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Electricity generated from wind and solar with some wires to the dredge would be way easier than dredging by hand. Why do many environmental activists seem to

Electricity generated from wind and solar with some wires to the dredge would be way easier than dredging by hand. Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. The historical aspects of this article are a good read though. Very interesting technology.

retired 1mo ago
I kinda like the idea of using prison labour for environmentally friendly dredging. But The Netherlands abolish prison slave labour in 2021 so that is no longer possible.
- thangalin 1mo ago
  https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-role-dutch-criminal-justice-system-study-finds https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-rol... "People from minority groups are relatively more often suspected of crimes that are more likely to end in a prison sentence. There is also a higher average number of charges against people from minority groups. On the socio-economic scale, people with an immigration background are more likely to be in vulnerable positions with lower education levels. "The origin of a suspect influences the outcomes of the criminal proceedings against them. 'This may indicate conscious or unconscious discrimination, which goes against the principle of the rule of law, in which everyone has an equal chance of fair treatment,' the researchers said."
  - test6554 1mo ago
    It seems like someone with an immigration background should have to go through an on-boarding period where a new arrival takes part in community service and is immersed with civic-minded people and good citizens rather than just heading straight for the slums to fend for themselves and live among the sorts of people who will be a bad influence on them.
    - kelseyfrog 1mo ago
      How would that lower the rate at which immigrants are suspected of crimes?
  - retired 1mo ago
    If you adjust for socio-economic factors then migrants are just as criminal as the rest of the population. https://nos.nl/artikel/2621324-percentage-asielmigranten-verdacht-van-criminaliteit-blijft-stabiel https://nos.nl/artikel/2621324-percentage-asielmigranten-ver...
    - JuniperMesos 1mo ago
      Why should you adjust for socio-economic factors though? Migrants coming to a new country where they score systematically worse on some kind of socio-economic metric, and then systematically committing more crime than the indigenous population, is bad for the indigenous population regardless.
      - lejalv 1mo ago
        Somebody would have to drive the buses and wait the tables. You're making it appear as if immigrants appeared out of thin air to occupy a social position. But the receiving country needs them, because their population is too old, too lazy, too greedy, or all three. It's very useful to have a disenfranchised underclass of immigrants to keep your own working class in check. Bonus points if you convince the latter that the source of all evil is the former. 101 capitalism, and it has worked with you.
    - fsckboy 1mo ago
      that study was specifically "asylum seekers" which is not migrants taken as a whole. isn't the migrant population substantially higher than the asylum population?
- wormius 1mo ago
  oh look a greenbrown
intrasight 1mo ago
I read the whole article figuring that the question in the title would be answered. Like you enjoyed the history but was frustrated by the fact that the question was never addressed.
Moosdijk 1mo ago
>some wires. Id look into that statement some more if I were you: There’s much difficulty building houses and starting industry because the net is congested. As always: if it’s as easy as a random commenter suggests, it’s probably not that easy.
- jeffbee 1mo ago
  Whenever wires don't make sense, as is the case for aircraft, synthetic liquid fuels can make sense. In a world where the inputs are free, the inefficiency of the process is not relevant.
  - fragmede 1mo ago
    Power-to-Liquids (PtL) have air as inputs, but that doesn't make them free. There's a high capex requirement to create the processing plants, and then the energy required to run them isn't free either.
    - fsckboy 1mo ago
      >then the energy required to run them isn't free either i think his point was that if you are in a remote location with solar and or wind power, the power is free because you can't do anything else with it (without transmission lines)
      - fragmede 1mo ago
        So apparently what you can do with that, is mine Bitcoin. This is a thing that happened. Which is fucked but that's a whole other discussion.
- VintageCool 1mo ago
  I think that's because we've made it politically difficult to build transmission. In the United States, you have to get approval from every jurisdiction and landowner along the route, so valuable transmission lines are politically impossible to build. (See: SOO Green, Grain Belt Express, BECI, other planned lines). Oil and gas pipelines are centrally approved by FERC, so there is no such difficulty. It doesn't have to be so difficult to build transmission, and it would unlock a lot of wind and solar development.
TacticalCoder 1mo ago
> Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. So do care about the environment but many "green" activists do not care at all for the environment: for those it's just another version of communism. They want to crush the notion of the individual: they cannot understand the notion of a free, happy, individual. They're rather have unhappy people united in communism, living miserably like under the USSR, than having a more advanced, richer, country if more advanced and richer means people are free. Many don't care a yota about the environment: it's just an excuse to try to remove freedom from others.
onraglanroad 1mo ago
> Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. They don't. That's fossil fuel propoganda that you've fallen for and are now spreading. In reality fossil fuel is crap and we don't need it.
- fragmede 1mo ago
  They do, because "greens" being anti-nuclear isn't just a fossil fuel talking point. We could have had widely deployed fission power by now, but politicing against it, in which greens were complicit in, managed to stall that out. While it was stalled out, perfect being the enemy of the good, guess which coal and oil plants ran in the meantime‽
  - hvb2 1mo ago
    The biggest blocker to nuclear in most places is that it needs the backing of a country in order to be built. The financial risk is just to big. Pair this with their decade+ timeline and you have a mix that means that it's a long term goal. Us as voters have made long term goals unfeasible, we mostly run after what was in the news yesterday.
    - cucumber3732842 1mo ago
      >The biggest blocker to nuclear in most places is that it needs the backing of a country in order to be built. And who was complicit in creating that state of affairs? Why did this technology not trickle down from the nation state to the enterprise and eventually the everyman the way that the material technologies of electronics and aerospace, the other high technologies of the time, did?
      - hvb2 1mo ago
        > And who was complicit in creating that state of affairs? Financial institutions? Because the issue is getting a loan for say 8 billion that you might start repaying 10 to 15 years from now assuming it all pans out. As much as you want to blame people for this, I don't think that's really the biggest reason. Most projects don't even get off the ground as the political will to back it is missing. > Why did this technology not trickle down from the nation state to the enterprise and eventually the everyman Uh, the cold war, nuclear proliferation etcetera. And I would argue that makes a lot of sense, even today.
black_puppydog 1mo ago
Well, for a techno-utopian perspective, a page called "Low Tech Magazine" might not be the right place to search. :) Besides, the page linked is actually powered entirely by solar panels, although intentionally not battery backed in this instance.
metalman 1mo ago
Many enviromentalists want to move past the enshitified present, and get a place where responsibly utilised technologys can be maintained ,repaired and modified. Doing repair and maintenance to a wide variety of equipment from many different erras, while building new things is part of my life.I am getting most of my energy from solar and renewable sources, but with engines for more energy intensive things like welding and transportation so thinking about ways to reasonably move forward has me very interested in electric battery cars,trucks,boats,airplanes,tractors and the rest, like megga massive earth moving equipment or say a dredge, which is where we agree, but it has to be a thing that is intuitive to operate and fix, reliable, and reasonably safe, but not priced so high that only capital can own it, this last bit is the part that makes the past atractive, as it is a place where if nothing else, people had agency as the default.VS the nagging nanny nightmare of enshitification and bieng institutionalised in there own skin.
chermi 1mo ago
1) they don't know what the past was like 2) they don't actually think humans deserve what we have 3) technology isn't natural, somehow

