Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, packing people into cities like sardines will help save the world from climate change. But even progressives are hesitating to support this latest climate initiative.
Denser cities could be a climate boon – but nimbyism stands in the way
Drawing people into cities could cut emissions and combat housing crises. But even progressives are hard to convince
In San Francisco’s Sunset District, rows and rows of pastel-colored, two-storey homes flow from the edge of Golden Gate park into the sand dunes of Ocean Beach. Many houses here have solar panels on their roofs and compost bins at their driveways, flanked by hybrid and electric cars.
Yet here – and all over this city – one major solution to both the housing crisis and the climate crisis has been met with fierce resistance: building more.
Climate scientists and urban planners increasingly suggest that one of the most impactful ways to slash greenhouse gas emissions is to make cities denser. This change, scientists have calculated, is even more impactful than installing solar panels on all new constructions or retrofitting old buildings with energy-saving technologies. Residents of cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Minneapolis already have much lower carbon footprints than in the surrounding suburban sprawl. City dwellers tend to have smaller apartments that require less energy to heat and cool.
But it also means a certain American way of life may have to end.
…
At a national level, Joe Biden has called for a “historic investment” in affordable housing, with his administration urging cities to change zoning laws to boost density and limit single-family housing developments, as well as rip up highways that have cleaved apart communities, typically communities of color, and added to air pollution.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/22/cities-climate-change-dense-sprawl-yimby-nimby
Is it just me, or does anyone else think some climate activists act like they hate the idea of any personal contact with nature? At least with suburbs, houses with backyards, there is room for kids to play on grass lawns, maybe plant a few fruit trees between the houses, to share the space with the local wildlife. High density housing not so much.
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Just the contrast will be right, open the cities for better air exchange. look for cold air flows from outsides to line the streets along.
Of course they want more people in cities. The UN and 179 nations created a plan to foster that movement. And of course — it will solve all climate problems … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkM0W1401dg
It’s also the policy of the US Democrat Party. Oregon led the way in ending single family dwelling zoning. The suburbs must die!
The Chinese have been “happily” engaged in bringing the peasants away from the farms and into the cities. Look how happy it has made so many of them.
Especially those Uyghurs. Nice Climate Friendly ™ camps, everything provided including nice well-paying, safe jobs. It’s a communist utopia!
Yeah the UN and the Guardian are on board with climate Re-education camps for the masses.
The transfer of population from rural squalor to urban squalor resulted in a tenfold increase in population. In the industrial UK
People live where they don’t starve to death.By definition.
This is pure “agends 21” Proles to live in smart citiues where they can be watched and herded. The countryside will be mostly reserved for daft wrewilding aka general neglect and abandonment to invasive species . Access to the better parts of the countryside to be restricted to a small number of the elect elite who are deemed by their peers worthy . ie the few who can be catered for and supplied with electric vehicles which the proles must be denied. Enjoy the Brave New World and feel Orwell’s totalitarian boot on your neck – for ever.
Ceaușescu’s ‘Systematization’, herded people into city tower blocks where they could be more easily controlled and surveilled.
It worked… for a while, Chris.
When will the elites learn that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose? Then… look out! French haircuts become the style.
…. well that didn’t end too well for him, or his wife.
To the end the pair behaved as if they were still in charge.
They’re dead but the mindset is alive and well.
Global Warming/Climate Change are the fence posts and barbed wire the Leftists will use to enslave humanity.
From Genesis (Get ‘em out by Friday)
…They say how the people
Will be shorter in height
They can fit twice as many
In the same building site
They say it’s alright….
Ahhh. Back in the days when Genesis actually made interesting music, instead of drivel.
Was there ever such a time?
‘And when it comes to the end, the men will look like the women, and the women like the men’
Back in the days of Peter Gabriel, my opinion is, yes. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
I thought the same thing when I read the article title.
In fact I started the song before I started scrolling the comments and am listening to it right now.
Considering the elitist nature of the greens, this is a desire that the plebs live in rat warrens, not their betters.
They’ll manage to get by in their 20-room dachas (with infinity pools) while we manage to get by in a 12′ x’ 15′ apartment with a hotplate that works when there is electricity, a sink, and a toilet that works most of the time.
What more could 6 serfs possibly want?
Utopia!
Don’t forget the toilets that use 1/4 less water but require you to flush twice.
John B. Calhoun demonstrated what happens in elitists utopias and the opening photo seems to confirm it.
Well how are the Greens going to be able to live in organic bliss 30 minutes away from the beach if proles are taking up all that space with their disgusting “traditional” housing??
but …
termites!
