Because fascist conservative domination of society depends on a constant stream of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about an ever changing cultural opponent that unifies the dazed and confused in outrage against said real or fantasized other. Thus making them unaware of how much they're being abused and exploited while also mobilizing them to fight in defense of the same oppressors who constantly propagandizes them.
Efficient of inefficient, polluting or non-polluting, exploitative (for both land and people) or not, agriculture is still the basis of a large part of the world's economy.
If it were to collapse, I don't dare to imagine how many angry jobless people there would be and what they could do. If people in IT get laid off, no one cares, but farmers scary./s
Don't get so teary eyed. Farmers have been fucked by capitalism since the dawn of time. This is about corporate pockets, not about farmers. Farmers don't get laid off, they just die and nobody cares.
it's both and more. nothing is as simple as a soundbite.
the people in those states are afraid of "the liberal agenda". they're being told that the Democrats are gonna take their meat and force them to eat bugs and lab grown slop. naturally, they're completely unwilling to ever Even try any of this stuff they hate, but that's neither here nor there. this constant cycle of fear and outrage gets their votes. who should they vote for? the guy that promises he'll stop the other guy from force feeding you bugs, or the one that never Even mentions this clearly important election issue?
this particular fear cycle was likely created and pushed by the beef industry that is large and strong in those states. cattle farming is by far the most environmentally inefficient way to produce protein. it's like 10x worse than chickens which are like 10x worse than the worst plant. this is a common leftist talking point these days. it's part of the rhetoric. so the idea that liberals are going to come after beef isn't entirely just based on media lies. if they go out and try to find opposing ideas they'll find that the left hates their cows and wants them to become vegan.
and i mean, there are people on the left who would force that kind of thing on them. look at lemmygrad and the tankies. that's my key ideological difference with communism. the state shouldn't force these practices, but i also don't think it's realistic to believe that America is anywhere close to ever doing that. the only states that would ever use the law to force someone's eating habits for cultural reasons are currently using that to ban lab grown meet.
I, as a leftist in America, genuinely hope that one day lab grown meat will be as cheap, good, and available as regular beef while being more environmentally friendly. i hope that this gets some hardcore beef eaters to realize that flavor is more important than whether something died to make it. lab meat is already outperforming natural steaks in flavor because it's literally designed to have perfect marbling. if we just let this play its course, we could probably expect many of them to eventually switch over. it may take a generation or two, people are very stubborn, but it could be very good for many things in the long run.
this sentiment alone is enough to scare conservatives. they don't even need the media or big beef to scare them. we're doing that on our own.
just like ever issue, the reality of it is nuanced and gray. most people aren't willing to read that much or think that hard about their feelings. they'd prefer a string of tiktoks or political tweets that dumb it all down to one sentence.
if you ever find yourself saying "it's not that complicated it's just..." you probably need to read more into that subject. it's always at least that complicated.
edit:
lol, literally in this thread someone pointed out another angle that i didn't. these states are full of people that work in the cattle industry. no one wants to see their town become Detroit.
As the article notes the largest meat packers are at least somewhat against this and are themselves investing in cell grown meat. The National Cattleman's Association stance on the issue, also noted in the article, boils down to "It's fine, it just needs to be labelled so consumers know what they're getting."
I think the only "they" we can define here are the Florida and Alabama State Legislatures.
If I was a Rancher, and I'm not terribly far removed from that, I wouldn't want cell grown or cultivated meat banned. I'd stand up a production center for it on my ranch right next to my cattle and sell both.
Can’t wait to see the articles in 10 years about how major countries are phasing out coal in the next 10-20 years.
The US still has work to do but have you SEEN the decline in coal use here over the past 15 years? Right now I think the US is back to using the same amount of coal that it did in 1965! As a percentage of energy use it's at the level it was in 1949!
The optimist in me is pumped about those stats, but the cynical pedantic asshole in me wants to point out >0≠0
Mostly I was just commenting on the fact that I keep seeing articles every few years about how some country or other has gone back on its promises to cut X by Y percent.
