5 ms·

OK. What are some ecologically unimportant places in England? Somewhere I could throw up a nuclear power plant without anyone raising a fuss.

wbl 2mo ago
Slough
- doublerabbit 2mo ago
  Swindon? They do have the magic roundabout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
- ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
  Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now
tomasphan 2mo ago
Birmingham?
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  Can you be more precise? Like an actual area on the map. Because when I look at England's map of greenbelt areas [1] literally everything around Birmingham is protected. [1] https://www.cpre.org.uk/interactive-map-of-englands-green-belt-land/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23515607255&gbraid=0AAAAAD1iFi7LQzVFV0S8n9a_3px9wTHN_&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkOvTBhDgARIsAKUNyRs6TpZefzB-wleJewbfP_NcvLq8pxDbi3q035GaYvW5x1PWc_pCToMaAiqFEALw_wcB https://www.cpre.org.uk/interactive-map-of-englands-green-be...
  - smallerize 2mo ago
    I think they were joking. In a literal sense, cities require green spaces for water management. Otherwise you end up like Chicago where they paved everything and flood constantly.
    - tptacek 2mo ago
      I mean, not really, right? Permeability would help, but the first and second principal components of our flooding situation are the fact that we're built on a flat swamp, so water has no natural place to go, and we're built around an undersized combined sewer system that would be dazzlingly expensive to replace.
  - pm215 2mo ago
    Green belt areas mostly are not markers of ecologically important areas. They're a planning tool that largely exists to prevent urban sprawl. A lot of the green belt area is unremarkable commercial agricultural land.
    - Gibbon1 2mo ago
      Once you crush the red and blue pills and snort them you can't unsee the environmental damage of agriculture.
pm215 2mo ago
I think here it's worth distinguishing between actually ecologically important, and the ability of campaigners to raise environmental arguments to try to prevent development when their underlying reason is something else (i.e. not wanting a nuclear plant in their back yard). There are definitely ecologically unimportant places in England, but it's almost certain that if you try to put a power station there somebody will raise an environmental concern anyway. This will probably eventually be dismissed, but you can gum up the works procedurally for a pretty long time.
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  I mean that's my point, if the campaigners are not willing to be honest about ranking the places they actually care about beforehand (and occasionally letting a project happen), I'm not going to listen to anything they do say.
  - pm215 2mo ago
    You started here with "associated with the environmental movement". That's not the same as everyone campaigning on a local issue who puts "environmental issues" into their big list of why some local development shouldn't happen: most of those people aren't associated with the environmental movement at all. I guess my point is that I think the problem is nimbies, not environmentalists, and since I think we need a faster and cheaper planning system in the UK I think it's important to identify the actual problem. Getting the Campaign to Protect Rural England or whoever to produce a ranking of places by importance does nothing if we still have a system where local residents can raise objections about building on locations at the bottom of the ranking and it takes forever to push something through.
    - arjie 2mo ago
      Sure, the environmentalism movement has sufficient independent organizations such that each of them can protest some site as environmentally sensitive while the others stay quiet. I'm sure some would conclude that this position of universally banning any human development everywhere is a pure accident and that distributed agreement to do so has no evidence of systematic coordination. I can believe there is no systematic coordination across these organizations, but if I had to meet someone in San Francisco and I knew nothing about where and there was no way to coordinate, I think we'd both end up in front of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
Ekaros 2mo ago
City of London? Does it have much ecology left? Then again I suppose too many people would raise a fuss...
ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
Anywhere in London would be good. There's nothing else worthwhile there.
graemep 2mo ago
Salford

wbl 2mo ago

Slough

doublerabbit 2mo ago
Swindon? They do have the magic roundabout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now

tomasphan 2mo ago

Birmingham?

bpodgursky 2mo ago
Can you be more precise? Like an actual area on the map. Because when I look at England's map of greenbelt areas [1] literally everything around Birmingham is protected. [1] https://www.cpre.org.uk/interactive-map-of-englands-green-belt-land/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23515607255&gbraid=0AAAAAD1iFi7LQzVFV0S8n9a_3px9wTHN_&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkOvTBhDgARIsAKUNyRs6TpZefzB-wleJewbfP_NcvLq8pxDbi3q035GaYvW5x1PWc_pCToMaAiqFEALw_wcB https://www.cpre.org.uk/interactive-map-of-englands-green-be...
- smallerize 2mo ago
  I think they were joking. In a literal sense, cities require green spaces for water management. Otherwise you end up like Chicago where they paved everything and flood constantly.
  - tptacek 2mo ago
    I mean, not really, right? Permeability would help, but the first and second principal components of our flooding situation are the fact that we're built on a flat swamp, so water has no natural place to go, and we're built around an undersized combined sewer system that would be dazzlingly expensive to replace.
- pm215 2mo ago
  Green belt areas mostly are not markers of ecologically important areas. They're a planning tool that largely exists to prevent urban sprawl. A lot of the green belt area is unremarkable commercial agricultural land.
  - Gibbon1 2mo ago
    Once you crush the red and blue pills and snort them you can't unsee the environmental damage of agriculture.

pm215 2mo ago

I think here it's worth distinguishing between actually ecologically important, and the ability of campaigners to raise environmental arguments to try to prevent development when their underlying reason is something else (i.e. not wanting a nuclear plant in their back yard). There are definitely ecologically unimportant places in England, but it's almost certain that if you try to put a power station there somebody will raise an environmental concern anyway. This will probably eventually be dismissed, but you can gum up the works procedurally for a pretty long time.

bpodgursky 2mo ago
I mean that's my point, if the campaigners are not willing to be honest about ranking the places they actually care about beforehand (and occasionally letting a project happen), I'm not going to listen to anything they do say.
- pm215 2mo ago
  You started here with "associated with the environmental movement". That's not the same as everyone campaigning on a local issue who puts "environmental issues" into their big list of why some local development shouldn't happen: most of those people aren't associated with the environmental movement at all. I guess my point is that I think the problem is nimbies, not environmentalists, and since I think we need a faster and cheaper planning system in the UK I think it's important to identify the actual problem. Getting the Campaign to Protect Rural England or whoever to produce a ranking of places by importance does nothing if we still have a system where local residents can raise objections about building on locations at the bottom of the ranking and it takes forever to push something through.
  - arjie 2mo ago
    Sure, the environmentalism movement has sufficient independent organizations such that each of them can protest some site as environmentally sensitive while the others stay quiet. I'm sure some would conclude that this position of universally banning any human development everywhere is a pure accident and that distributed agreement to do so has no evidence of systematic coordination. I can believe there is no systematic coordination across these organizations, but if I had to meet someone in San Francisco and I knew nothing about where and there was no way to coordinate, I think we'd both end up in front of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

Ekaros 2mo ago

City of London? Does it have much ecology left? Then again I suppose too many people would raise a fuss...

ErroneousBosh 2mo ago

Anywhere in London would be good. There's nothing else worthwhile there.

graemep 2mo ago

Salford