Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, packing people into cities like sardines will help save the world from climate change. But even progressives are hesitating to support this latest climate initiative.
Denser cities could be a climate boon – but nimbyism stands in the way
Drawing people into cities could cut emissions and combat housing crises. But even progressives are hard to convince
In San Francisco’s Sunset District, rows and rows of pastel-colored, two-storey homes flow from the edge of Golden Gate park into the sand dunes of Ocean Beach. Many houses here have solar panels on their roofs and compost bins at their driveways, flanked by hybrid and electric cars.
Yet here – and all over this city – one major solution to both the housing crisis and the climate crisis has been met with fierce resistance: building more.
Climate scientists and urban planners increasingly suggest that one of the most impactful ways to slash greenhouse gas emissions is to make cities denser. This change, scientists have calculated, is even more impactful than installing solar panels on all new constructions or retrofitting old buildings with energy-saving technologies. Residents of cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Minneapolis already have much lower carbon footprints than in the surrounding suburban sprawl. City dwellers tend to have smaller apartments that require less energy to heat and cool.
But it also means a certain American way of life may have to end.
…
At a national level, Joe Biden has called for a “historic investment” in affordable housing, with his administration urging cities to change zoning laws to boost density and limit single-family housing developments, as well as rip up highways that have cleaved apart communities, typically communities of color, and added to air pollution.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/22/cities-climate-change-dense-sprawl-yimby-nimby
Is it just me, or does anyone else think some climate activists act like they hate the idea of any personal contact with nature? At least with suburbs, houses with backyards, there is room for kids to play on grass lawns, maybe plant a few fruit trees between the houses, to share the space with the local wildlife. High density housing not so much.
Just the contrast will be right, open the cities for better air exchange. look for cold air flows from outsides to line the streets along.
Of course they want more people in cities. The UN and 179 nations created a plan to foster that movement. And of course — it will solve all climate problems … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkM0W1401dg
It’s also the policy of the US Democrat Party. Oregon led the way in ending single family dwelling zoning. The suburbs must die!
The Chinese have been “happily” engaged in bringing the peasants away from the farms and into the cities. Look how happy it has made so many of them.
Especially those Uyghurs. Nice Climate Friendly ™ camps, everything provided including nice well-paying, safe jobs. It’s a communist utopia!
Yeah the UN and the Guardian are on board with climate Re-education camps for the masses.
The transfer of population from rural squalor to urban squalor resulted in a tenfold increase in population. In the industrial UK
People live where they don’t starve to death.By definition.
This is pure “agends 21” Proles to live in smart citiues where they can be watched and herded. The countryside will be mostly reserved for daft wrewilding aka general neglect and abandonment to invasive species . Access to the better parts of the countryside to be restricted to a small number of the elect elite who are deemed by their peers worthy . ie the few who can be catered for and supplied with electric vehicles which the proles must be denied. Enjoy the Brave New World and feel Orwell’s totalitarian boot on your neck – for ever.
Ceaușescu’s ‘Systematization’, herded people into city tower blocks where they could be more easily controlled and surveilled.
It worked… for a while, Chris.
When will the elites learn that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose? Then… look out! French haircuts become the style.
…. well that didn’t end too well for him, or his wife.
To the end the pair behaved as if they were still in charge.
They’re dead but the mindset is alive and well.
Global Warming/Climate Change are the fence posts and barbed wire the Leftists will use to enslave humanity.
From Genesis (Get ‘em out by Friday)
…They say how the people
Will be shorter in height
They can fit twice as many
In the same building site
They say it’s alright….
Ahhh. Back in the days when Genesis actually made interesting music, instead of drivel.
Was there ever such a time?
‘And when it comes to the end, the men will look like the women, and the women like the men’
Back in the days of Peter Gabriel, my opinion is, yes. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
I thought the same thing when I read the article title.
In fact I started the song before I started scrolling the comments and am listening to it right now.
Considering the elitist nature of the greens, this is a desire that the plebs live in rat warrens, not their betters.
They’ll manage to get by in their 20-room dachas (with infinity pools) while we manage to get by in a 12′ x’ 15′ apartment with a hotplate that works when there is electricity, a sink, and a toilet that works most of the time.
What more could 6 serfs possibly want?
Utopia!
Don’t forget the toilets that use 1/4 less water but require you to flush twice.
John B. Calhoun demonstrated what happens in elitists utopias and the opening photo seems to confirm it.
Well how are the Greens going to be able to live in organic bliss 30 minutes away from the beach if proles are taking up all that space with their disgusting “traditional” housing??
but …
termites!
Think more like bed bugs and high-rise fires.
“termites”… termites, you say?… Extra FOOD!
It’s all good.