Thanks for sharing the facts, though! My cynical side needs to see stuff like that to keep it at bay.
This is actually a new commitment. There have been large-scale cuts to coal uses in several of the countries already, with the UK dropping to near zero.
There have actually been a few reversals from major corpos regarding climate change recently. It should be a positive thing, but I just feel like they’re seeing some scary-ass fuckin data. And their revenue predictions are due to take a nosedive when 60% of the population dies from wildfires, flood, famine, and civil strife, and now they’re working to protect their bottom line.
Between 2012 and 2022 electricity generation from coal has gone down from 2400TWh to 1427TWh for the G7. Most of that comes down to the US, Japan and Germany in that order.The UK and France have basicaly no coal left, besides some rarely running plants and Italy and Canada do exit coal a bit slowler, but do not have too much left anymore.
To look a bit closer. The US has the inflation reduction act and is building out renewables at record pace, while gas is killing coal in most places. The speed in decline is rather rapid. Japan has closed down its nuclear power plants after Fukushima, but is restarting them about now, so a decline in coal consumption is possible. Germany did phase out all its nuclear power plants until last year, but still managed to have a decline in coal electricity generation, due to building out renewables fairly quickly. This means that should go even faster.
So yeah, this might happen. Japan is the one to watch though. It really does not built much clean energy these days.
We mine and export as well as a large internal household market. Still lots of coal unfortunately, we may have stopped using it for power generation but it's still being used.
There's Ratcliffe-on-Soar and that doesn't run all the time, and very rarely at anything approaching full power. It's closing for good later this year.
That's good, I suppose; I'm of the mind that historical art belongs to humanity.
However, if climate activists want to vandalize something to make a point, go vandalize the CEOs who are ruining the climate. They don't care about history and preserving anything, as long as they're making gobs of money, so punching somebody else in the face isn't something that causes them any discomfort.
I think these guys get headlines exactly because they target things that “belong” to all of us. PETA throwing red paint on some rich schmuck wearing furs? That might get a minute of airtime. But (safely) paint Stonehenge, throw baked beans on the Mona Lisa, etc and every news outlet will cover it.
If you put more focus on the act instead of the reason you don't have your priorities straight. People should be out in the streets and destroying a shit ton of monuments important to the rich with what's happening in the world right now.
Agreed. The key there is "important to the rich," not "important to humanity." Break all the rich people's toys, make some noise. Go sabotage a SpaceX rocket or something.
But the fact that I'm focused on the act despite being effectively on their side means a ton of other people who aren't on their side are too, and I can almost guarantee they can't see past the act to really grasp the impetus behind it.
You think the Louvre and what's inside isn't important to rich people? Stonehenge isn't important to rich people?
You and me shouldn't give a fuck that these things get destroyed because if things keep going the way they are there won't be any humans from the working class to enjoy them anymore in a century, so what's the point of preserving them in the first place?
Destroy all that shit so people have to face the fact that our governments and rich people are ready to spend billions to restore a church in Paris while people in the same city are starving.
If you put more focus on the act instead of the reason you don’t have your priorities straight.
So you would be totally fine if people took a shit on your front porch as long as it's to protest climate change, right? Clearly you wouldn't get upset about the act if there is a good reason.
I thought the headline was a bit misleading, because obviously environmental activists wouldn't "paint" or vandalize something like that.
Anyone who thinks they are assholes for doing this to a monument should be thinking about what oil companies are doing to less visible areas that are just as important.
Then they send their message to the informed but poor and powerless.
I disagree, though, that the rich don't care about their toys. They may be able to afford to replace them, but it's not like they go out and buy a yacht every day. And activists vandalizing public works of art or history can and do still face legal action from the governments that oversee or maintain them.
Ultimately, the rich responsible for facilitating and encouraging climate change aren't going to feel any compunction to change if you never even punch in their direction.
It's called raising awareness in society. This kind of coverage costs millions of dollars, and it only happened because they involved something visible we all care for in a way.
I guess, but who hasn't heard of climate change at this point?
