Live data from Hacker News

Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

cnn.com

51–60 of 119 posts

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#52
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if somebody else wasn't going to give them a big deal. Your premise requires a scenario where all cities work together to specifically avoid Amazon getting a deal, rather than any of them competing. All it takes is one city to breach that and start offering incentives, then it all folds. Short of implementing a federal law against it, there is no scenario where cities were not going to compete to lur…

> Short of implementing a federal law against it, there is no scenario where cities were not going to compete to lure Amazon. Fortunately no such federal law exists i would say that's unfortunate rather than fortunate. Cities competing for businesses is a net loss to the tax payer. If a business is to build a new HQ or invest, they should do it on the merits of their business needs and general condition applicable to…

Exactly. Thankfully in Europe, some of these deals can be deemed illegal state aid and the companies forced to give back the money they saved on taxes, if the state given advantage distorted the trade between Member States.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think op means we should have zero enemies in fixing our environment. If we were truly all on the same page and freaking out, taking meaningful action would be a lot easier.

Freaking out is the opposite of what we need. I am not worried about the consequences being so severe we cant handle them, there are other quite scarier scenarios. Freaking out gives us the opposite of solutions,just a lot of noise and premature solutions such as focusing on inferior solutions such as solar. This is the right way to do it, deal with the problems you see and can deal with.

The biggest problem is that people don’t see the problem, because they can’t see it in historical context.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#56
Mark Kurlansky (of Cod and Salt fame) wrote a book "The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell" which detailed the history of oysters and NYC [0]. Apparently at one time more than 700 million oysters a year were being harvested.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Big-Oyster-History-Half-Shell/dp/0345...

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#57
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should watch the Handmaid’s Tale; it will make you never suggest your latter suggestion again :)

It was a book originally. Plus that's kind of the opposite of what you're talking about, as most of the women are infertile.

The point of the book isn't the fertility, it's the fascism. When you're doing something abhorrent that is, of course, supposed to save the world/species - that doesn't actually make it ok

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#58
post #42

Wouldn't this invite some kind of oyster-predator or oyster-disease? Biodiversity would be more sustainable ...

This is alluded to in the article, they want wild oysters to join the population. Most likely to increase genetic diversity.

I would imagine this is a good start, people can identify with oysters and they can then start to use funding to diversify the biosphere down the line.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#59

Zebra mussels might be up to the task as well, apparently they are an invasive species, they will live anywhere and will eat anything (But they are a freshwater species)

As long as they don't migrate over to where people swim. Those things are insanely sharp and dangerous.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#60
post #5

We should all be freaking out about what we’ve done to the earth, but nobody seems to really be able to compare it within historical context. We just dont know what it was like just a century ago. I’m always surprised by facts like in this story and similar like https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b... And https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/nyregion/new-york-city-sm...

Sometimes I think our only options going forward are a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated, or an eco-fascist regime enforces pollution (and thus effectively population) control on the whole planet.

Really totallitaranism for "a good cause" is an incredibly dangerous fiction. Communism was essentially that fiction "for the workers" all they got out of that was torture and death.

The object of power is power and any claims of a cause are illusions and deceptions. React accordingly.

Post reply on HN