because of all the technology we're gaining.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- woodruffw 3y ago
  > They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential. I think most of the Great Plains disagrees[1]. I'm pro-technology and pro-development. But I don't think we should kid ourselves about what we have, and about the limits of our ability to geo-engineer ourselves into global homeostasis, versus out of it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
- DoughnutHole 3y ago
  I don’t think vast suburban single family home housing developments, big box store parking lots and Wendys drive thrus are the drivers of technological development you’re making them out to be. The overwhelming majority of environmental degradation is not being caused by cutting edge technological development. Wasteful and destructive development patterns are not what’s driving technological growth.
  - EnigmaFlare 3y ago
    I'd say they're interconnected. Quality of life may help people be more productive or attract more productive people. Plenty of technology goes into consumer goods and services, and is sort of what the whole point of technological development is - making people's lives better. Also, the car industry was/is full of cutting edge technology and was enhanced by car-friendly housing and roads. It was a major factor in America industrializing in the first place.
sandworm101 3y ago
Whether it is car, bus, train, Uber or hovercar, we will still need roads. Until personal jetpacks and flying school busses are a thing, the road issue is totally divorced from the type and environmental impact of vehicles driving upon the. Some form of road will be there regardless of the means, or even the amount of traffic, so long as a connection is needed.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Of course we need roads. We just don't need all of the roads we currently have; many could be (and were, until very recently) eminently more sustainable forms of mass transit. Similarly, many of our roads could be narrowed and augmented to induce demand away from unsustainable development patterns.
- kuhewa 3y ago
  DDT in very particular situations has also been a net positive. It's really the widespread indiscriminate use of it in nature areas and dumping it by the ton into municipal sewers that caused the terrible ecological outcomes. Similarly, organising ourselves into sprawling suburbs (rather than higher density cities with sparse rural communities and nature areas in between) was ecologically, the less optimal deployment of roads.
- dangus 3y ago
  The thing is that we choose the amount and type of traffic and therefore the physical size and area of our roads by planning choices that induce behavior. “We will still need roads” is true, but the amount and size of those roads are important details. Not all roads are created equal - just ask your local bike path how many animals were killed in collisions.
- frabbit 3y ago
  Of course roads are needed. But there are at least two problems with such a deceptively simple statement: 1) Road construction is constantly expanding. They create their own demand by diverting resources away from many things including affordable housing -- the number of people I know that commute for over an hour because they cannot afford to live near their work is non-negligible. At some point this becomes a planning/resource issue and at the moment the decision is to carry on as usual with a system that is causing major problems. 2) The amount of traffic makes a huge difference. It is well documented that roads create ecological bubbles affecting animal populations negatively. The speed and frequencey of the traffic (type of vehicle) makes a difference.
k99x55 3y ago
"Traffication: How Cars Destroy Nature and What We Can Do About It" excellent book on ecological damage caused by traffication. Some insights: * traffic noise (soundscape pollution) is actually suspected to be the biggest ecological destructor affecting all levels of life from insects, to birds, to mammals. * Traffic-related noise accounts for over 1 million healthy years of life lost annually to ill health, disability or early death in the western countries in the WHO European Region. (a) a) https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/30-03-2011-new-evidence-from-who-on-health-effects-of-traffic-related-noise-in-europe https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/30-03-2011-new-evidence...
- frabbit 3y ago
  That was one of the things I actually liked about Covid lockdowns: the absence of the constant, distant noise of cars and trucks.

tony_cannistra 3y ago

This is most definitely the case. It has also caused enormous problems for places where flooding was already a threat, by removing the natural buffering capabilities that places like wetlands have. In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this.