The conversation has to go beyond that, and their desire to raise awareness accompanied by acts like this only demonstrates their conviction, not the truth of our impending doom. They have to reach the people who still don't think it's real, and what does painting a historical monument have to do with climate change?
The plot they want people to pick up gets lost and the message is out of their control if the act isn't self-evident with regard to their purpose.
I can go through the dictionary all day. That's called activism my dude, and it was an excellent way to being attention to a particular issue they are campaigning for.
The act is self-evident in regards to their purpose lmao. They "painted" the environment (polluted it) in a way we could all relate to, in a effort raise awareness on other things happening in the environment that aren't as visible.
They're sending the message to people who are ready to take a plane to travel thousands of km to go check a bunch of rocks. They're sending the message to people who vote. They're sending the message to people that use their car to get stuck in traffic every morning instead of using public transport.
This, I think, is the biggest issue this election. These next four years are fucking crucial to what the future will look like under extreme climate change. I hope his summer wakes some people up, because we all know it’s going to be fucking devastation after devastation. And all these people on lemmy saying Biden is participating in genocide and therefore they won’t vote for him…it’s-
I’ve explained it so many times. The country is in bed with Israel. Not Biden. Someone told me the other day “it won’t get worse for Palestine under trump. It can’t. If anything it will stay the same.” I said, okay, then how can you justify chucking the environment, women’s reproductive health, lgbtqia+ people, and all vulnerable groups into the fire if things will be the same for the apparent single issue you care about? And it’s not even that they care so much about Palestine. It’s just the issue du jour. every single time an election rolls around, there is always that one geopolitical or social issue that people are talking about. They can’t pull their heads out of it. And sadly, it’s not even that they care. It’s that people who they think are on the right side (“their” side) are riled up, so they have to be more riled up to be more just and on the righter side of history. And then when wing authoritarian puts a bunch of Christofascist judges into lifetime positions? Well then everyone gets very upset.
That’s a pretty grim outlook, but I can’t help but see it that way. People were changing their profile pictures to French flags after the attacks there, they gave a shit about Ukraine and were riled up about that—until oct. 7, they gave a shit about Syria when that was the issue everyone was discussing. Flint. Haiti. The Uyghur concentration camps—that one hasn’t been solved by a long shot. Where is all the rage that everyone was feeling for that?
None of these things got solved. They just stopped being in people’s feeds and like lemmings, they stopped being so passionate about it. People are so quick to be like, “the media is manipulating everyone (else)! They’re telling them what to think and changing the focus of ____!” While at the same time they are trailing behind whatever they choose to follow.
It’s fucking maddening. We all know Palestine is a huge problem. There is a fucking genocide going on. But there is no option to fix that in this election. They’re almost separate issues. I mean, they are. Your country and the money behind it are committing genocide. The president is a figurehead on this particular issue. Throwing everything else away for a decision that won’t alter the thing you supposedly care about (at the moment) is so, so stupid. And I guarantee you there will be another issue that becomes everyone’s most important issue long before the problem of Israel/palestine is solved. But you watch, everyone will stop caring.
I’m not a democrat. I don’t support Biden. I don’t think the democrats are good enough. They are a corporatist organization that does plenty of harm for their own self interest. But right now, we don’t have time to say”if it’s not 100% in line with my beliefs, I say we let the fascist win! That’ll show ‘em!” We all get it. Biden is a stooge with beliefs few of us hold. But…we don’t have the luxury of time. Trump will jumpstart the most devastating part of climate change. No doubt. Because it’s not him, it’s the people he appoints, the companies that have those people in their pockets, and the distraction that trump causes while those corporate pigs devour everything and the news can’t tear themselves away from talking about what trump did or said or whatever to even cover it. We can’t afford that again.
I will ALWAYS tell people they need to be strategic about voting. A vote is not an endorsement. It's not a pledge of deep personal conviction for a cause. Your vote is currency to be spent, and it should be spent in such a way that gives you the best possible rate of return. Refusing to vote, letting a Trump win, actions like that? Pretty poor return on investment. If you're in a place like California where you know the state is going Biden anyway and you think you can spend that vote in a way to protest and create more impact that way, that's reasonable and cool. If you're in Georgia, where every damn vote counts, and you do the same, you are being anything but.
