Comment by xor99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xor99 | Hacker News Reader

Some of the arguments seem misplaced via bad assumptions. This is exactly the approach that will alienate trad thinkers who need to be convinced in order for any effective action to be taken. Here are the issues I had:

- Highly processed food, including fake meat, could be extremely bad for you. The point is we just don't know yet as there isn't good data.

- Dense cities have the potential to be inhumane and not worth living in for various health (e.g. particulates, aerosols, nitrogen, disease) and social (digital-gov tight controls over movement, work, and access to resources) reasons. Just look at covid era China. Large groups of people displaced into under resourced cities ends badly.

-Nuclear is great until you get something like Ukraine where its used as a stick against the rest of Europe. Thyroid cancer rates in western europe would spike as a result of a critical incident. Or ofc Fukashima and Chernobyl. I'm totally pro nuclear but not mentioning its failures is a bad take and I don't believe the figures about nuclear related deaths.

> Dense cities have the potential to be inhumane and not worth living in for various health (e.g. particulates, aerosols, nitrogen, disease)

Sure they have the potential for this, but only if we don’t take these problems into account and mitigate them. Take particulates for example (and noise, which you didn’t mention but is also an issue); a lot is from cars. If we assume that every city resident will have and frequently use a car, then sure that becomes an issue. But if we provide viable alternatives to driving and make them as or more convenient than driving, much less of an issue.

True, but the potential must be possible given existing resources and political systems and not inhuman or utopian. EVs are possible and not utopian for the most part and so you are right. Although the energy crisis will heavily impact manufacture of EVs.

Another point: fertility drops massively in cities and this is an environmental concern as you need labour to transition industries at scale (e.g. nuclear plants, solar, wind, biomanufacture). Low birth rate dense cities are a recipe for disaster in terms of sufficient labour for a green transition.

The list of issues with the authors "I'm a misunderstood future hero" viewpoint goes on and on imo.

Low-traffic neighborhoods, grassy tram tracks for sound dampening, protected bike lanes, etc are also possible and not utopian. We do ourselves a disservice if we think about them as some unattainable ideal. They exist, right now.

Yes, they exist, but are only implemented in very small pockets of neighborhoods in cities across the US and there is usually huge hurdles in expanding them. They seem like window dressing in wealthy neighborhoods rather than as solutions being expanded citywide.

Exactly.. and believing that this will distribute evenly across the population magically and solve the issues relating to dense and unhealthy post-climate cities is the kernel of moderate climate-utopic thinking. Sure these interventions exist but so do Ferraris. They may or may not scale.

> and believing that this will distribute evenly across the population magically

I don’t expect this will happen magically. I expect it will happen through advocacy and legislation.

The US is not a particularly good role model here. Look to Western Europe for better examples.

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