retired 1mo ago

I kinda like the idea of using prison labour for environmentally friendly dredging. But The Netherlands abolish prison slave labour in 2021 so that is no longer possible.

thangalin 1mo ago
https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-role-dutch-criminal-justice-system-study-finds https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-rol... "People from minority groups are relatively more often suspected of crimes that are more likely to end in a prison sentence. There is also a higher average number of charges against people from minority groups. On the socio-economic scale, people with an immigration background are more likely to be in vulnerable positions with lower education levels. "The origin of a suspect influences the outcomes of the criminal proceedings against them. 'This may indicate conscious or unconscious discrimination, which goes against the principle of the rule of law, in which everyone has an equal chance of fair treatment,' the researchers said."
- test6554 1mo ago
  It seems like someone with an immigration background should have to go through an on-boarding period where a new arrival takes part in community service and is immersed with civic-minded people and good citizens rather than just heading straight for the slums to fend for themselves and live among the sorts of people who will be a bad influence on them.
  - kelseyfrog 1mo ago
    How would that lower the rate at which immigrants are suspected of crimes?
- retired 1mo ago
  If you adjust for socio-economic factors then migrants are just as criminal as the rest of the population. https://nos.nl/artikel/2621324-percentage-asielmigranten-verdacht-van-criminaliteit-blijft-stabiel https://nos.nl/artikel/2621324-percentage-asielmigranten-ver...
  - JuniperMesos 1mo ago
    Why should you adjust for socio-economic factors though? Migrants coming to a new country where they score systematically worse on some kind of socio-economic metric, and then systematically committing more crime than the indigenous population, is bad for the indigenous population regardless.
    - lejalv 1mo ago
      Somebody would have to drive the buses and wait the tables. You're making it appear as if immigrants appeared out of thin air to occupy a social position. But the receiving country needs them, because their population is too old, too lazy, too greedy, or all three. It's very useful to have a disenfranchised underclass of immigrants to keep your own working class in check. Bonus points if you convince the latter that the source of all evil is the former. 101 capitalism, and it has worked with you.
  - fsckboy 1mo ago
    that study was specifically "asylum seekers" which is not migrants taken as a whole. isn't the migrant population substantially higher than the asylum population?
wormius 1mo ago
oh look a greenbrown

intrasight 1mo ago

I read the whole article figuring that the question in the title would be answered. Like you enjoyed the history but was frustrated by the fact that the question was never addressed.

