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Yes don't get me started on this path. Draining marshes, improving soil, air conditioning and heat, levelling grades, dredging rivers. All capital and labor in

Yes don't get me started on this path. Draining marshes, improving soil, air conditioning and heat, levelling grades, dredging rivers. All capital and labor intensive. We can manage without destruction and it's enabled exponential population and economic growth in a virtuous cycle.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
I grew up in Florida. It was mostly a giant swamp. It has been turned into the world's largest concrete strip-mall. There's literally nothing natural left to see in Florida except a beach, and the small part of the Everglades they carved out as protected before it too got "developed". This result came about from initially using African slaves to work plantations and build wealth. That wealth (and labor) was then turned into political capital to create the state itself. Then the state was used to develop a real estate market to create/centralize more wealth. WWII created even more development, bringing in the core of engineers to 'terraform' the land further. At each stage of increased development, a different natural habitat was destroyed in order to create an artificial one to enable generating wealth for a select few. Native people were killed or driven off the land. Wetlands were destroyed, habitats and native species were razed and paved over, waterways were poisoned, and agricultural runoff created environmental disasters in the rivers, bays, and ocean. A vast number of invasive species were introduced which out-competed and eliminated many native species, and we are still battling to keep them under control. There are many superfund and other sites of long-term ecological damage. Drinking water is quickly becoming scarce due to the lowering of the water table. Mining pools are still infiltrating environments causing more damage. And of course, global climate change is exacerbating every single problem, plus adding erosion and elimination of land used for housing. But hey, it's a virtuous cycle, right? We can manage without destruction, right? Just keep growing exponentially. At some point we'll clean up all those superfund sites, and figure out how to stop the red tides, and giant heat-sinks of concrete and asphalt that create microclimates that eliminate native species, and figure out where to put trash once all the landfill sites are gone soon, and somehow rid the Everglades of all the boa constrictors and invasive plants, and somehow we'll catch all the green parrots out-competing native birds. And we will have to use this author's idea of desalination, since the fresh water table will be gone by then. It'll all be fine. Once we figure out how to stop killing everything. Sometime in the future. Let's just not worry about that though. Onward and upward.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  We are debating the past practices of our own ancestors, without which we wouldn't be here. We shouldn't abandon civic projects and land development just because it was poorly done. It can be done well and it should.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

I grew up in Florida. It was mostly a giant swamp. It has been turned into the world's largest concrete strip-mall. There's literally nothing natural left to see in Florida except a beach, and the small part of the Everglades they carved out as protected before it too got "developed". This result came about from initially using African slaves to work plantations and build wealth. That wealth (and labor) was then turned into political capital to create the state itself. Then the state was used to develop a real estate market to create/centralize more wealth. WWII created even more development, bringing in the core of engineers to 'terraform' the land further. At each stage of increased development, a different natural habitat was destroyed in order to create an artificial one to enable generating wealth for a select few. Native people were killed or driven off the land. Wetlands were destroyed, habitats and native species were razed and paved over, waterways were poisoned, and agricultural runoff created environmental disasters in the rivers, bays, and ocean. A vast number of invasive species were introduced which out-competed and eliminated many native species, and we are still battling to keep them under control. There are many superfund and other sites of long-term ecological damage. Drinking water is quickly becoming scarce due to the lowering of the water table. Mining pools are still infiltrating environments causing more damage. And of course, global climate change is exacerbating every single problem, plus adding erosion and elimination of land used for housing. But hey, it's a virtuous cycle, right? We can manage without destruction, right? Just keep growing exponentially. At some point we'll clean up all those superfund sites, and figure out how to stop the red tides, and giant heat-sinks of concrete and asphalt that create microclimates that eliminate native species, and figure out where to put trash once all the landfill sites are gone soon, and somehow rid the Everglades of all the boa constrictors and invasive plants, and somehow we'll catch all the green parrots out-competing native birds. And we will have to use this author's idea of desalination, since the fresh water table will be gone by then. It'll all be fine. Once we figure out how to stop killing everything. Sometime in the future. Let's just not worry about that though. Onward and upward.

jvanderbot 2y ago
We are debating the past practices of our own ancestors, without which we wouldn't be here. We shouldn't abandon civic projects and land development just because it was poorly done. It can be done well and it should.