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Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

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Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#81

Post by ericmay »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #70
ericmay wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree with you there, but even a healthy lawn is still a lawn, which is still a bit of a problem. Outside of insects in the ground not much can live there. You need a variety of bushes, trees, herbs, flowers, and other types of plants to create a healthy ecosystem there. A lawn simply can't provide that.

that’s the historical point of a lawn. no one wants pests near their home.

Yea but now we can see the ecological impact of tens (hundreds?) of millions of people doing that and it doesn’t work.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#82

Post by bombcar »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #73
bluGill wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make it worse, often the things we are talking about are areas where network effects matter so the more you build the better the return on investment. Or in our case because we can afford to build so little our return on investment will be much less than it could be if we build more.

Most of the reports I've seen site a few factors: Availability of cheap skilled labor. Europe often sources it's cheap engineers and Trades workers from the East. Inefficient regulatory Frameworks such as mandated workers to do nothing and an onerous environmental monitoring. Political dysfunction and gridlock. Projects are often poorly conceived and continually change their design and intent over the course of a pro…

Remember that US prices include health insurance, I’m not sure the EU ones do (for state-provided healthcare). I’m not sure how the account labor costs.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#83

Post by bombcar »

hcrisp wrote: post #79
bombcar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute amount of effort we spend fighting nature instead of just guiding and living with it is frightening.

I spent some time as a volunteer sandbagging one of the levees in Missouri as high water neared flood stage. While there, I heard a quote attributed to an old-time farmer who was also the president of the Upper Mississippi Valley Drainage Association who also appeared before Congress on damages caused by varying the water level. The quote was along the lines of: "We think we can drain water from certain areas and far…

The eventual disaster at the old river control will show us that someday. Hopefully not soon.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#84

Post by vkou »

TylerE wrote: post #19
fredrikholm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications of such a mindset leads to further destruction. The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing things like: * Scraping away every fallen leaf to be burned * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood * Burning or spraying down all weeds * Cutting the grass, even in places no one walks…

Quoted post unavailable.

The sum total of every single American lawn occupies less than 0.5% of the overall land area of the continental US.

Meanwhile, if 'emissions from passenger cars in the US' were a country, they'd be the sixth largest carbon polluter in the world.

Not to mention the millions of years of life lost to traffic, air pollution, crashes, and their contribution to our sedentary lifestyles.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#86

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #84
TylerE wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The sum total of every single American lawn occupies less than 0.5% of the overall land area of the continental US. Meanwhile, if 'emissions from passenger cars in the US' were a country, they'd be the sixth largest carbon polluter in the world. Not to mention the millions of years of life lost to traffic, air pollution, crashes, and their contribution to our sedentary lifestyles.

[deleted]

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#87

Post by reportingsjr »

nightski wrote: post #53
ericmay wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but we're so far on the extreme of slash and burn and pouring chemicals on lawns that it's not even worth considering at this point concerns of habitation. It's just not even on the radar in terms of things that we need to bother caring about for the foreseeable future (100+ years minimum).

Pouring chemicals? Maybe a few do but I only apply one application of pre-emergent a year and then one application of fertilizer in the fall. That's not really pouring chemicals. In fact nature seems to thrive in our lawn.

You would be astounded if you looked more deeply in to this. I have tried in vain to get my landlord to stop paying a lawncare company to regularly (every month or two) dousing the patchy, dry, awful grass patches some call a lawn with fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides.

There is a huge business around doing this as well, you may not see it if you don't walk suburbs during working hours when much of this is done.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#88

Post by zip1234 »

Metacelsus wrote: post #65
hinkley wrote: post #9

If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems. Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in more…

And the Supreme Court will probably gut those laws in the near future.

How would wetlands conservation laws not be constitutional?

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#89

Post by s1artibartfast »

bombcar wrote: post #82
s1artibartfast wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the reports I've seen site a few factors: Availability of cheap skilled labor. Europe often sources it's cheap engineers and Trades workers from the East. Inefficient regulatory Frameworks such as mandated workers to do nothing and an onerous environmental monitoring. Political dysfunction and gridlock. Projects are often poorly conceived and continually change their design and intent over the course of a pro…

Remember that US prices include health insurance, I’m not sure the EU ones do (for state-provided healthcare). I’m not sure how the account labor costs.

I don't think that's true. I think the costs are top line, before corporate and individual taxes, which would include any cost which go to socialized medicine in Europe.

As a separate question, I don't know that the European socialized Healthcare Services are paying for the migrant workers from Eastern countries that perform the work

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#90

Post by nightski »

reportingsjr wrote: post #87
nightski wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pouring chemicals? Maybe a few do but I only apply one application of pre-emergent a year and then one application of fertilizer in the fall. That's not really pouring chemicals. In fact nature seems to thrive in our lawn.

You would be astounded if you looked more deeply in to this. I have tried in vain to get my landlord to stop paying a lawncare company to regularly (every month or two) dousing the patchy, dry, awful grass patches some call a lawn with fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides. There is a huge business around doing this as well, you may not see it if you don't walk suburbs during working hours when much of this is do…

Oh no I believe it and I am against those practices very much! But I feel like lawns are demonized when they don't need to be if properly done. There are a lot of benefits to lawns that are just being flat out ignored in a large part of these comment sections.
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