Utopia!
yeah , that how I describe hirise units and inner city dwelling
Guardian writes lot of nonsense usually on climate and much on else too.
Telegraph, however has different ideas on global warming and much else too.
Tomorrow’s headline:
The Washington elite have turned on Biden. Watch out for the Harris presidency
“The media outlets which sold the wars, and sold Biden’s candidacy too, are now whispering that he’s past it.
…. Kamala Harris has gone from near-total invisibility on the southern border, where the Biden team sent her to deal with the migrant crisis …”
From bad to worse, is that the Trump’s shadow looming on horizon?
Even the Media turns on Joe Biden
Even CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times have stopped defending him.These are the same teams that hid the Hunter-Biden Laptop from hell, the “10% for the Big Guy” scandal and that the FBI had possession for a whole year and did nothing.
You think Biden has issues. The Democrats didn’t vote for Harris in the primaries. She was the 3rd person to exit out of 18 candidates due to lack of support. The US has 3.5 years of no leadership ahead and the way things are going we will have a Republican Congress and a weak Democratic President. Just hope the country can make it.
Kamala had less support than Beto, if I remember correctly.
His skateboard had more support than both of them combined.
They are deathly afraid of Harris losing her deciding vote in the Senate and the fact that she’s hated so much that the house will reject her out of hand.
Good point. Does that mean we will have a President Pelosi?
The Democrats have hoist themselves on their own petard. Whatever happens, it “will be worse than we think”.
They want everyone (the survivors) packed into a few mega cities. You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy. Or else!
For something that’s just supposed to be a conspiracy theory, it’s just getting more and more obvious and in your face.
There are no real conspiracy theories, at least 98% are based on facts.
When I get called a conspiracy theorist now, I just tell people it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a spoiler alert.
Excellent, Mark! I am s-o-o-o stealing that.
It will be ok once the survivors get their heads straight and can remember to never speak their minds.
That’s UN Agenda 21 right there. UN’s plan through which elites rule a globalised World of energy poor impoverished city based population, confined to cities we are not wealthy enough to leave, under high tech controls, run by elites for the elites. 50% of the land area will be banned to everyone – apart from the elites – also the only ones allowed to fly.
Worth checking out Agenda 21.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21#:~:text=Sustainable%20Development%20Knowledge%20Platform&text=Agenda%2021%20is%20a%20comprehensive,human%20impacts%20on%20the%20environment..
It’s not a conspiracy theory when they hand you their ‘How To’ manual, is it?
I’ve shared that link and had people STILL insist it’s a conspiracy theory and there is no such thing.
The opening sentence of the entire document.
“Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being.”
Worsening poverty??
Less food??
WTF are they smoking??
The question is, is that a stable scenario?
Like it or not, and you probably won’t and I certainly don’t, a system whereby an elite suppresses and enslaves a majority by means of a fully paid off warrior class or legal class, works.
In fact some authorities aver that it was only the rise of a mercantile and artisanal middle class with wealth and power that managed to impose some form of democracy on an autocratic monarchy that typified the European nation states in the Middle Ages. And its all been fragile ever since then, with one dictator or another or a top down antidemocratic politburo of one sort or another trying to restore things to ‘us on top, you plebs do as you are told’
Today, it’s the elites with big money, who buy private education for their kids, rather than send then for indoctrination in state schools, who employ the technocrats, who are told they are smart and should be running things, who replace manual and white collar labour with computers, who are disenfranchising the plebs, who have no value wahstover except as service workers – essentially slaves of one sort or another.
The inconvenient truth is that if all the people in the ‘projects’ just died tomorrow, the rest of middle America would probably be all the better for it, and the elites wouldn’t blink an eyelid beyind shedding the odd crocodile tear.
Why are ArtStudents™ always Revolting? Because they realise they have nothing to contribute to a consumer product technological world. The same goes for various other sub classes. They are superfluous to requirements.
Mushroom management rules. Pack em into cities, keep em in the dark and feed em on bullshit. Via the Guardian, that bastion of the Bandar Log, and consensus politics: ‘we all say it, so it must be true’
All this moralising political correctness, eco bollocks and solcial engineering – LBGTQ or whatver it is, is simply a replacement for Christianity, which informed us slaves that rewards are to be sought not on earth, but in heaven, and rich men don’t get there so yah boo sucks!
How convenient for the rich men….
It worries me. In times of war and conflict, cold or otherwise, you need the truth to fight the enemy with. If you have achieved victory, the truth is inconvenient and unnecessary: what matters is that everybody believes the same bullshit, especially that you were born to rule and are exceptionally well suited for it.
Stuck inside a thermally adjusted city who will know what global temperature really is ? – as I told the police officers who stopped me doing 130mph when they asked me what speed I was doing “It was whatever speed you say it was”
Which amused them enough to call it 99mph, one mph less than instant disqualification.
