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.
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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.
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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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Won’t more high-density cities contribute to the urban heat island effect?
Only if you use it for infilling the data…
Only if there the overlords provide heating.
The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence all efforts to reduce CO2 emissions will have no effect on climate.
I think it is pretty much a proven fact that CO2 dramatically affects the Political Climate.
Idiotic Political Climate Change?
Great way to increase the spread of disease…
Now you’re catching on. That’s the whole idea. All these lock downs and loss of freedoms is just a trial run.
Aligns well with new Marxist reasoning: gather them up in cities where they are easier to pacify and control.
If everybody is packed into the cities, where will the food come from? Who will farm? This idea is idiotic on so many levels.
With the right equipment, you don’t need all that many farmers to feed a lot of people. Now if you also kill off fossil fuels, well, there’s going to be a lot of hungry people.
I read recently that in the UK, a lot of the equipment used to automate farming, such as GPS monitoring, is getting nicked.
That’s because enterprising peeps will nick (steal) anything if they think it’ll raise a few quid (pounds)!!! When I used to do a bit of sailing, my sailing friends & I would spend about half an hour screwing/bolting expensive kit such as radar/GPS etc before going to sea, then repeating the process in reverse when anchoring up & leaving the boat, anything that could be easily removed was easily removed, by us instead of them!!! Human beings can be very criminally minded, IMHO, that it!!!
Not round here.
But what is of interest was clearly brought home to me when I rented a cottage on a Fen farm in Cambridgeshire. That fen was littered with derelict houses. My landlord, saidthat prior to WWII it had featrured about 500 peole, 5 pubs, a church and a hundred houses and stables and horses and so on. Now less than a dozen people lived on it, and it produced more food than ever.
From 90% of the population doing agriculture in the 18th century its down to less than one percent now. I surrounde bey a small farm of probably not much nmore than 100 acres: It takes two full time people to manage it.
Soylent Green.
Ultimate recycling.
Please John, don’t joke about such things, I fear we’re not that far away from such policies!!! ;-((
The more they try to dictate anti-meat bullshit, the closer to it we’ll get…
Robots do all that.
Just get your food from the store! No need for farms!
When you ignore past history and research you are doomed to repeat it. Does no ne remember past experiments with cramming large number of rats into small living spaces? Sooner or later violence happens and the rats start killing each other in order to gain living space.
Why do you see more crime in high-density low-income subsidized housing than you do in rural and suburban living? It isn’t because people are inherently bad and wind up in dense housing. The psychological and social pressures caused by such dense living eventually generate problems There have been all kinds of science fiction novels on this. The people at the Guardian need to expand their horiizons!
Why do you imagine that this is not desirable to them? Scared citizens are much easier to control.
John B. Calhoun’s experiment illuminated many distressed behaviors. Does this sound familiar today?
“Pretty boy” rats that basically spent all their time grooming and wouldn’t mate.
“The turning point in this mouse utopia, Calhoun observed, occurred on Day 315 when the first signs appeared of a breakdown in social norms and structure. Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant
behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.”
“Other young mice growing into adulthood exhibited an even different type of behavior. Dr. Calhoun called these individuals “the beautiful ones.” Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared [outwardly] as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, alert eyes and a healthy, well-kept body. These mice, however, could not cope with unusual stimuli. Though they looked inquisitive, they were in fact, very stupid.”
https://fee.org/articles/john-b-calhoun-s-mouse-utopia-experiment-and-reflections-on-the-welfare-state/
Cities over larger areas increase average travel distances & spreads the urbanisation into farming & natural areas (increases area of UHI effect). Smaller cities kept apart can aid isolation of pandemics. Low density cities have greater opportunity for rooftop solar, household batteries, rooftop rain collection & water tanks, private space for outdoor exercise & children to play (especially during lockdowns).
Greater city densities increases infection rates, subsidence, heat island effects (temperature but also can change wind & rain). It increases the density of pollution & waste to deal with. Some old cities have problems with sewer systems that overflow because of stormwater & a lack of areas to allow flooding of wetlands before silt/chemicals/rubbish/sewage enters the sea. There is a benefit that living 5km from the sea in the Sydney area has less need for heating & cooling (Winter min 10C, Summer max 35C) than 50km west of Sydney (Winter min 3C, Summer max 45C). Apartments have shared walls/roof with neighbouring temperature controlled apartments & apartments have smaller internal area than detached houses. The problem with apartments is lack of natural drying of clothes (high use of electric dryers) vs houses with clothes lines in the backyard. High density does allow daily shop a walk away to avoid cars by some. During a pandemic, daily shopping & high density crowds in local shops increases spread. Too much of the city workforce can still live a distance away & cause cross city transmission between work, home & shops.
Your winter mins are way to high. It can easily freeze at Penrith, and can get as low as 1C in Sydney.
It even gets as low as 7C here, 500km into the tropics, and that’s on the coast. Inland it can freeze still.
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.
No, they just hope large estates for themselves will be more affordale, once the riff raff are out of the way.
“But even progressives are hesitating to support this latest climate initiative.” All you have to do is drive I66 into D.C. to understand that one :<)
I seem to recall studies years ago that detailed the negative impacts on people when forced into small compact spaces. High-rise tenements were cauldrons of dog-eat-dog existence. Man (and animal) must be able to move about. Being packed in like sardines is not a winning formula.
Tell that to Hong Kong…
High density housing and workplaces, high use of public transport, reusable coffee cups and shopping bags – everything green sounds ideal for the next virus.