schiffern 3y ago
> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.
- tony_cannistra 3y ago
  I don't really know. I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds.
  - schiffern 3y ago
    Thanks. Hey it's a start! Village Homes in Davis has an interesting distributed stormwater system, which was specifically designed to maximize infiltration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_05oRQxssQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_05oRQxssQ
  - grogenaut 3y ago
    I'm out duck hunting right now and there's quite a lot of very very damp farmland in the Seattle/Tacoma/Everett metroplex. The river valley behind microsoft would be idiotic to build anything bu farms and golf courses on (and the golf course is unplayable half the year). The term colloidal substance describes these areas well. Also a ton of water retention areas on the hills, otherwise stuff would wash out very easily.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds. I can think of some spots where four or five adjacent suburban developments will all have their own pond/catchment tucked away, although their appearance and attractiveness varies.
  - VintageCool 3y ago
    I love to bike around the city and listen to the frogs in the Stormwater Ponds.
- pixl97 3y ago
  So the answer to this is HOA's.... Um, what? you say. So here in the hill country of Texas housing developments/cities need to build so many feet of storage retention ponds per house built and impermeable roadway laid. Depending on the size of the development these are decently sizes structures and an off the cuff guess on costs is between 500k and a few million (+lost land to build more houses on) so it's a sizeable expense of developing. Cities themselves don't want to pay for and maintain these structures so they instead farm it off to a MUD/PUD. https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=227010 https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=22701... The MUD wraps up the expense of the roads, things like this water settlement area, and pools and puts the expenses on an HOA.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    By now, I assume everywhere in the developed world requires retention ponds to be built to offset whatever land gets paved and/or is no longer permeable due to development. Usually among the most costly line items of construction.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Litost 3y ago
  This drain, drain, faster faster is a question I've been keen to get to the bottom off as I live in an area covered by upcoming River Thames Scheme to help prevent flooding. As I'm doing a rewilding course I wanted to find out how much natural flood management techniques they were using as nature's solution is to generally hold water as long as possible in the landscape to slow down peak flow, as peak flow is generally what causes the worst flooding events. This also has knock on benefits helping mitigate pollution and soil erosion etc. I've been to two consultations and am still none the wiser, though I've another consultation to go to. Whether this is tree/vegetation cover or beavers (despite being in the middle of surburban sprawl, Ealing have secured funding for beavers as a potentially cheaper solution than hard infrastructure for flood mitigation and a significant amount of the beaver costs were the fencing to keep them in despite England having some wild beavers). Similarly I've seen the Pennine Way in the South Pennines turn into a fast flowing stream during one period of wet weather due to the inability of the land to hold all the water and houses there get flooded as well. Obviously the clash here is between the human and natural ways of doing things, building static houses on floodplains doesn't fit with more chaotic natural solutions in a dynamicly changing landscape with increasingly erratic weather patterns...
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  At least recently there are a lot of projects in various places to essentially build long pipe tunnels to hold water for treatment in storms and not overwhelm treatment plants. DC is building one, London is building one, Paris is building one to make the Seine swimmable for the Olympics, etc.
iambateman 3y ago
“A field exists to mitigate this” is a great way to end that comment. :)
Log_out_ 3y ago
It's In huge troubles as the old models do not hold up against new realities and all incentives are aligned against acknowledging that. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/floods-then-and-now-photographs-germany-ahr-valley-flooding-disaster-july-2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/floods-then-an... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65632655 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65632655 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/europe/greece-floods-storm-rescue-climate-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/europe/greece-floods-stor... https://www.climatechangepost.com/austria/river-floods/ https://www.climatechangepost.com/austria/river-floods/ The again, neither insurance nor building pricing wants to reflect the new reality. A whole generation has invested "safe" in buildings and companies along "virtual flash flood funels" and embracing truth is like accepting your life's saving burning away. One wonders when the first realistic model based tax write off ahead of time goes to court and pokes a hole into that reality. As in "I pay no taxes for what is most likely destroyed over the next ten years and will repay if it doesn't happen"..

explaininjs 3y ago

> much like we remember our grandparents for leaded gasoline and DDT What? I associate DDT and leaded gasoline with my grandparents not-at-all. Is anyone here really holding their grandparents feet to the fire over these?

woodruffw 3y ago
I don’t literally associate my grandparents with leaded gasoline. It was meant to be metonymic.
- explaininjs 3y ago
  I don’t think dissolving the blame is particularly helpful here. A minuscule number of individuals had full control over the use and knowledge of the impact of leaded gasoline, and everyone else had absolutely none. For 99.999% of folks those people have no relation to their grandparents, and “blaming” an entire generation for the malice of a few is ill guided at best.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Blame is your phrasing, not mine. I agree with your point about knowledge and agency; I think future generations will look back on us with disbelief and shock at our shortsightedness, not blame.
    - grogenaut 3y ago
      Then when they're 50 they'll look back on stuff they thought was fine when they were young, and is bad now. If they're introspective they'll look at the stuff that their parents or grand parents or further back thought was fine and turned out to be bad. As people say, it's easy with hindsight and it's really hard in the moment. Many second and third order effects aren't obvious or testable. Then add profit motive. The real question is do you change when you realize you were wrong or double down.
  - 0xfae 3y ago