But, “Agenda 21 is a conspiracy theory” haven’t you heard?
The proles are all Deplorables and Irredeemable. Way too many of them live in flyover country, which has to be fixed. Once they are all packed into high-density areas, they can easily be mulched down and recycled. This is, of course, the point of the exercise.
“Hey hey ho ho Western Culture’s got to go!” The people who chanted that 50-60 years ago are in charge now. Climate change is only one of the means being used to justify that end.
How about just cramming everyone into the a single gigacity with the population density of Monaco? Would take up around 300,000 sq. km. Oman would work nicely, with room to spare.
A few farmers would be required in more fertile areas, but not many, given robotics. Plus the odd factory running on nuclear, solar and wind power.
You could save on CO2 from concrete if you herd everyone into one giant room. Who needs a city? That’s just wasteful.
Great idea, Robert! The pit toilets are kind of yucky, but the proles will get used to it.
Meanwhile, claim your spot near the one window. Guard it vigorously. You may be one of the lucky ones to get 10 minutes by the window if you rat out enough other people for ‘wrongthink’.
“Comrades. Today is a glorious day. We celebrate the birthday of Dear Leader! (Evereybody cheer… or else.)
The lights will be on for an extra 10 minutes today, from 9:00 am to 11:40 am and there will be a feast where everyone gets not one, but TWO extra maggots in their gruel! (Evereybody cheer… or else.)”
(Is the sarc tag really necessary?)
Hmmmm … now that you’ve got them all in one big room, what to do? What to do? Choices. Choices.
Planned Personhood (PP) to ensure a politically congruent (“=”) distribution of diversity classes (e.g. race, sex, gender?, age).
When the fight against climate change has been fought and climate change has been defeated, what will the climate be like?
“…what will the climate be like?”
Changed.
I think mankind has been fighting stupidity for at least 300,000 years and we still have not won that fight…what makes you think we can ever win this “climate change” fight?
Sadly being smart is not necessarily a survival trait. Substantial buttocks, as a portable energy battery, are handier for famines.
well kims set then
There will be climate stasis once we reach a state of leftist (i.e. authoritarian) utopia. So, sacrifice a baby for social progress, and let us bray, sheman.
Climate Change (TM) will never be defeated. That is a feature, not a bug. A continuing “crisis” requires continuing subservience to the endless demands for “action.” Which “action,” as always, will somehow boil down to people “needing” to surrender more of their money and freedom to those in power.
Considering all of the low skilled and uneducated illegal immigrants invading the US, high density third world like slums like homeless encampments will expand to make this ‘dream’ a reality.
Large cities export their environmental problems. Almost everything they consume is made elsewhere.
Once you change the balance sheet so you attribute to the actual consumers the resources and pollution entailed in the production of the goods they use, large, dense cities look a lot less environmentally friendly. link
Amazing. Not the excerpt from the book (by the way, the whole book looks interesting [EDIT it is not free, if anyone read the comment just a few seconds ago]) – but that Scientologist American actually published it.
What a perfect way to kill as many of us as possible with COVID or any other communicable disease that comes along! It would indeed lower emissions, since there would be far fewer of us to emit anything.
The few surviving humans might evolve bat-like immune systems. They’ve been living in megacities for 50 million years, with even closer crowding than the densest human slum.
The first human megacity, with over ten million inhabitants, was the NYC metro area in 1950. Now there are over 40 megacities, with up to 40 million (metro Tokyo) closely packed residents. The largest known bat colony, in TX, contains 20 million denizens.
The bats need to up their game.
They’re on their own schedule, not ours.
They weren’t given a choice as to participating in CCP bioweapons research, trained and funded by Dr. FauXi.
Hmmmm. It would be interesting to see the crime statistics for that largest bat colony in Texas. I would be interested, in particular, in the incidence of crime by the Joker, Riddler, and (dare I say it?) Harvey Dent.
Would a study correlating population density with COVID cases and deaths even be permitted?
Does anyone know if such a study has been done?
Please see the NYC metro area. But you have to factor in brain dead or actively evil Democrat governors in NY and NJ.
Does anyone even know if there was an uptick in moralities in 2020? Brain dead doesn’t count.
It doesn’t need doing – its patently obvious (in the UK at least).
Yup. Its all evolution in action. People will consciously or unconsciously try every single thing befire hitting on one that works, for now. Their descendants will worship their ancestors for being wise, but really they were just plain lucky.
Yet again, we speak of “features,” not “bugs.”
Doesn’t that sound like a greater social change than urbanisation?