Think more like bed bugs and high-rise fires.
“termites”… termites, you say?… Extra FOOD!
It’s all good.
Utopia!
yeah , that how I describe hirise units and inner city dwelling
Guardian writes lot of nonsense usually on climate and much on else too.
Telegraph, however has different ideas on global warming and much else too.
Tomorrow’s headline:
The Washington elite have turned on Biden. Watch out for the Harris presidency
“The media outlets which sold the wars, and sold Biden’s candidacy too, are now whispering that he’s past it.
…. Kamala Harris has gone from near-total invisibility on the southern border, where the Biden team sent her to deal with the migrant crisis …”
From bad to worse, is that the Trump’s shadow looming on horizon?
Even the Media turns on Joe Biden
Even CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times have stopped defending him.These are the same teams that hid the Hunter-Biden Laptop from hell, the “10% for the Big Guy” scandal and that the FBI had possession for a whole year and did nothing.
You think Biden has issues. The Democrats didn’t vote for Harris in the primaries. She was the 3rd person to exit out of 18 candidates due to lack of support. The US has 3.5 years of no leadership ahead and the way things are going we will have a Republican Congress and a weak Democratic President. Just hope the country can make it.
Kamala had less support than Beto, if I remember correctly.
His skateboard had more support than both of them combined.
They are deathly afraid of Harris losing her deciding vote in the Senate and the fact that she’s hated so much that the house will reject her out of hand.
Good point. Does that mean we will have a President Pelosi?
The Democrats have hoist themselves on their own petard. Whatever happens, it “will be worse than we think”.
They want everyone (the survivors) packed into a few mega cities. You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy. Or else!
For something that’s just supposed to be a conspiracy theory, it’s just getting more and more obvious and in your face.
There are no real conspiracy theories, at least 98% are based on facts.
When I get called a conspiracy theorist now, I just tell people it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a spoiler alert.
Excellent, Mark! I am s-o-o-o stealing that.
It will be ok once the survivors get their heads straight and can remember to never speak their minds.
That’s UN Agenda 21 right there. UN’s plan through which elites rule a globalised World of energy poor impoverished city based population, confined to cities we are not wealthy enough to leave, under high tech controls, run by elites for the elites. 50% of the land area will be banned to everyone – apart from the elites – also the only ones allowed to fly.
Worth checking out Agenda 21.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21#:~:text=Sustainable%20Development%20Knowledge%20Platform&text=Agenda%2021%20is%20a%20comprehensive,human%20impacts%20on%20the%20environment..
It’s not a conspiracy theory when they hand you their ‘How To’ manual, is it?
I’ve shared that link and had people STILL insist it’s a conspiracy theory and there is no such thing.
The opening sentence of the entire document.
“Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being.”
Worsening poverty??
Less food??
WTF are they smoking??
The question is, is that a stable scenario?
Like it or not, and you probably won’t and I certainly don’t, a system whereby an elite suppresses and enslaves a majority by means of a fully paid off warrior class or legal class, works.
In fact some authorities aver that it was only the rise of a mercantile and artisanal middle class with wealth and power that managed to impose some form of democracy on an autocratic monarchy that typified the European nation states in the Middle Ages. And its all been fragile ever since then, with one dictator or another or a top down antidemocratic politburo of one sort or another trying to restore things to ‘us on top, you plebs do as you are told’
Today, it’s the elites with big money, who buy private education for their kids, rather than send then for indoctrination in state schools, who employ the technocrats, who are told they are smart and should be running things, who replace manual and white collar labour with computers, who are disenfranchising the plebs, who have no value wahstover except as service workers – essentially slaves of one sort or another.
The inconvenient truth is that if all the people in the ‘projects’ just died tomorrow, the rest of middle America would probably be all the better for it, and the elites wouldn’t blink an eyelid beyind shedding the odd crocodile tear.
Why are ArtStudents™ always Revolting? Because they realise they have nothing to contribute to a consumer product technological world. The same goes for various other sub classes. They are superfluous to requirements.
Mushroom management rules. Pack em into cities, keep em in the dark and feed em on bullshit. Via the Guardian, that bastion of the Bandar Log, and consensus politics: ‘we all say it, so it must be true’
All this moralising political correctness, eco bollocks and solcial engineering – LBGTQ or whatver it is, is simply a replacement for Christianity, which informed us slaves that rewards are to be sought not on earth, but in heaven, and rich men don’t get there so yah boo sucks!
How convenient for the rich men….