woah 3y ago

It's simply not possible for many families to live in the cramped environments of a city. How am I going to pick up 12 gallons of milk on my weekly grocery shopping trip without a pickup truck? That's about 125lb of milk. Not going to be able to get that onto a fixie in the city. How am I going to park the truck without a garage? The garage needs 3 spaces, one for the truck, one for the car, and one for my garage refrigerator to hold the 12 gallons of milk. You're not going to find a house with a 3 car garage that hasn't been built on marshland. Sites like this one like to browbeat hardworking Americans, but the reality is that not everyone can live an eco-friendly lifestyle. I'm not sure what the solution is but shaming people isn't it.

maeil 3y ago
The reality is that the rest of the developed world manages just fine living in houses without such garages, driving smaller cars. And having a family isn't a uniquely American concept. Of course everyone can live an eco-friendly lifestyle; for all but a tiny speck of human existence, everyone did indeed do so, and the majority of people on the earth actually still do so to a reasonable extent. It's not a "not everyone can" or "not possible", it's a "not everyone wants to".
bobthepanda 3y ago
usually, when people are promoting alternatives to the car, these things need not be in exclusion to the car. In general, when a road is over a hundred feet wide, it is really not a big deal to provide an additional twelve feet for an ADA sidewalk, and maybe another twelve for a bike lane with more protection than a strip of fading paint. the American car dependent lifestyle has mostly happened by making other lifestyles impossible. In other places you don't buy your milk for the whole week in one go, there are convenient supermarkets where you can walk in and out on your way to and from work on foot or public transport, so stopping in more frequently is a lot easier if you're not driving 15-20 minutes on arterial roads to the big box store. In most of America, it is illegal to open even slightly smaller grocery stores in areas outside big box arterial roads.
woodruffw 3y ago
There's no shame in my statement. The US isn't the only country in the world with big families; there's seemingly nothing exceptional about us (in that regard) that requires the pickup truck and 3-space garage where other countries get along fine. Part of the reason they get along fine is because they allow grocery stores to be built on residential corners, so that you buy 3 gallons of milk every other night on your way home rather than driving X miles to load up weekly.

belorn 3y ago

How much of that swamp, marsh, and wetlands was drained in order to enable/improve farming and forestry? To me this has less to do with living patterns and more to do with commercial exploitation of land. I am unsure how much of a reduction in draining we would see if we remove cars and roads from the equation. Looking at Sweden, there was a major movement in the last century to drain wetlands in order to improve timber production. This forestry policy is argued to currently produce about 1/4 of all green house gases released in this region, and a major cause to lower ecological diversity.

woodruffw 3y ago
Much, much more. Industrial-scale agriculture is by far one of the most devastating things that humans do to the environment; my focus on roads wasn't meant to imply otherwise. (The larger observation is that, while we use more land for agriculture than we need, there is at least a prima facie argument that industrial agriculture feeds our planet. Whereas a 6 lane highway through a drained wetland to a low-density suburb does very little for our planet.)
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Not all agriculture even feeds the planet. E.g. cotton grown in the central valley of california makes its way to mexico to become budget metal spring mattresses. Does the world need more metal/wood/cotton boxes that end up on the side of the road at some point in their lifetime? State economic planners seem to think so at least.
scythe 3y ago
A lot of farming would not be viable without roads. It's something of a blind men and the elephant question. Roads weren't originally developed for cars; the US Constitution prescribed the authority to build roads for the postal service. Roads, especially paved roads, make it possible to send fresh produce to markets in cities hundreds of miles away, to collect grains at mills, and to distribute and maintain farm equipment. In warm regions, wetlands were also drained to control malaria, particularly in Brazil and the American South.

engineer_22 3y ago

USA has plentiful water resources. Engineering practices in new development and redevelopment have adapted to prioritize retention of stormwater. We have some of the finest and most sophisticated hydraulic engineering in the history of the world, be happy for what you've got.

woodruffw 3y ago
All three of "we have plentiful water resources," "we have advanced ground- and storm-water management systems," and "we are disastrously compromising our water resources" can be simultaneously true. I'm exceedingly thankful for my high quality of life. I would like my grandchildren to share a similar quality of life.
- engineer_22 3y ago
  Since you're a fellow New Yorker, I'm also puzzled how you conclude there is a water scarcity problem? My first reaction was that you might be living in a water-stressed area. I'm sorry if my first comment sounds trite, it wasn't my intention. (Maybe I have social media fatigue?)

