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I've sometimes wondered whether arid parts of the American Southwest could, through the right kind of permaculture interventions, support more biological carbon
by abeppu 2y ago
I've sometimes wondered whether arid parts of the American Southwest could, through the right kind of permaculture interventions, support more biological carbon sequestration, more plant life, drive development of richer soil etc. But I suspect if you said "we're gonna use this big section of BLM land to incrementally try to keep water in the landscape, and introduce a sequence of plant species that can increase carbon storage and soil cover" the immediate American political response would be "government overreach!" on one side and "what about threatened species X that thrives in the sparse desert?" on the other. And if you did get such a project approved, some elaborate supply chain would arise to provide plant seedlings at 10x the normal price and a consulting firm would be brought in for k million for a plan to administer the project, and the ratio of humans getting paid for the project to acres worked would be inexplicably high.
- dingnuts 2y ago[flagged]
- nullstyle 2y agoLooking at your posting history, you shouldn't be telling others how to spend their time on the internet.
- just_1_comment 2y agoI agree that theres no hope of such a project ever happening in the USA unless it’s on private land, and even then someone is going to object and sue to stop it for some shortsighted and probably selfish reason.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- emptysongglass 2y agoThat's kind of the point of democratic institutions, though: centralizing a lot of these directive powers leads to explosive efficiencies at the cost of liberty to, for example, surface objections as you illustrate. Or, more dramatically, throwing people who object into dark cells. That's how autocratic regimes can take on megaprojects without a lot of the red tape that leads to, for example, a paralytically slow rollout of Seattle light rail. You choose your poison.
- einpoklum 2y agoWouldn't you say the US is somewhat of an outlier w.r.t. government ability to undertake significant infrastructural projects?
- emptysongglass 2y agoAs someone who has lived pretty firmly in both parts of the West: no, not really. Denmark, where I live now, has the luxury of commanding massive taxes from its citizens to finance its projects, all while putting a pittance of its share to its military. Denmark is also much, much, smaller than the US so the red tape that would be apparent at the size of the US is less apparent at the size of 6 million people. We also overspend on grotesque, predatory contracting firms, just as the US does, to finance our public projects.
- einpoklum 2y ago> Denmark, where I live now, has the luxury of commanding massive taxes from its citizens to finance its projects, Well, so does the US - which is also able to do defict-spending much more easily due to the USD's role as a global reserve currency. But as you've pointed out, a huge part of it feeds the military-industrial complex - and that's a part (but not nearly the most important part) of how it struggles to expend on public infrastructure. Also, red tape is mostly not a per-capita thing; that kind of red tape is mostly in distributed execution rather than decision-making, legislation and such. But point taken regarding Danish overspending on predatory contractors.
- ainiriand 2y agoYou cannot choose much poison either in one side.
- oivey 2y agoThis isn’t the traditional thought process on this topic. Traditionally, it was thought that the ills of resource allocation under democracy were far outweighed by the automatic optimization of the free market. The Soviets did a lot to suggest that the free market was actually better than central planning. China is showing that with 21st century needs, technologies, and planning that may no longer be the case.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoProbably a lot easier to just cut down all the trees in the midwest and throw them into a deep ocean trench every few years than to go up against the activation energy you will face converting a desert environment into something presumably more wet and less hot. This isn’t Arrakis.
- cassepipe 2y agoCan you explain the tree-cutting rationale ? Wouldn't cutting all the trees have a masse effect that would lead to desertification ? i.e. can you pitch me your project :) ?
- toast0 2y agoHave you seen a lot that's been clear cut right after and then after 5/10/20 years? They've got some near me where they cut adjacent lots every so often and they're on a cycle to do it again after whatever the interval is. If you cut the whole thing down at once, yeah, maybe it won't come back. But if you do a reasonable section, it comes back alright. So, current management practices are only cut down what you need to produce lumber and other wood products and wood adjacent stuff; plus the extras that get cut and don't make it to the mill whatever. I think the proposal is to cut more, and drop them off into deep ocean where they won't decompose much. As trees grow, they turn environmental carbon dioxide (and other inputs) into wood, but an established forest is mostly steady state in carbon dioxide... cutting it down and depositing it into the ocean is a way to keep the existing carbon dioxide as wood and turn more carbon dioxide into new wood.
- mistermann 2y ago>response would be "government overreach!" on one side and "what about threatened species X that thrives in the sparse desert?" on the other. And if you did get such a project approved Maybe what is needed is a project to teach people how to think without making unforced errors. > some elaborate supply chain would arise to provide plant seedlings at 10x the normal price The beauty of it is, this one stone could kill many birds, even giant ones like this.
- _yb2s 2y agoI don’t think this would be a good idea… these areas are not the result of desertification but are naturally desert ecosystems. The only way to make them anything else would be to take even more water from bordering non desert areas, which are already severely impacted by all of the water taken to support huge cities and green lawns in the southwest deserts. For carbon storage it would make more sense to regrow forest in places that naturally have water and soil that support forest.
- tim333 2y agoRelated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951420 "We Can Terraform the American West"