But on climate, I'll defend Biden. The IRA is a good piece of legislation. It's hard to overstate how good it is. He somehow got the biggest climate policy in US and likely the entire world's history past an essentially-hostile congress (including 51+ anti-climate senators), and the law is almost entirely sound, reasonable, effective policy. It's even baked into its design to have a self-reinforcing constituency -- every year it survives, its repeal becomes less likely, just like with something like medicare or the ACA -- since it promotes and creates entire slow-moving industries to respond to its built-in incentives.
And sorry not sorry to piss off a lot of people, but climate is hierarchically the most important issue. If we do not address climate, all these other issues are irrelevant. We're talking about something with possibly-apocalyptic ramifications. Our civilization has the potential to exist a very long time. We have the potential to make a lot of changes, right a lot of wrongs, make the future way better. Climate change is very nearly the only threat that cannot take advantage of all that time, because the deadlines are fast approaching -- some already blown away.
I'll be voting for Biden in the next cycle. I think his entire foreign policy related to the middle east is asinine and evil. I think that if he does lose in November, it will be 100% his own fault for throwing in with the undeniably-genocidal regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. But I know that things will be worse for Gaza with Trump in the white house, because then what little resistance to the slaughter exists will go away; Trump loves a dead Arab, after all. And more important, I know things will be way worse for absolutely everyone if the hard-won progress we have had on climate since 2020 is all thrown in the bin. That may well be the point of no recovery for the entire world.
For a while now, I kept seeing posts about the Israel/Palestine issue, and almost every time, when I looked at their poster's history, they were full of negative news against Israel and the US (often with a negative comment from the OP about the US, even when the article isn't about to the US), and often contained lots of positive news, comments and remarks about China and Russia. I find this very suspicious, but I may be overly cynical.
I've almost only been seeing this on lemmy.ml and lemmy.ca. Perhaps I'm imagining it, but I also feel like I've seen these accounts promote not voting during the next election.
I started tagging these accounts a few months ago and I frequently see their posts on the front page.
I wonder. I mean, there are tons of stupid e-communists online that are usually middle class white 20-somethings that are taking their first foray into politics, think they know everything, and want to be more “left wing” than other people. Because political identity is so pronounced these days, and the desire (as seen in these same people labeling themselves by their self-diagnosed mental disorders in their bios) for “individualism” that fits into a distinct flavor of “individualism” that they’ve seen and want to use for their identity.
I know this, because I went through a period like this, but I went through it young. I got interested in politics probably too young. Like, in middle school. So by the time I reached high school/college, I was already reading crimethinc. books, and liking their particular brand of anarchism. So I got upset about things in the world not adhering to my worldview, got up in arms over a lot of stuff, and was probably really annoying to be around. By the time I grew into my 20s, I had gone brought that period, but I still grew up reading anarchist literature, adbusters, and eventually learned enough that I know I was probably an insufferable asshole. So now, I’m a 30-something anarchist. But I have a healthy dose of realism attached to my idealism. I know things don’t work the way I want them to work. If you read my comment history, I tend to spout a lot of the same type of stuff I used to. But it’s now been a lifetime of doing it, so I’ve learned to not do it at people. Which, of course, fits into the ideals of my deeply rooted political beliefs. So I think a good amount of the people on lemmy are the types of people like I used to be. It’s the more “terminally online” crowd, honestly. A lot of needlessly combative, overly self-righteous e-communists in that crowd.
But, then again, it is entirely possible that there are some disinformation artists mixed in there. I don’t know if lemmy is a big enough platform to target, honestly. But maybe it’s a sophisticated enough operation that they did end up putting a few people here to really target a specific left-leaning demographic. Would be pretty smart. But fuck both of those countries too. American “communists” defending them because they pretend to believe the same thing the communists in the US pretend to believe is so goddamn stupid. Makes me angry. Like they want to be against the US because the online circles they grew up in were left leaning or conspiracy and they learned to be angry at the US (which is entirely valid), but they just start swallowing the propaganda from the OTHER two superpowers that are just as guilty as the US. lol so dumb
It's unfortunate that "Global Warming" was the phrase that got lodged in the public's collective brain, because it's such a terrible summary of what is actually happening, and idiots run with it.