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

EnigmaFlare 3y ago

There's a trade-off between preserving the environment and having human development. We already remember our grandparents for the contributions they made to human development. Our lives are vastly better now because of it. Future generations will also benefit from our contributions, including the things we did using roads. They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential. We can always get water from other places if we pay more, and we can afford to pay more because of all the technology we're gaining.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
woodruffw 3y ago
> They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential. I think most of the Great Plains disagrees[1]. I'm pro-technology and pro-development. But I don't think we should kid ourselves about what we have, and about the limits of our ability to geo-engineer ourselves into global homeostasis, versus out of it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
DoughnutHole 3y ago
I don’t think vast suburban single family home housing developments, big box store parking lots and Wendys drive thrus are the drivers of technological development you’re making them out to be. The overwhelming majority of environmental degradation is not being caused by cutting edge technological development. Wasteful and destructive development patterns are not what’s driving technological growth.
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  I'd say they're interconnected. Quality of life may help people be more productive or attract more productive people. Plenty of technology goes into consumer goods and services, and is sort of what the whole point of technological development is - making people's lives better. Also, the car industry was/is full of cutting edge technology and was enhanced by car-friendly housing and roads. It was a major factor in America industrializing in the first place.

sandworm101 3y ago

Whether it is car, bus, train, Uber or hovercar, we will still need roads. Until personal jetpacks and flying school busses are a thing, the road issue is totally divorced from the type and environmental impact of vehicles driving upon the. Some form of road will be there regardless of the means, or even the amount of traffic, so long as a connection is needed.

woodruffw 3y ago
Of course we need roads. We just don't need all of the roads we currently have; many could be (and were, until very recently) eminently more sustainable forms of mass transit. Similarly, many of our roads could be narrowed and augmented to induce demand away from unsustainable development patterns.
kuhewa 3y ago
DDT in very particular situations has also been a net positive. It's really the widespread indiscriminate use of it in nature areas and dumping it by the ton into municipal sewers that caused the terrible ecological outcomes. Similarly, organising ourselves into sprawling suburbs (rather than higher density cities with sparse rural communities and nature areas in between) was ecologically, the less optimal deployment of roads.
dangus 3y ago
The thing is that we choose the amount and type of traffic and therefore the physical size and area of our roads by planning choices that induce behavior. “We will still need roads” is true, but the amount and size of those roads are important details. Not all roads are created equal - just ask your local bike path how many animals were killed in collisions.
frabbit 3y ago
Of course roads are needed. But there are at least two problems with such a deceptively simple statement: 1) Road construction is constantly expanding. They create their own demand by diverting resources away from many things including affordable housing -- the number of people I know that commute for over an hour because they cannot afford to live near their work is non-negligible. At some point this becomes a planning/resource issue and at the moment the decision is to carry on as usual with a system that is causing major problems. 2) The amount of traffic makes a huge difference. It is well documented that roads create ecological bubbles affecting animal populations negatively. The speed and frequencey of the traffic (type of vehicle) makes a difference.

k99x55 3y ago

"Traffication: How Cars Destroy Nature and What We Can Do About It" excellent book on ecological damage caused by traffication. Some insights: * traffic noise (soundscape pollution) is actually suspected to be the biggest ecological destructor affecting all levels of life from insects, to birds, to mammals. * Traffic-related noise accounts for over 1 million healthy years of life lost annually to ill health, disability or early death in the western countries in the WHO European Region. (a) a) https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/30-03-2011-new-evidence-from-who-on-health-effects-of-traffic-related-noise-in-europe https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/30-03-2011-new-evidence...

frabbit 3y ago
That was one of the things I actually liked about Covid lockdowns: the absence of the constant, distant noise of cars and trucks.