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Comment by mordymoop | Hacker News Reader

My family owns some land in south Texas and my subjective sense from dealing with that reality and talking to people in the area is that you can’t throw a rock without hitting a protected wetland. In practice, the ubiquity of environmentally delicate tracts of land seems to be used by the state to restrict or permit industrial activities arbitrarily, likely based on political favoritism. If you think this is hyperbole, I suggest you look into the details of the various solar power projects in Texas.

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Heard an anecdote from an architect in south Texas: if you have land there, and it rains enough, your land can become a protected wetland. Now you can't build on it.

To be fair, there's also a good case for preventing people from building on land to protect ecosystems. We may not need that many rockets, and it's certainly not the only priority for society.

Our tech circles tend to paint a very one-sided picture of the rules just putting roadblocks in front of us, but there's a lot of good examples both of what unregulated progress can do to natural resources, and of preservation efforts making a real difference.

If I was a professional environmentalist/preservationist, I'd be very frustrated with the total lack of empathy by the tech community and their efforts (often cutting-edge science!) getting described as backwards or in the way of progress almost constantly ...

Exactly. Keeping wetlands intact is very important for climate change, because draining them releases a shit ton of greenhouse gases. Of course, it's also important for biodiversity.

Nobody is draining wetlands at starbase.

And the only reason for that is because they're protected lands.

No it’s not. It’s a dumb thing to do from a construction perspective.

If you were an environmentalist / preservationist, how would you determine where the line is between what’s an appropriate level of resistance versus inappropriate (or what’s fair for spacex vs unfair for the environment)?

I would draw the line at being able to maintain a steady-state ecosystem in perpetuity.

We, uh, have yet to meet that line in most of the world. Pretty much anyone draining an aquifer, or having to import more soil nutrients than are produced by their land year-over-year, is doing something that's unsustainable.

> maintain a steady-state ecosystem in perpetuity

Impossible. It's not how the universe works.

> Impossible. It's not how the universe works.

The degree to which we normalize unsustainable industrial activities is impressive.

We're not talking about the heat death of the universe here. Industrial society (especially industrial agriculture) is counting down toward auto-destruct sequence on a time scale of decades, not billions of years. Look at trendlines for soil erosion, aquifer depletion, cadmium soil buildup, land salinification, etc.

It's oddly one-sided how people always ask if sustainable agriculture can replace industrial agriculture. By the very definition of the word "unsustainable," industrial agriculture cannot replace industrial agriculture.

The impact of rockets is a tiny speck by comparison. In this case rockets will effectively preempt the slow encroach from land privatization lobbying and housing development, which would be far (far!) more destructive to the wetlands than the occasional rocket detonation or ten...

Anyone who loves preserving wilderness should love rocket launch sites, as shown by the history of Cape Canaveral vs surrounding land.

Whoa. You believe that soil and aquifer issues will lead to society's destruction in a matter of decades? What evidence supports that belief?

> You believe

Not just me, this is the mainstream business-as-usual expectation. Collapse of breadbasket regions tends to be a Very Bad Thing.

What did you think "unsustainable" meant anyway?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

https://theconversation.com/farmers-are-depleting-the-ogalla...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

> will lead to society's destruction

Technically by "self-destruct" I mean that the agriculture system destroys itself, by somehow undermining its own mechanisms of support. How much of 'society' gets pulled down with it? That's up to us to decide.

Are you aware that less than 6% of US farmland is irrigated, and only half of irrigated farmland (3% of total) uses groundwater?

97% of our farmland uses no groundwater. None.

If US lost 3% of its agricultural output tomorrow, we'd still be growing more food than we can possibly eat; still be filling our cars with a mix of gasoline and corn liquor as we do today.

Perhaps I should have asked this question instead: Is there any evidence that would cause you to change your belief that society is on the brink of collapse, or is that belief unfalsifiable like religious faith?

What about total amount of viable farmland? How much of that amount do those 6% constitute?