It can be super difficult to understand, especially when it's easy to present the same data in multiple ways. Global warming is a thing, and climate change is a thing, but it's hard to fully experience because daily weather is so variable.
For example, if you look at the last 2000 years of data, we are starting an extremely rapid temperature increase. If you zoom out to a the last 500 million years, our global temperature is still changing, but it doesn't appear to be extreme.
People just don't realize that homosapiens only really appeared 200,000 years ago and our distant ancestors started showing up 7 million years ago. Point being, we started evolving in a climate that was cool and then got colder.
For perspective, the first fungi are thought to have first appeared 650 million years ago. They have seen it all and eventually said "fuck this" and now mostly live underground. For good reason.
It's the acceleration of global warming that is bad. In the last few thousand years, we have erased ~25 million years of the last cool down period. That is bad. Very bad.
The earth will survive climate change just fine, maybe. We won't, though.
Disclaimer: All numbers are basic estimates and data changes faster than I can keep up with. I am not a scientist, but I can read charts. For my summary here, I used these:
I like this video from Gutsick Gibbon that talks a lot about evolution as it relates/related to climate change and what our future may hold if we don't change.
Problem is, idiots always cling to whatever is most beneficial for them anyway.
EV's are the perfect example.. They ignore the cost saving or time saving (if you charge from home), and at the moment are focused entirely on battery fires (which are more rare than ICE fires), towing capacity (for whatever reason, they seem to think they need to tow 4 tonnes), and seem to have forgotten that both ICE and EV's need prewarming in cold climates.
Industry study is where you can stop reading. The industry in question has been lying to everyone about the impacts of climate change for over half a century.
It's weird that there are any AC that can't function in heating mode at this point. In Australia at least, you'd be hard pressed to even find one that doesn't support heating.
Here in Cali there are a ton of homes that have wood burning fireplaces in them so often that’s viewed as the “heater” if need be and the AC is for cooling.
I, for one, would support a law that requires any new unit over a certain size must be reversible and maybe even a tier where they must have variable speed compressors. But I can already hear the Republicans lying that the feds are coming to steal your window units.
In automotive at least, it's pretty common to size the evaporator and condenser coils based on their expected operating temperatures and (therefore) pressures. Usually this means condenser is a lot bigger than evaporator.
If you reverse the flow with the right valves and compressor setup, then the heat exchangers will still be sized wrong for efficiency. I suppose you could design a bidirectional system from the start that trades off for middling efficiency in both modes.
I'm not at all convinced that there are a substantial number of such bidirectional-sized residential systems installed in North America. But it's also possible that the residential folks don't care much about HX efficiency.
Every heat pump is an air conditioner, not every air conditioner is a heat pump. They require a reversing valve to function both ways.
The furnace doesn't need to change. I have a nat gas furnace with an electric heat pump. You can also do electric heat pump with an electric air handler. There are plenty of combos.
That said, every year I run the numbers and despite my heat pump being ~300% efficient my 95% efficient nat gas furnace is still cheaper to operate (based on the cost of each energy source). I'd LOVE to go solar and operate as close to 100% electric as possible but with my old growth trees and shitty house orientation I wouldn't even break-even in the lifetime of the panels. :(
Just curious, so numbers are the deciding factor for heating, not environmental impact? For example if your were wealthy would you choose lowest impact option, or would numbers still dictate your choice?
Where I live, electricity costs around $0.28/kWh, but generation is typically >85% renewable (predominantly hydroelectric).
My heat pump (4.7 COP when heating) would cost $0.06 to run for every 1kWh of heat it produces, with only 0.03kWh of that electricity coming from fossil fuel sources.
Gas - which I don't have at my house - would have pricing in the neighbourhood of $0.15/kWh. Even at 95% efficiency getting 1kWh of heat from gas would cost $0.16, using 1.05kWh of gas.