A kibbutz or a commune is a great thing to voluntarily join. Yet in doing so you are making a social choice for yourself and the collective cause. However you are sacrificing your responsibilities to your family in order to resource this choice.
Forcing a change in the basic social unit from the family to… something else is… an interesting idea.
What leftist outfits like the Guardian, the BBC, the CBC, CNN, etc. want and what the majority of citizens want are two different things. Densely populated cities are associated with poor air quality, congestion, noise, and inflated property values, and the advocates of them often already own housing there. So more people in these areas would increase property demand and raise prices benefiting those currently residing in them. Besides, core areas of cities are often adjacent to lower- rent districts with higher degrees of social instability; i.e., crime rates and too often the perpetrators carry their activities into gentrified neighborhoods. People want for the most part to live in places where they have operating space,and any climate action takes a distinct back seat to such priorities.
You forgot higher levels of escapist drug abuse and child suicide.
They tried that in many UK cities after WWII. It was a disaster and councils have been tearing down high rise blocks of flats ever since.
Brutalism is the name for all of the concrete architecture put up in the 60s and 70s.
No need to tear them down. Just add some Climate Friendly ™ cladding, and wait for it to burn!
The ideas were all good. The implementation was all wring.
Fundamentally they took the tower blocks, didnt insulate them, made them only heatable with expensive electricity and then stuck problem families in them.
If they had sold them to yuppies at enormous prices they would have been fine dwelling units
That might burn down from one small fire…
Imagine some building developments in the National Mall in DC. That would look great and bring the public really ckise to politics, arts, enterteinment and science.
How about reducing the population? All greens and leftards should stop exhaling, right now!
They’re working on that right now. It’s called covid.
Why does anyone read the Guardian? They’re clearly just trolling the western world with lies and nonsense to scam and misinform everyone so they can sell more Google-Ads™ using UN-Climate-Scam™.
I can’t remember the last time I deliberately clicked on a Guardian link … well … unless I want to catch up on my celebrity drama news … especially if there’s a bikini or cleavage involved … as that’s totally different …
Yes, that would be “Cleavage Change”, not “Climate Change”.
People who consider themselves well informed and intelligent read the Guardian and believe every word. It is truly frightening.
I myself read the tabloids, because there is no danger of believing anything they say, and if they do mention in passing between the endless soap opera that is their portrayal of the royal family and other mindless celebrities, something of actual relevance, I can always research it in depth elsewhere.
The Guardian is read by right-thinking people who know what is bad for the rest of us and are outraged they are not in total control.
We already have a few “cattle car” dwellings with slitty horizontal windows only inches high that you can hardly see out of having been constructed as replacements for older homes. I think these are trial balloon properties.
Urban parasites love their hellholes and don’t understand why everyone doesn’t. They even call people that won’t live like that names and say they’re stupid.
Isaac Asimov was a prophet. His robot series, specifically starting with the “Caves of Steel” contain what seem like astounding insights.
while certainly not the first SF writer to write about future inventions, his take on how humanity interacted with technology and herd mentality certainly seem to encompass what is happening in the world.
And “The Naked Sun” examines what might happen if the “elite” get their way.
Don’t forget Soleria. A world where humans meeting face to face was taboo, all communications were by video chat and robots/machines did all the work.
Ah hell, I’m just going to throw Judge Dredd into the mix – with more people shoved into these megacities it’ll require more draconian policing.
It isn’t that they hate nature, they hate other people, and they hate the idea that other people live a decent life.
You can’t be an elite unless the majority of other people are living under worse conditions than you.
Excellent insight, Thomas.
And all of the leftists view themselves as the morally superior ‘Elites’ until they have to pay for the bullet the true, 1% Elites, order for them to be sh0t with in the back of their head. ‘They’ being the Useful Idiots who have outlived their usefulness.
Somehow, the ‘Useful Idiots’ are always surprised. I guess it’s because they are idiots.
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(Idle thought: Members of the YSM (Yellow Stream Media) might want to make sure their life insurance policies are paid up. Anyone who can be bought or programmed so easily as they have been can just as easily be bought and programmed by someone in opposition. Best to make sure that never happens.)
Won’t more high-density cities contribute to the urban heat island effect?
Only if you use it for infilling the data…
Only if there the overlords provide heating.
The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence all efforts to reduce CO2 emissions will have no effect on climate.
I think it is pretty much a proven fact that CO2 dramatically affects the Political Climate.
Idiotic Political Climate Change?
Great way to increase the spread of disease…
Now you’re catching on. That’s the whole idea. All these lock downs and loss of freedoms is just a trial run.
Aligns well with new Marxist reasoning: gather them up in cities where they are easier to pacify and control.
If everybody is packed into the cities, where will the food come from? Who will farm? This idea is idiotic on so many levels.
