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This is very true, but also the Native Americans didn't build their houses in the forest (for this reason). The white man likes to have his cabin in the woods.

This is very true, but also the Native Americans didn't build their houses in the forest (for this reason). The white man likes to have his cabin in the woods. This is perfectly fine in northern Europe and the NE U.S., because due to the different climate, wildfires aren't so common, and wood on the forest floor there is more prone to rot instead of burn. Now that there are so many cabins in the woods, there's probably an opportunity for a startup that makes robots to clear out the forest floor. The only problem is that the forest ecosystem has evolved to have periodic fires, but perhaps this is still the best of a series of bad options.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
All joking aside, there are tons of mitigation options for this, most of which wouldn't even require robots or startups, they just require the political will to allocate money to do a thing we know needs to be done. We don't need a company to do this. We can just say "to protect both our environment and tons of people who live in the forested areas most at risk, we need to implement a set of protection measures to mitigate the probability of disastrous fires." These can be some combination of clearing forest floors, probably revisiting construction guidelines for homes/businesses in these areas, and controlled burns in areas where that's required or necessary. But no. We do nothing, and people's homes continue to burn, and we dump yet more masses of CO2 into the atmosphere and waste thousands of trees, and of course a requisite number of human casualties. Ridiculous.
- callalex 3y ago
  > These can be some combination of clearing forest floors, probably revisiting construction guidelines for homes/businesses in these areas, and controlled burns in areas where that's required or necessary. But that’s communism! You bureaucrats can’t tell me what to do! (You may think I am straw-manning but this is based on real, actual conversations that I have had with real, actual people in rural California. There is a terrible brain rot that has ossified in “conservative” culture in rural America and at this point I don’t think anything can actually be done about it. These people will happily burn to death with an ignorant smile on their face.
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    The only problem is that then their heirs will sue PG&E and before long I'll have a $3000 electric bill.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    [flagged]
nick7376182 3y ago
The last thing I want to be scared of is a self-driving brush hog.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  When Fern Gully came out, were you hiding under the couch?

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

All joking aside, there are tons of mitigation options for this, most of which wouldn't even require robots or startups, they just require the political will to allocate money to do a thing we know needs to be done. We don't need a company to do this. We can just say "to protect both our environment and tons of people who live in the forested areas most at risk, we need to implement a set of protection measures to mitigate the probability of disastrous fires." These can be some combination of clearing forest floors, probably revisiting construction guidelines for homes/businesses in these areas, and controlled burns in areas where that's required or necessary. But no. We do nothing, and people's homes continue to burn, and we dump yet more masses of CO2 into the atmosphere and waste thousands of trees, and of course a requisite number of human casualties. Ridiculous.

callalex 3y ago
> These can be some combination of clearing forest floors, probably revisiting construction guidelines for homes/businesses in these areas, and controlled burns in areas where that's required or necessary. But that’s communism! You bureaucrats can’t tell me what to do! (You may think I am straw-manning but this is based on real, actual conversations that I have had with real, actual people in rural California. There is a terrible brain rot that has ossified in “conservative” culture in rural America and at this point I don’t think anything can actually be done about it. These people will happily burn to death with an ignorant smile on their face.
- cameldrv 3y ago
  The only problem is that then their heirs will sue PG&E and before long I'll have a $3000 electric bill.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  [flagged]

nick7376182 3y ago

The last thing I want to be scared of is a self-driving brush hog.

selimthegrim 3y ago
When Fern Gully came out, were you hiding under the couch?