35x the fossil fuel usage and 2.5x the price, for the same quantity of heat. Some luck of living in a moderate climate where an air-source heat pump almost never loses efficiency, to be fair.
Just curious, so numbers are the deciding factor for heating, not environmental impact?
This is correct. And given the way the grids interconnect it would be hard if not impossible for me to be able to quantify environmental impact. I would assume even though there is still a lot of coal generation in-use it would still be more environmentally friendly for me to run the heat pump but I just don't know.
For example if your were wealthy would you choose lowest impact option, or would numbers still dictate your choice?
If money was no object I would absolutely choose the lowest impact option. I would even do a solar install even though it would likely end up being a net-loss for my specific case.
I think many people believe gas is at least preferable to coal environmentally wise, but turns out in quite a few instances it's worse. (fossil fuel companies did a good job marketing gas as cleaner for a long time)
There are still some edge cases where a grid-powered, air-source heat pump system MAY have slightly higher carbon emissions than a high efficiency furnace RIGHT NOW. This will happen in very cold climates (which means a lower effective seasonal COP) where the grid is very dirty. That might be an argument for not immediately electrifying.
But these systems also ought to last, with proper maintenance, something like a decade. And we should expect there to be no grids dirty enough to make that same calculus happen a decade from now. If you are replacing right now anyway, there's nearly no cases where a heat pump isn't the right choice.
Any if your primary goal is reducing emissions and you can afford it, getting a heat pump system installed in parallel to a traditional furnace (and then only using the furnace on the most brutal days where the COP for the heat pump at its nadir) will still absolutely lower your overall emissions, and probably significantly.
Maybe don't use a private jet then?
It would be a lot harder to track someone on a random flight in business class. And I can't imagine business class is more expensive than flying private.
It would be enormously easier to track Taylor Swift on a random flight in business class, because the moment people saw her on their random flight in business class it would turn into a social media frenzy.
So...a bunch of idiots end up on the no-fly list? I don't see a down side. I mean, I could see it being stressful for poor tay-tay, but nothing her money can't pay for in therapy.
As an American, I can honestly say the only three times I've met a celebrity, once I didn't even recognize her (still don't remember her name, she had appearances on crime shows) , once I didn't care to acknowledge their presence (Kevin sorbo) , and once I literally just said "Hey do you and Alan Tudyk ever hang out since firefly? I love that show" to Nathan Fillion. Yes, they do things together sometimes.
Om not even American and have only spent a few months there, it even I've met more than 3 celebrities in America. That's an oddlyow number. I mean, just the other day in Sydney, Rachel Griffiths was in myocal café here in Sydney. I believe sheives locally, so it's not odd but celebrities are everywhere. She wants bothered by anyone. Taylor would be. I'm not a fan, but I can understand why she'd fly privately. I hope she offsets the emissions, but even the small effort she has done to improve youth voting would offset those emissions.
Do you forget what community you're in?
It's insane to me that people in the CLIMATE community will bend over backwards to defend a celebrity with a fucking private jet.
Seriously though, will you also defend Elon musk and Jeff Bezos for their use of private jets too?
Or is it only ok when it's a "cool" celebrity?
I'm just practical. If you go on a world tour where you have a day or so between gigs and you need to bring a lot of gear and people then it makes sense to use a private plane.
If she would fill the plane regardless then why not her own plane.
If I want to invade a country, people will die. But that can't be helped, that's just the cost of things. What, you expect me not to invade a country? But I WANT to. That's how I make my money!! Surely that is the most important consideration.
I wouldn't count on that tbh, especially since it won't solve anything...
We are not in the same boat at all (metaphorically and physically as well for the most part):
The 90% have a little boat at best with most of the Global South being on a raft, with the rich basically being on a Dreadnought but in hysterical size of like cruiseships
Nope... Spreading that bullshit as a fact is part of the problem.
The economy isn't the problem. We can adapt in a lot of ways that helps the climate while also having working economies.