With the right equipment, you don’t need all that many farmers to feed a lot of people. Now if you also kill off fossil fuels, well, there’s going to be a lot of hungry people.
I read recently that in the UK, a lot of the equipment used to automate farming, such as GPS monitoring, is getting nicked.
That’s because enterprising peeps will nick (steal) anything if they think it’ll raise a few quid (pounds)!!! When I used to do a bit of sailing, my sailing friends & I would spend about half an hour screwing/bolting expensive kit such as radar/GPS etc before going to sea, then repeating the process in reverse when anchoring up & leaving the boat, anything that could be easily removed was easily removed, by us instead of them!!! Human beings can be very criminally minded, IMHO, that it!!!
Not round here.
But what is of interest was clearly brought home to me when I rented a cottage on a Fen farm in Cambridgeshire. That fen was littered with derelict houses. My landlord, saidthat prior to WWII it had featrured about 500 peole, 5 pubs, a church and a hundred houses and stables and horses and so on. Now less than a dozen people lived on it, and it produced more food than ever.
From 90% of the population doing agriculture in the 18th century its down to less than one percent now. I surrounde bey a small farm of probably not much nmore than 100 acres: It takes two full time people to manage it.
Soylent Green.
Ultimate recycling.
Please John, don’t joke about such things, I fear we’re not that far away from such policies!!! ;-((
The more they try to dictate anti-meat bullshit, the closer to it we’ll get…
Robots do all that.
Just get your food from the store! No need for farms!
When you ignore past history and research you are doomed to repeat it. Does no ne remember past experiments with cramming large number of rats into small living spaces? Sooner or later violence happens and the rats start killing each other in order to gain living space.
Why do you see more crime in high-density low-income subsidized housing than you do in rural and suburban living? It isn’t because people are inherently bad and wind up in dense housing. The psychological and social pressures caused by such dense living eventually generate problems There have been all kinds of science fiction novels on this. The people at the Guardian need to expand their horiizons!
Why do you imagine that this is not desirable to them? Scared citizens are much easier to control.
John B. Calhoun’s experiment illuminated many distressed behaviors. Does this sound familiar today?
“Pretty boy” rats that basically spent all their time grooming and wouldn’t mate.
“The turning point in this mouse utopia, Calhoun observed, occurred on Day 315 when the first signs appeared of a breakdown in social norms and structure. Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant
behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.”
“Other young mice growing into adulthood exhibited an even different type of behavior. Dr. Calhoun called these individuals “the beautiful ones.” Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared [outwardly] as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, alert eyes and a healthy, well-kept body. These mice, however, could not cope with unusual stimuli. Though they looked inquisitive, they were in fact, very stupid.”
https://fee.org/articles/john-b-calhoun-s-mouse-utopia-experiment-and-reflections-on-the-welfare-state/
Cities over larger areas increase average travel distances & spreads the urbanisation into farming & natural areas (increases area of UHI effect). Smaller cities kept apart can aid isolation of pandemics. Low density cities have greater opportunity for rooftop solar, household batteries, rooftop rain collection & water tanks, private space for outdoor exercise & children to play (especially during lockdowns).
Greater city densities increases infection rates, subsidence, heat island effects (temperature but also can change wind & rain). It increases the density of pollution & waste to deal with. Some old cities have problems with sewer systems that overflow because of stormwater & a lack of areas to allow flooding of wetlands before silt/chemicals/rubbish/sewage enters the sea. There is a benefit that living 5km from the sea in the Sydney area has less need for heating & cooling (Winter min 10C, Summer max 35C) than 50km west of Sydney (Winter min 3C, Summer max 45C). Apartments have shared walls/roof with neighbouring temperature controlled apartments & apartments have smaller internal area than detached houses. The problem with apartments is lack of natural drying of clothes (high use of electric dryers) vs houses with clothes lines in the backyard. High density does allow daily shop a walk away to avoid cars by some. During a pandemic, daily shopping & high density crowds in local shops increases spread. Too much of the city workforce can still live a distance away & cause cross city transmission between work, home & shops.
Your winter mins are way to high. It can easily freeze at Penrith, and can get as low as 1C in Sydney.
It even gets as low as 7C here, 500km into the tropics, and that’s on the coast. Inland it can freeze still.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think some climate activists act like they hate the idea of any personal contact with nature? At least with suburbs, houses with backyards, there is room for kids to play on grass lawns, maybe plant a few fruit trees between the houses, to share the space with the local wildlife. High density housing not so much.
No, they just hope large estates for themselves will be more affordale, once the riff raff are out of the way.
