101–110 of 241 posts
I wonder if we stopped killing wildlife wholesale if we would see reductions in this overgrowth. Although I wonder if any native species would be able to handle the insane numbers of Russian Thistle/Tumbleweeds.
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Also see resistance to nuclear fission. Environmentalists have inadvertently shot civilization in the foot and served the interests of the fossil fuel industry by blocking expansion of carbon free nuclear. In exchange, we've spent the last several decades dumping drastically more carbon in the atmosphere than was necessary.
This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…
A viable solution might be the creation of an insurance fund to compensate for any unintended damage caused by prescribed burns. This fund, funded by utility companies especially those in wildfire-prone areas, would function similarly to banks' contributions to the FDIC. This could alleviate liability concerns, thereby encouraging proactive wildfire prevention strategies.
This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…
It’s common to the main deontological ethical frameworks including the Judeo-Christian models that underpin “western values.
The “solution” is to take a Consequentialist approach, though most people fail the trolley problem and find consequentialism repugnant, so I don’t think we will solve this problem any time soon.
(Most people are familiar with Mills’ hedonic utilitarianism, but it’s quite simplistic; I’m a big fan of Eudaimonia as your value function, and richer systems like two-level utilitarianism as a way of getting round the “calculate everything all the time” problem with some utilitarian systems.)
I'd like to point out that this problem can technically be solved by a well-meaning arsonist who's willing to break the law. Simply send a public message to fire departments naming the date and location that a forest fire will start, let the fire departments prepare like they would for a controlled burn, and then set off the blaze. There's some difficulty involved with establishing sufficient credibility for this to…
An extremely brief google search tells me that controlled burns require firebreaks, knowledge of the wind patterns (something called a downwind backfire?) and presumably continued monitoring/support from firefighters to actually be a controlled burn over the area that needs it. I think what you're describing is a total fantasy.
I thought only you can prevent wildfires
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The medical analogy here is the DNR order. Doctors don't want to create liability by explicitly assisting in a patient's death, even of someone in a vegetative state. So instead, they avoid this liability while still "accomplishing death", by following an order to intentionally avoid explicitly reversing any sudden "act of god" event that would cause the patient to die without active intervention. Or, to put that ano…
> why not just build (and maintain) the firebreaks, wait for a wildfire to happen inside the burn zone, and then just refuse to put it out? Per my understanding, part of performing a controlled burn is mustering more resources near the burn (spatially and temporally) than you could reasonably maintain near every possible burn site all the time.
This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…
You can improve the retention basin by adding a pump to actively manage the basin's capacity. When there is rain in the forecast, you pump water out of the basin, reducing its water level. When the rain arrives, you turn off the pump and let the basin refill. This increases the amount of water that the basin is able to divert during the storm.
I worked with a company that designed such a system and we even installed a demonstration unit for a municipality. It worked as intended and the city engineer advocated for expanding the project to all suitable basins. However, when the municipality's lawyers looked at the project, they argued that if the system failed to activate prior to a storm, the city might be liable any flooding that occurred afterward. Of course, the scenario where the system failed to function was identical to one in which it had never been built in the first place*, but that was not a convincing argument and the project was killed.
* I like escalators because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. - Mitch Hedberg
I'd like to point out that this problem can technically be solved by a well-meaning arsonist who's willing to break the law. Simply send a public message to fire departments naming the date and location that a forest fire will start, let the fire departments prepare like they would for a controlled burn, and then set off the blaze. There's some difficulty involved with establishing sufficient credibility for this to…