Moosdijk 1mo ago

>some wires. Id look into that statement some more if I were you: There’s much difficulty building houses and starting industry because the net is congested. As always: if it’s as easy as a random commenter suggests, it’s probably not that easy.

jeffbee 1mo ago
Whenever wires don't make sense, as is the case for aircraft, synthetic liquid fuels can make sense. In a world where the inputs are free, the inefficiency of the process is not relevant.
- fragmede 1mo ago
  Power-to-Liquids (PtL) have air as inputs, but that doesn't make them free. There's a high capex requirement to create the processing plants, and then the energy required to run them isn't free either.
  - fsckboy 1mo ago
    >then the energy required to run them isn't free either i think his point was that if you are in a remote location with solar and or wind power, the power is free because you can't do anything else with it (without transmission lines)
    - fragmede 1mo ago
      So apparently what you can do with that, is mine Bitcoin. This is a thing that happened. Which is fucked but that's a whole other discussion.
VintageCool 1mo ago
I think that's because we've made it politically difficult to build transmission. In the United States, you have to get approval from every jurisdiction and landowner along the route, so valuable transmission lines are politically impossible to build. (See: SOO Green, Grain Belt Express, BECI, other planned lines). Oil and gas pipelines are centrally approved by FERC, so there is no such difficulty. It doesn't have to be so difficult to build transmission, and it would unlock a lot of wind and solar development.

TacticalCoder 1mo ago

> Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. So do care about the environment but many "green" activists do not care at all for the environment: for those it's just another version of communism. They want to crush the notion of the individual: they cannot understand the notion of a free, happy, individual. They're rather have unhappy people united in communism, living miserably like under the USSR, than having a more advanced, richer, country if more advanced and richer means people are free. Many don't care a yota about the environment: it's just an excuse to try to remove freedom from others.

onraglanroad 1mo ago

> Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. They don't. That's fossil fuel propoganda that you've fallen for and are now spreading. In reality fossil fuel is crap and we don't need it.

fragmede 1mo ago
They do, because "greens" being anti-nuclear isn't just a fossil fuel talking point. We could have had widely deployed fission power by now, but politicing against it, in which greens were complicit in, managed to stall that out. While it was stalled out, perfect being the enemy of the good, guess which coal and oil plants ran in the meantime‽
- hvb2 1mo ago
  The biggest blocker to nuclear in most places is that it needs the backing of a country in order to be built. The financial risk is just to big. Pair this with their decade+ timeline and you have a mix that means that it's a long term goal. Us as voters have made long term goals unfeasible, we mostly run after what was in the news yesterday.
  - cucumber3732842 1mo ago
    >The biggest blocker to nuclear in most places is that it needs the backing of a country in order to be built. And who was complicit in creating that state of affairs? Why did this technology not trickle down from the nation state to the enterprise and eventually the everyman the way that the material technologies of electronics and aerospace, the other high technologies of the time, did?
    - hvb2 1mo ago
      > And who was complicit in creating that state of affairs? Financial institutions? Because the issue is getting a loan for say 8 billion that you might start repaying 10 to 15 years from now assuming it all pans out. As much as you want to blame people for this, I don't think that's really the biggest reason. Most projects don't even get off the ground as the political will to back it is missing. > Why did this technology not trickle down from the nation state to the enterprise and eventually the everyman Uh, the cold war, nuclear proliferation etcetera. And I would argue that makes a lot of sense, even today.

black_puppydog 1mo ago

Well, for a techno-utopian perspective, a page called "Low Tech Magazine" might not be the right place to search. :) Besides, the page linked is actually powered entirely by solar panels, although intentionally not battery backed in this instance.

metalman 1mo ago

Many enviromentalists want to move past the enshitified present, and get a place where responsibly utilised technologys can be maintained ,repaired and modified. Doing repair and maintenance to a wide variety of equipment from many different erras, while building new things is part of my life.I am getting most of my energy from solar and renewable sources, but with engines for more energy intensive things like welding and transportation so thinking about ways to reasonably move forward has me very interested in electric battery cars,trucks,boats,airplanes,tractors and the rest, like megga massive earth moving equipment or say a dredge, which is where we agree, but it has to be a thing that is intuitive to operate and fix, reliable, and reasonably safe, but not priced so high that only capital can own it, this last bit is the part that makes the past atractive, as it is a place where if nothing else, people had agency as the default.VS the nagging nanny nightmare of enshitification and bieng institutionalised in there own skin.

chermi 1mo ago

1) they don't know what the past was like 2) they don't actually think humans deserve what we have 3) technology isn't natural, somehow