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Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

ryanblakeley.net

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Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#51

Post by dukeofdoom »

1) Animals make use of roads too, makes it easier for them to get around just as much as humans. For example coywolfs spread along the rail lines from Algonquin Park in Ontario to as far as Downtown NY. Seems like Fences are the bigger problem. Preventing some migration routs.

2) Animals are relatively quick to adapt. It might take a few generations but they will. There are street dogs in India that live their entire life on the busiest streets and manage avoid getting hit. Kangaroo's, Deer, and squirrels learned to avoid roads too for the most part.

3) While human development is bad for some species. Others thrive around humans. More Deer live now than ever before, for example.

4) Not really convinced that we have a net negative on the total biomass of animals on the planet. Lots of evidence that CO2 promotes plant growth. Greening the planet. More trees, would equate to more forrest habitat for larger animals.

5) Do spoons make you fat? ... Kent Brockman reporting

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#53

Post by bluGill »

defrost wrote: post #22
explaininjs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I own property You hit the nail on the head workout realizing it. The real problem is mass property ownership in remote areas. The huge uptick in car travelers and according roads are a result of that.

Yes | No. The classic "road trueism" is If you build them, they will fill . Four lane highways with occassional gridlock when expanded become six lane highways with occassional gridlock. The connection corollary that follows is roads | train lines built to connect A and B will often be followed by small townsites along the way and the spread of "off the grid" living at blocks T junctioning dirt road access from the n…

There are plenty of rural roads and highways that disprove your point.

We fill roads in cities because the population wants/needs to travel. If we would instead build trains those would fill instead. Trains are a lot more cost effective in cities, but no city (not even transit cities like Paris) builds enough of them to make trains a better alternative than cars.

Note that by the time anyone realizes roads are full and they need "one more lane" the road has 6 times more cars on it than it can safely handle - people just give up their safe following distance. One more reason to build trains.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#54

Post by grogenaut »

woodruffw wrote: post #20
explaininjs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think dissolving the blame is particularly helpful here. A minuscule number of individuals had full control over the use and knowledge of the impact of leaded gasoline, and everyone else had absolutely none. For 99.999% of folks those people have no relation to their grandparents, and “blaming” an entire generation for the malice of a few is ill guided at best.

Blame is your phrasing, not mine. I agree with your point about knowledge and agency; I think future generations will look back on us with disbelief and shock at our shortsightedness, not blame.

Then when they're 50 they'll look back on stuff they thought was fine when they were young, and is bad now. If they're introspective they'll look at the stuff that their parents or grand parents or further back thought was fine and turned out to be bad. As people say, it's easy with hindsight and it's really hard in the moment. Many second and third order effects aren't obvious or testable. Then add profit motive. The real question is do you change when you realize you were wrong or double down.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#55

Post by oh_sigh »

woah wrote: post #35
woodruffw wrote: post #7

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…

It's simply not possible for many families to live in the cramped environments of a city. How am I going to pick up 12 gallons of milk on my weekly grocery shopping trip without a pickup truck? That's about 125lb of milk. Not going to be able to get that onto a fixie in the city. How am I going to park the truck without a garage? The garage needs 3 spaces, one for the truck, one for the car, and one for my garage ref…

The problem is you're just overlaying suburban lifestyle on a city without adjusting it to suit your environment. The equivalent would be a city dweller moving to the suburbs and thinking they can just walk to Walmart, when it might be 10 miles away.

If you live in a city you can just pick up milk at a convenience store as you walk by, when you need it. There will probably be one within a 5 minute walk of your house.

I would also like to know more about this milk consumption. Median consumed by US milk drinkers is 1/3rd gallon per week - your family is drinking as much milk as 36 people do every week.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#56

Post by ants_everywhere »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #18

There's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?" Besides the simple idea of neighbours building and maintaining small roads, I argue that I wouldn't want the highway. Between the ecological damage, the noise, air pollution, increased reliance on shipping things from far away vs buying local - are we really sure building the massive road ne…

> some entrepreneur would have worked on flying cars and skipped the road altogether.

In practice, a society without a government is just a collection of local warlords depleting all the resources in a violent struggle for power.

For example, consider the history of Somalia or the general concept of a power vacuum.

So I'd think the chances of such an environment supporting an entrepreneur working on flying cars to be near zero.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#57

Post by grogenaut »

tony_cannistra wrote: post #14
schiffern wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.

I don't really know. I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds.

I'm out duck hunting right now and there's quite a lot of very very damp farmland in the Seattle/Tacoma/Everett metroplex. The river valley behind microsoft would be idiotic to build anything bu farms and golf courses on (and the golf course is unplayable half the year). The term colloidal substance describes these areas well. Also a ton of water retention areas on the hills, otherwise stuff would wash out very easily.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#58

Post by woodruffw »

engineer_22 wrote: post #48
woodruffw wrote: post #7

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…

USA has plentiful water resources. Engineering practices in new development and redevelopment have adapted to prioritize retention of stormwater. We have some of the finest and most sophisticated hydraulic engineering in the history of the world, be happy for what you've got.

All three of "we have plentiful water resources," "we have advanced ground- and storm-water management systems," and "we are disastrously compromising our water resources" can be simultaneously true.

I'm exceedingly thankful for my high quality of life. I would like my grandchildren to share a similar quality of life.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#59

Post by roenxi »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #18

There's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?" Besides the simple idea of neighbours building and maintaining small roads, I argue that I wouldn't want the highway. Between the ecological damage, the noise, air pollution, increased reliance on shipping things from far away vs buying local - are we really sure building the massive road ne…

I'm not sure why you've been downvoted at the time of my commenting; but you've probably upset someone who deserves to be upset. The sheer amount of space that is killed off in many cities to support roads and car parking is insane. If there wasn't that much dead space, walking around would be more than feasible.

Car-centric design sits in competition with pedestrian-centric design, and the bias towards road over-construction has ruined a lot of urban spaces. At the very least, rolling back government involvement in road construction would be helpful.

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