It worries me. In times of war and conflict, cold or otherwise, you need the truth to fight the enemy with. If you have achieved victory, the truth is inconvenient and unnecessary: what matters is that everybody believes the same bullshit, especially that you were born to rule and are exceptionally well suited for it.
Stuck inside a thermally adjusted city who will know what global temperature really is ? – as I told the police officers who stopped me doing 130mph when they asked me what speed I was doing “It was whatever speed you say it was”
Which amused them enough to call it 99mph, one mph less than instant disqualification.
But, “Agenda 21 is a conspiracy theory” haven’t you heard?
The proles are all Deplorables and Irredeemable. Way too many of them live in flyover country, which has to be fixed. Once they are all packed into high-density areas, they can easily be mulched down and recycled. This is, of course, the point of the exercise.
“Hey hey ho ho Western Culture’s got to go!” The people who chanted that 50-60 years ago are in charge now. Climate change is only one of the means being used to justify that end.
How about just cramming everyone into the a single gigacity with the population density of Monaco? Would take up around 300,000 sq. km. Oman would work nicely, with room to spare.
A few farmers would be required in more fertile areas, but not many, given robotics. Plus the odd factory running on nuclear, solar and wind power.
You could save on CO2 from concrete if you herd everyone into one giant room. Who needs a city? That’s just wasteful.
Great idea, Robert! The pit toilets are kind of yucky, but the proles will get used to it.
Meanwhile, claim your spot near the one window. Guard it vigorously. You may be one of the lucky ones to get 10 minutes by the window if you rat out enough other people for ‘wrongthink’.
“Comrades. Today is a glorious day. We celebrate the birthday of Dear Leader! (Evereybody cheer… or else.)
The lights will be on for an extra 10 minutes today, from 9:00 am to 11:40 am and there will be a feast where everyone gets not one, but TWO extra maggots in their gruel! (Evereybody cheer… or else.)”
(Is the sarc tag really necessary?)
Hmmmm … now that you’ve got them all in one big room, what to do? What to do? Choices. Choices.
Planned Personhood (PP) to ensure a politically congruent (“=”) distribution of diversity classes (e.g. race, sex, gender?, age).
When the fight against climate change has been fought and climate change has been defeated, what will the climate be like?
“…what will the climate be like?”
Changed.
I think mankind has been fighting stupidity for at least 300,000 years and we still have not won that fight…what makes you think we can ever win this “climate change” fight?
Sadly being smart is not necessarily a survival trait. Substantial buttocks, as a portable energy battery, are handier for famines.
well kims set then
There will be climate stasis once we reach a state of leftist (i.e. authoritarian) utopia. So, sacrifice a baby for social progress, and let us bray, sheman.
Climate Change (TM) will never be defeated. That is a feature, not a bug. A continuing “crisis” requires continuing subservience to the endless demands for “action.” Which “action,” as always, will somehow boil down to people “needing” to surrender more of their money and freedom to those in power.
Considering all of the low skilled and uneducated illegal immigrants invading the US, high density third world like slums like homeless encampments will expand to make this ‘dream’ a reality.
Large cities export their environmental problems. Almost everything they consume is made elsewhere.
Once you change the balance sheet so you attribute to the actual consumers the resources and pollution entailed in the production of the goods they use, large, dense cities look a lot less environmentally friendly. link
Amazing. Not the excerpt from the book (by the way, the whole book looks interesting [EDIT it is not free, if anyone read the comment just a few seconds ago]) – but that Scientologist American actually published it.
What a perfect way to kill as many of us as possible with COVID or any other communicable disease that comes along! It would indeed lower emissions, since there would be far fewer of us to emit anything.
The few surviving humans might evolve bat-like immune systems. They’ve been living in megacities for 50 million years, with even closer crowding than the densest human slum.
The first human megacity, with over ten million inhabitants, was the NYC metro area in 1950. Now there are over 40 megacities, with up to 40 million (metro Tokyo) closely packed residents. The largest known bat colony, in TX, contains 20 million denizens.
The bats need to up their game.
They’re on their own schedule, not ours.
They weren’t given a choice as to participating in CCP bioweapons research, trained and funded by Dr. FauXi.
Hmmmm. It would be interesting to see the crime statistics for that largest bat colony in Texas. I would be interested, in particular, in the incidence of crime by the Joker, Riddler, and (dare I say it?) Harvey Dent.
Would a study correlating population density with COVID cases and deaths even be permitted?
Does anyone know if such a study has been done?
Please see the NYC metro area. But you have to factor in brain dead or actively evil Democrat governors in NY and NJ.
