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Comment by AtomicOrbital | Hacker News Reader

Folks need to appreciate lush vibrant green vegetation where frequent rain is encouraged ... perhaps motivated by lifelong hiking every few days ... so for me Mediterranean climate is way too dry and barren

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Wallace Stegner:

"Dutton describes a process of westernization of the perceptions that has had to happen before the West is beautiful to us. You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time."

Much longer and more explanatory quote here:

https://bensonian.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/you-have-to-get-o...

I'm not against what he's saying, but green vegetation generally means a good source of water, which is handy to have:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_security

Indeed, but millions of humans have lived for millenia in places where grass does not grow easily. It's a different culture in so many important ways from the one found in areas with plentiful water, and has evolved over thousands of years to deal with "the world as it is".

> Indeed, but millions of humans have lived for millenia in places where grass does not grow easily.

And what were the populations of those communities? Did they have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of individuals draining natural resources?

In recent times humans haven't really done as much accepting the "world as it is". We've tried to shoehorn ourselves into circumstances where we probably should not have. I am reminded of the episode of the cartoon King of the Hill where they visit Phoenix:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PYt0SDnrBE

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