The actual problem is that the people with money want exactly the kind of economy that makes them money for decades. So they will block any changes to keep everything as it is.
Really depends how you measure the economy. Gross national happiness seems like better way to judge the health of an economy than GDP, which has little bearing on the state of most people's lives.
Humans make all this shit up, line goes up is a completely valid retort to how the economy is being mismanaged, because it is what is seemingly most important regardless of the quality of people's lives.
Saying if the line didn't go up, people's live would be worse is true, but only because of who we are letting rule the playground, i.e. if they don't have all the toys then nobody is getting anything.
It’s very revealing for their favorite lie: “Anyone can get rich. All you have to do is work hard like I do.” Then they do everything in their power to prevent anything that might impact their current money-making scheme.
If they’re working hard now and all you have to do is work hard to get rich, why not move their efforts to something that will make the world a better place… or at least stop making it a worse place?
This is why zoning reform (i.e. allowing higher density for better walkability/bikeability) is the single most important policy change to fight global warming.
From an ecological viewpoint such zoning reforms have merits, but in the way we have done it so far, I question the social merits of such policies. The society must be about more than stacking people on top of eachother.
From time to time we've seen very one-sided policies pushed (often with economical focus) and several years down the line we realise the issues of such policies. We can't afford that at this point, we need to find policies that adress the full trifecta of areas to find our way forward sustainably.
The force of these polices are applied in exactly the opposite of how you think they are. Zoning reform does not force "stacking people on top of each other;" it allows them the freedom to choose to live more closely together. Single-family exclusionary zoning is, in fact, the policy that curtails freedom the most by forcing everyone to live in only one type of housing whether they like it or not. Any property owner is perfectly free to build a single-family house in an area zoned to allow high density if they want; it's the single-family zoned areas where their property rights are infringed.
Low-density areas are objectively harmful to live in. Physical health is destroyed by the forced imposition of a sedentary lifestyle due to lack of walkability, and mental health is destroyed by the prohibition of convenient access to third places (i.e. forcing them to be miles away instead of interspersed within neighborhoods). To be very clear: this is not an opinion; this is a fact informed by studies showing that people's health and happiness are measurably worse in car-dependent places.
"Allows them freedom"? From my viewpoint, that is straight up newspeak. Which is also a point to be made, our respective frames of reference is so diverse I'm hard pressed to think we would ever use the same language to describe any form of housing. Only in America is walkability a problem in low density areas. Presuming your definition of "low density" isnt rural, of course.
And if we are rural, I have a hard time seeing how that can be defined as a sedentary lifestyle. Going for a walk is not usually a problem in those settings, either.
I live in an area where everything is roughly within a 10 minute's walk. Groceries, pharmacy, universities, hospitals, etc. It is flipping awesome. And the light rail can quickly take you to other universities, jobs and (further out) the airport.
Yeah, which is what you get in the US. Very different in Europe, where distances are shorter, passengers are packed tightly, and the trains are often electrified.
Just to note, this doesn't apply to every journey, only the really long distance ones.
Amtrak is still the more climate-friendly option for the vast majority of travelers, who on average travel 300 to 400 miles, said Olivia Irvin, a spokeswoman for the rail company. (That is, not many people are crazy enough to go cross-country by train.) A 2022 Department of Transportation study found that traveling by train from Los Angeles to San Diego generated less than half the emissions, per passenger, of flying, or driving. For Boston to New York, an electrified route, taking the train generated less than a fifth the emissions of flying or driving.
The problem with electrification however is that while it on average half’s an railroads operating costs, it takes significant upfront investment. Given most of Amtrak runs over fright railroads, and even if it didn’t fright is by far the larger source of carbon, you need to convince said fright railways to make the upfront investment.
Since they are currently in a state of self described ‘managed decline’ as Wall Street and private equity loot the old giants for everything they can, we probably arn’t going to see much progress on that front until Conrail 2, nationalization repairs the US rail system after private companies messed it up round four.
Conrail was taken over by the US government to be privatized as quickly as possible. That is really not the kind of nationalization you want for a railway. It is basically just government support for the private sector.
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