“But even progressives are hesitating to support this latest climate initiative.” All you have to do is drive I66 into D.C. to understand that one :<)
I seem to recall studies years ago that detailed the negative impacts on people when forced into small compact spaces. High-rise tenements were cauldrons of dog-eat-dog existence. Man (and animal) must be able to move about. Being packed in like sardines is not a winning formula.
Tell that to Hong Kong…
High density housing and workplaces, high use of public transport, reusable coffee cups and shopping bags – everything green sounds ideal for the next virus.
They just said the quiet part out loud. Of course the eco-Marxists want people into cities! When people are packed into cities, then they can take away all property. No private ownership of vehicles, dwellings, or land. We will all own nothing, and be happy.
And if you are not happy … well, your new dwelling in the gulag will make you regret not being happy. So, you better be happy living in your tenement. You better be happy working a menial job that you were ordered to have (instead of a job you want to do). You better be happy with your ration of vegetables, bread, and once weekly luxury of meat. You better be happy showing your papers to travel. And, most of all, you better not be unhappy with the blatant hypocrisy of your enlightened leaders and the in-your-face hypocrisy of the ones who keep them rich.
Are you refusing the government ordered medical treatment? Do you need to be reminded of the people who are not happy? To the gulag for you, grandma killer!
I think one of the books of Asimov’s Foundation series begins with the arrival of the lead character arriving on a planet nearly covered with interconnected highrise buildings. There is one green space or park that can be viewed.
I might miss-remember.
Surely the Guardian writers are plagiarizing.
Yes, you are thinking of the very first book – “Foundation.” Where his initial protagonist, Hari Seldon (who personified the technocratic notion that people and history could be completely manipulated to desire if you only had enough information) arrives on Trantor, capital of the Galactic Empire. Completely covered by city, extending miles above and below the former surface – except for a district around the Imperial Palace (of course).
Asimov had somewhat of a fascination with urbanization taken to the extremes, a product of his only memories and life experience being in NYC (his parents emigrated from Russia when he was barely an infant). He had a similar society in “Caves of Steel” (referenced by Matt Kiro above) – Earth almost entirely covered by a massive city.
Even he, though, eventually figured out that such things were sterile, and would inevitably degenerate and collapse – when he merged his robot series with the Foundation series, he had a robot artificially increase the decay rate of the long-lived elements in the crust to make the Earth virtually uninhabitable, driving the dispersal of humanity out to the stars. (Bad physics, by the way – but what we writers call a “Macguffin.”)
Sorry, the greater the density the lower the birthrate and the shorter the lifespan. A biological factoid. Increasing density is a way to control people, ease marketing costs, increase profit margins and shrink populations. There is no way the planet could sustain and grow in population in a high density format. It just won’t work. China isn’t covered in rat mazes. It still grows Asian pears (yuk). Asimov was a chicken little about the human population. Remember he wrote fiction… intellectually lame fiction based on chicken little presuppositions. Any one who takes an a priori inference and builds it into a chicken little alarm system is a moron making himself out to be the principium of all truth. I am hoping there is a first class Ph.D. out how understands biological populations and who can shed some light. Remember America’s population would have shrunk precipitously after 1980. This is the reason for immigration anarchy and a legal immigration rate 5-6 times the historical average prior to 1980.
Try to explain to my daughter with 18 month old male twins. who is desperately looking for a place with a yard, that she must keep them in an apartment.
Ah, you have the community crêche instead…where they can run around with otrher kids in the block, spreading diseases.
Having your own yard is frightfully elitist darling…
when i was a kid we’d go to the museum of science where they had an exhibit showing that by the year 2000 an average human would have 20 square feet to live in. I didn’t realize at the time that that wasn’t prediction, but rather prescription.
oh, by the way. leave it to liberals to think that more complex systems would require less energy per individual
The climate activists dream for humanity is for everybody but the elites to be living their entire lives in coffin sized boxes while consuming kale gruel and shopping for mind altering substances online. These SJWs are such revolting, sub-human cretins.
Do you think they consider Matha’s Vineyard as high density ?
But Martha’s Vineyard is for the haves, not the have-nots. The only people allowed in will be the party faithful, the nomenklatura and their servants, no-one else.
“800 million people living in the ruin of the old world and the mega structures of the new one. Mega blocks. Mega highways. Mega City One. Convulsing. Choking. Breaking under its own weight. Citizens in fear of the street. The gun. The gang. Only one thing fighting for order in the chaos: the men and women of the Hall of Justice. Juries. Executioners. Judges.”
I would Dredd that
I prefer the rural life.
Nobody working for the Guardian has ever been abroad to, say, Peru or India. Ludicrous idea, waste of ink and time.
I agree, the Grauniad is both.
Make cities denser? Just dumb down the education. Job done.
Okay. I’ve had some great fun above and responded to and expanded on some excellent points.