Does anyone even know if there was an uptick in moralities in 2020? Brain dead doesn’t count.
It doesn’t need doing – its patently obvious (in the UK at least).
Yup. Its all evolution in action. People will consciously or unconsciously try every single thing befire hitting on one that works, for now. Their descendants will worship their ancestors for being wise, but really they were just plain lucky.
Yet again, we speak of “features,” not “bugs.”
Doesn’t that sound like a greater social change than urbanisation?
A kibbutz or a commune is a great thing to voluntarily join. Yet in doing so you are making a social choice for yourself and the collective cause. However you are sacrificing your responsibilities to your family in order to resource this choice.
Forcing a change in the basic social unit from the family to… something else is… an interesting idea.
What leftist outfits like the Guardian, the BBC, the CBC, CNN, etc. want and what the majority of citizens want are two different things. Densely populated cities are associated with poor air quality, congestion, noise, and inflated property values, and the advocates of them often already own housing there. So more people in these areas would increase property demand and raise prices benefiting those currently residing in them. Besides, core areas of cities are often adjacent to lower- rent districts with higher degrees of social instability; i.e., crime rates and too often the perpetrators carry their activities into gentrified neighborhoods. People want for the most part to live in places where they have operating space,and any climate action takes a distinct back seat to such priorities.
You forgot higher levels of escapist drug abuse and child suicide.
They tried that in many UK cities after WWII. It was a disaster and councils have been tearing down high rise blocks of flats ever since.
Brutalism is the name for all of the concrete architecture put up in the 60s and 70s.
No need to tear them down. Just add some Climate Friendly ™ cladding, and wait for it to burn!
The ideas were all good. The implementation was all wring.
Fundamentally they took the tower blocks, didnt insulate them, made them only heatable with expensive electricity and then stuck problem families in them.
If they had sold them to yuppies at enormous prices they would have been fine dwelling units
That might burn down from one small fire…
Imagine some building developments in the National Mall in DC. That would look great and bring the public really ckise to politics, arts, enterteinment and science.
How about reducing the population? All greens and leftards should stop exhaling, right now!
They’re working on that right now. It’s called covid.
Why does anyone read the Guardian? They’re clearly just trolling the western world with lies and nonsense to scam and misinform everyone so they can sell more Google-Ads™ using UN-Climate-Scam™.
I can’t remember the last time I deliberately clicked on a Guardian link … well … unless I want to catch up on my celebrity drama news … especially if there’s a bikini or cleavage involved … as that’s totally different …
Yes, that would be “Cleavage Change”, not “Climate Change”.
People who consider themselves well informed and intelligent read the Guardian and believe every word. It is truly frightening.
I myself read the tabloids, because there is no danger of believing anything they say, and if they do mention in passing between the endless soap opera that is their portrayal of the royal family and other mindless celebrities, something of actual relevance, I can always research it in depth elsewhere.
The Guardian is read by right-thinking people who know what is bad for the rest of us and are outraged they are not in total control.
We already have a few “cattle car” dwellings with slitty horizontal windows only inches high that you can hardly see out of having been constructed as replacements for older homes. I think these are trial balloon properties.
Urban parasites love their hellholes and don’t understand why everyone doesn’t. They even call people that won’t live like that names and say they’re stupid.
Isaac Asimov was a prophet. His robot series, specifically starting with the “Caves of Steel” contain what seem like astounding insights.
while certainly not the first SF writer to write about future inventions, his take on how humanity interacted with technology and herd mentality certainly seem to encompass what is happening in the world.
And “The Naked Sun” examines what might happen if the “elite” get their way.
Don’t forget Soleria. A world where humans meeting face to face was taboo, all communications were by video chat and robots/machines did all the work.
Ah hell, I’m just going to throw Judge Dredd into the mix – with more people shoved into these megacities it’ll require more draconian policing.
It isn’t that they hate nature, they hate other people, and they hate the idea that other people live a decent life.
You can’t be an elite unless the majority of other people are living under worse conditions than you.
Excellent insight, Thomas.
And all of the leftists view themselves as the morally superior ‘Elites’ until they have to pay for the bullet the true, 1% Elites, order for them to be sh0t with in the back of their head. ‘They’ being the Useful Idiots who have outlived their usefulness.
Somehow, the ‘Useful Idiots’ are always surprised. I guess it’s because they are idiots.
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(Idle thought: Members of the YSM (Yellow Stream Media) might want to make sure their life insurance policies are paid up. Anyone who can be bought or programmed so easily as they have been can just as easily be bought and programmed by someone in opposition. Best to make sure that never happens.)