They just said the quiet part out loud. Of course the eco-Marxists want people into cities! When people are packed into cities, then they can take away all property. No private ownership of vehicles, dwellings, or land. We will all own nothing, and be happy.
And if you are not happy … well, your new dwelling in the gulag will make you regret not being happy. So, you better be happy living in your tenement. You better be happy working a menial job that you were ordered to have (instead of a job you want to do). You better be happy with your ration of vegetables, bread, and once weekly luxury of meat. You better be happy showing your papers to travel. And, most of all, you better not be unhappy with the blatant hypocrisy of your enlightened leaders and the in-your-face hypocrisy of the ones who keep them rich.
Are you refusing the government ordered medical treatment? Do you need to be reminded of the people who are not happy? To the gulag for you, grandma killer!
I think one of the books of Asimov’s Foundation series begins with the arrival of the lead character arriving on a planet nearly covered with interconnected highrise buildings. There is one green space or park that can be viewed.
I might miss-remember.
Surely the Guardian writers are plagiarizing.
Yes, you are thinking of the very first book – “Foundation.” Where his initial protagonist, Hari Seldon (who personified the technocratic notion that people and history could be completely manipulated to desire if you only had enough information) arrives on Trantor, capital of the Galactic Empire. Completely covered by city, extending miles above and below the former surface – except for a district around the Imperial Palace (of course).
Asimov had somewhat of a fascination with urbanization taken to the extremes, a product of his only memories and life experience being in NYC (his parents emigrated from Russia when he was barely an infant). He had a similar society in “Caves of Steel” (referenced by Matt Kiro above) – Earth almost entirely covered by a massive city.
Even he, though, eventually figured out that such things were sterile, and would inevitably degenerate and collapse – when he merged his robot series with the Foundation series, he had a robot artificially increase the decay rate of the long-lived elements in the crust to make the Earth virtually uninhabitable, driving the dispersal of humanity out to the stars. (Bad physics, by the way – but what we writers call a “Macguffin.”)
Sorry, the greater the density the lower the birthrate and the shorter the lifespan. A biological factoid. Increasing density is a way to control people, ease marketing costs, increase profit margins and shrink populations. There is no way the planet could sustain and grow in population in a high density format. It just won’t work. China isn’t covered in rat mazes. It still grows Asian pears (yuk). Asimov was a chicken little about the human population. Remember he wrote fiction… intellectually lame fiction based on chicken little presuppositions. Any one who takes an a priori inference and builds it into a chicken little alarm system is a moron making himself out to be the principium of all truth. I am hoping there is a first class Ph.D. out how understands biological populations and who can shed some light. Remember America’s population would have shrunk precipitously after 1980. This is the reason for immigration anarchy and a legal immigration rate 5-6 times the historical average prior to 1980.
Try to explain to my daughter with 18 month old male twins. who is desperately looking for a place with a yard, that she must keep them in an apartment.
Ah, you have the community crêche instead…where they can run around with otrher kids in the block, spreading diseases.
Having your own yard is frightfully elitist darling…
when i was a kid we’d go to the museum of science where they had an exhibit showing that by the year 2000 an average human would have 20 square feet to live in. I didn’t realize at the time that that wasn’t prediction, but rather prescription.
oh, by the way. leave it to liberals to think that more complex systems would require less energy per individual
The climate activists dream for humanity is for everybody but the elites to be living their entire lives in coffin sized boxes while consuming kale gruel and shopping for mind altering substances online. These SJWs are such revolting, sub-human cretins.
Do you think they consider Matha’s Vineyard as high density ?
But Martha’s Vineyard is for the haves, not the have-nots. The only people allowed in will be the party faithful, the nomenklatura and their servants, no-one else.
“800 million people living in the ruin of the old world and the mega structures of the new one. Mega blocks. Mega highways. Mega City One. Convulsing. Choking. Breaking under its own weight. Citizens in fear of the street. The gun. The gang. Only one thing fighting for order in the chaos: the men and women of the Hall of Justice. Juries. Executioners. Judges.”
I would Dredd that
I prefer the rural life.
Nobody working for the Guardian has ever been abroad to, say, Peru or India. Ludicrous idea, waste of ink and time.
I agree, the Grauniad is both.
Make cities denser? Just dumb down the education. Job done.
Okay. I’ve had some great fun above and responded to and expanded on some excellent points.
But I’m U.S. and I have to wonder, how many of the Grauniadistas actually live in high-rise, high-density blocs? Not many, I’m willing to bet.
Just guessing from an ocean away, but I think the better paid ones at the Grauniad might just so happen to have a country cottage in addition to their in-town digs, or at least go home at night to their home in the ‘burbs with a bit of garden in the back and maybe a shed and a workshop.
Maybe… probably… no doubt? I dunno. I’m U.S.
Elitist mentality: Gruel for thee but filet and lobster for me, because I’m righteous and you’re not. Phlbtt!!
*SPIT*
Guradinstas are talking about the people– not about themselves. Naturally they know how to look after the natural world and take responsibility for it. So naturally they are entitled to country cottages…
Hmm, appears they want us all to be Winston Smiths.
“According to The Guardian, packing people into cities like sardines will help save the world from climate change” which is a scheme in itself. While in the US already, Gates, Bezos, et al who already own tens of millions of US land and continue buying up even more of it, the rest of us should be forced to cramp up in tiny spaces like vertical zoo?? Read my lips Guardian, UN, WEF, US Congress, global Deep State et al: NO WAY!
People who write for & read the Guardian know exactly what is best for everyone, just as long as it isn’t applied to them, only the rest of us!!!