But I’m U.S. and I have to wonder, how many of the Grauniadistas actually live in high-rise, high-density blocs? Not many, I’m willing to bet.
Just guessing from an ocean away, but I think the better paid ones at the Grauniad might just so happen to have a country cottage in addition to their in-town digs, or at least go home at night to their home in the ‘burbs with a bit of garden in the back and maybe a shed and a workshop.
Maybe… probably… no doubt? I dunno. I’m U.S.
Elitist mentality: Gruel for thee but filet and lobster for me, because I’m righteous and you’re not. Phlbtt!!
*SPIT*
Guradinstas are talking about the people– not about themselves. Naturally they know how to look after the natural world and take responsibility for it. So naturally they are entitled to country cottages…
Hmm, appears they want us all to be Winston Smiths.
“According to The Guardian, packing people into cities like sardines will help save the world from climate change” which is a scheme in itself. While in the US already, Gates, Bezos, et al who already own tens of millions of US land and continue buying up even more of it, the rest of us should be forced to cramp up in tiny spaces like vertical zoo?? Read my lips Guardian, UN, WEF, US Congress, global Deep State et al: NO WAY!
People who write for & read the Guardian know exactly what is best for everyone, just as long as it isn’t applied to them, only the rest of us!!!
If you do heat analysis, one thing pops out of heat transfer equations. The larger a structure, the less heat loss per unit volume. Which is why the Earth still has a molten core.
If you really want to reduce heating costs, start with high rise flats but end up by enclosing a whole city in a geodesic triple glazed dome. Photochromic glass is recommended to reduce summer ‘greenhouse effects’ .
Less Antwerp than Antheap…
Taller buildings dont require more energy
The apartments dont lose energy through floors or ceilings, only through walls, and then only if they are outsie walls. An apartment that occupies say one quarter of the floor has a heat loss through two walls only instead of six in a single storey detached house
It didn’t ‘demand’ it, did it?
It is logic if humanity continues to increase its number then either cities become more densly populated or we spread into the countryside and bring added pressure on all types of life reducing biodiversity of the planet with predictable consequences – you choose. Nothing to do with climate of course
Readers of and writers for The Guardian are the sorts of people that want everyone else to live in crammed cities, not them. With a SARS virus, living in cramped conditions leads to rising infection rates.
That is right. Then Covid, but the nasty variant.
the green agenda 21 housing plans and land use i read some time back…wanted dense urban corridors on public tranport corridors to be around 6 stories high jam packed
why
so they could move people(like china did great jump backwards) to relocate TO suburbia and get all farm and other land under govvy wildlife corridors parks etc
there were maps showing how theyd remove people and create huge “wilderness areas”
as stupid as it gets I thought then
post covid its a total fustercluck idea when hi density means easy disease spread.
Happening right now in Australia. Look at any urban development near or along a transport corridor, lines and lines of unit blocks. Funnily enough, in China, if you are lucky enough to buy an apartment, it’s value decreases with improvements. So most remain unaltered and empty.
The best & brightest FAIL to learn from experience;-( In the 1950s, 60s & 70s, they moved people from cities to suburbs and rural areas. Cities were then said to be bad for civilized society. The adverse results include Detroit, Baltimore and suburbs blanketing former farm land.
Scotty, beam the best & brightest out of here. There is no sign of wisdom or humility amongst them.
Interesting that the old ecomodernist plan of increasing urbanisation is now suddenly embraced by the Guardian.
Next: nuclear power and intensive crop cultivation.
Save the world, incarcerate the GREEN FOOLS.
This is actually quite to be welcomed.
The only way to get to the desired local reductions in CO2 emissions is a radical change of lifestyle. This has always been obvious, but its always been the one thing that the green movement refused to talk about.
As a result we have had for many years now the pretence that all you have to do is change the technology. Like, keep on with cars, suburbs and malls, but just change the cars to electric. Keep on with the housing we presently have, just change the way we heat them to heat pumps, or hydrogen. Keep on shopping just like we do now, but eat less meat.
Finally we are seeing the Guardian admit what it will actually take. Addressing housing is an important step.
It will take, in no particular order:
— abolition of the car industry – under one million total on the roads in the UK, compared to over 40 million today
— closing of roads to cars and covert to use for bikes and walking
— wholesale population move into dense insulated housing
— closure of shopping centers – you will shop within walking distance
— move of business into cities, you will walk or bike to work Or take public transport to the few heavy industry sites left
— huge expansion of rail and public transport services
— an end to chemical agriculture, back to hand labour in fields
You have to imagine the UK as it was just before the introduction of the car, around 1900. This is the only way to get where the Guardian claims to want to go.
Of course, it only works as if China does the same. imagine China in about 1965. That is where China will have to go back also, to really make a dent in the global emission figures. India too.
So its good the Guardian is finally waking up to this. Now if we could only explain it to the BBC, and get them off their insane narrative about every little thing we do personally is going to have huge effects on saving the planet….
Give it time. The Guardian has even started to notice that China is emitting quite a lot and is not stopping, in fact its increasing. Men go mad in a herd, but they come to their senses slowly, one by one, a bit at a time. Its starting.
We have already seen massive centralization of America’s work force since 1960. In 1950, 25% of American’s either lived on farms and/or owned small business. My father grew up in Iowa plowing fields with horses at age 12, in 1930’s…producing what would now be 5-6 ,million dollars of beef, eggs, milk, livestock, grain, apples, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, hogs, chicken, veal etc, with only coal to heat the house and no electricity, (think if he had a truly viable off grid cheap electricity high tech solution…. he might of had enough money to buy shoes instead of wrapping his feet in rags. Now only 1.3% Americans live on farms or own businesses and this number is still falling. The rise of corporate globalistic leveraging has forced a very large migration of Americans off the farm lands and into cities and coastal megalopolises. America is nothing like what it was 50 years ago. We’re at a point in history that if the tide does not turn in America, Americans will be squeezed into tighter and tighter holes psychologically, geographically and politically, (or disenfranchised totally). There will be plenty of special stuff to consume but less and less liberty and opportunity. Since 1970, there has been little tech advancement that truly empowers families on small farms and businesses in local communities, ( I mean small… not multi-million dollar operations). And not franchises selling Crapola made in china. I mean small family businesses that hire a few local people. Currently, there is the alt economy in the hinterlands…(why buy new crap on Amazon when you can buy 20x cheaper used). Much of it is marketing of used items, and home made food, and small craft/manufacturing operations. These local economies would flourish with tech solutions that would provide off grid solutions for cheap electricity…. of the kind promised in the early 70’s that never happened. Instead, we got smartphone serfdom and with it, a rapidly shrinking imagination and massive intellectual decadence. There was a time when America’s strength was the small town. The radical fringe do not want to see that economic strength rise and flourish again in small town America unless it serves the current trajectory of Corporatism’s centralized, modularized, predictable and decadent tech make work solutions. They don’t want to see intellectual growth and expansive imagination, ( I do not mean grandiose imagination for grand high towers. I mean imagination for land, relationships, partnerships, in making and growing things and doing good work day to day in the local community. There was a time where I live in PA, when every one worked the fields and apple orchards, the craft manufacturing sheds. I mean every one. The old, the disabled and the barely able. There were no nursing homes. There were no predictable corporate program for life worked out by the insurance companies, hoards of lawyers, politicians. Yet structure in society is good… it protects and provides but now we’re into radical fringe social restructuring to the max led by the politically ambitious and intellectually decadent.
Hitler had the same idea of people happily living in close quarters where they can be easily watched. Maxine Waters said the people have to be controlled. In fact it is the representation that must be controlled with only honest votes counted.
They want to do away with cages and stock yards for live stock grown for food but are ok with stacking people into cages called apartments. In other words eliminate private ownership of everything. And for what, their idea of what is good.
Someone would move into the rural areas with trees, grass and fresh air. Who would that be the elites of course.
“Is it just me, or does anyone else think some climate activists act like they hate the idea of any personal contact with nature?” – Eric W.
Nope, nope, nope, Eric. It is NOT just you. There is something about climate activists that indicates a separation from reality in everything they say and do. They want what they want and who cares what it costs, as long as they get their way, like spoiled noisy brat that they are. And they always want it done to someone else, not to them. I don’t believe they can be trusted, period.
They want to turn the cities into huge PRISONS>
Well, they don’t seem to know much about the natural world (first-hand), so why not try to keep other people away from it too?
40 year old dystopian novels…and it’s exactly what leftists want.
These people are demented.
Agenda 21! Man is evil, man must be separated from ‘nature’. Of course urban fox populations are 5 times the density of rural ones. The same with pigeons, and there would be no where near the bat population without houses.
The Guardian are just ignorant.
I think our experience with COVID-19 shows the advantage of living in densely populated urban areas. They seemed to have the lowest death rates, didn’t they? (/sarc)
F. word morons, I’ll invite all of them in former East Europe where the packed ten stores buildings are the norm. Let’s all of them came here and find solutions!
When dense cities were bombed during WW2 the firestorms ensued. That is because of low distance between buildings the fire from the burning buildings were setting the neighbour buildings on fire. And thus all the city burned. If they kept large distances between the buildings (lower density) this wouldn’t happen.
This also may be one of the reason than in the Eastern Block during communism architects kept large distances between buildings. These were tall buildings, but not a dense architecture.