How much of farmland is situated close to cities (main cause of aquifer deterioration)? Would that farmland still have enough water after aquifers are caput?

My takeaway was that 97% of US farmland would be unaffected by aquifer collapse. The 3% that would be affected (and that's assuming every aquifer in the country goes dry, which is not at risk of happening) those farms might become completely nonviable, or they might be able to shift to less water intensive crops and methods. In either case, aquifer collapse is not a significant threat to our food supply.

Nonetheless, it is prudent to preserve those water sources.

re: farms near cities, I think it varies a lot by region. Growing thirsty crops near LA is going to be a lot harder than near Houston.

Soil erosion and other forms of degradation is bound to affect billions of people until 2050 [1].

Groundwater degradation is just as bad of an issue - in the US [2], in Europe [3] and APAC regions [4]. The sole exception is Africa, but if they follow the same pathway as everyone else in exploiting and managing it, it's not going to be sufficient [5].

[1] https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/lln-20... (full report: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/LLN-...)

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groun...

[3] https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...

[4] https://www.asiapathways-adbi.org/2022/11/the-invisible-wate...

[5] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-africa-aquifers-scarcity.html

(offtopic: this is how I would ask GPT4)

I am an environmentalist. The line is that SpaceX is operating a fundamentally unsustainable business. The appropriate level of resistance is that which prevents them from conducting any launches at all. Launching rockets is quite literally the last possible thing we need to achieve a sustainable and equitable future for our planet.

Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar. You'll most likely find that 90+% of them are vehemently opposed to space missions in general, and especially SpaceX given the absurdity of traveling to Mars when we have so many low-hanging problems to fix here on Earth.

It's such a bold statement. Building a colony on Mars, in such a harsh environment, is not possible without extreme sustainability. The entire colony's existence will rely on being sustainable.

You don't have free air; you need to find a way to reuse it, or you'll die.

You can't simply source water from a river; if you don't find a way to reuse the same water multiple times, you'll die.

You can't just eat vegetables and rely on cows that graze on open land; if you don't figure out a way to produce food without using vast expanses of land, you'll perish.

You can't just build a house from a few sticks from the nearest forest or rely on minimal heating from drilled gas or oil. If you don't find a way to protect against radiation and heat your home efficiently, you'll die.

You can't rely solely on oil for energy; if you can't move between structures, sooner or later, you'll die.

Mars represents a global rethinking of our entire way of living, pivoting to a sustainability-only approach.

In many cases, the sustainable approach is also cheaper. After all, reusing resources tends to be more economical. Consider solar energy as an example. It's booming not just because of its environmental benefits, but because it's cost-effective.

And why are we building solar panels? Because NASA needed it before for space exploration.

So when I hear, "Let's not focus on space; let's fix Earth," I can't help but think of a Luddite who's inadvertently advocating for our planet to remain in its current, unsustainable state.

Politics is the art of the possible.

"Lets fix Earth". The issue is the small wee number (what, almost 8 billion) of humans on the Earth and getting them to cooperate. So far, notsomuch, and the beloved economic structure to every Hacker News, capitalism, does not have practical structures to accomodate conservation, environmentalism, restraint, or valuation of nature.

Capitalism essentially is a structure that maximizes resource use. The entire ruling elite was determined by the winners of capitalism, and their psychology is not of rational restraint, respect of the world, respect of others, or even respect for their children.

Capitalism has a side game of converging to maximal sociopathy for the individual (greed is good, selfish is good per microeconomics, that is the definition of a rational consumer) while not overly crashing the whole system, except maybe after the next quarter's earnings report.

Capitalism and the "economics intelligentsia" have no workable theory for transitioning our current economic structure to a different one. The notion of an "externality" (note that the verbiage directly places concerns of environmentalism and long term survival as a phenomenon outside/external to the functioning of economics) has only existed in a widespread fashion in the last decades, and really only begrudgingly to address the impending reality of global warming. Thus, there is no real development of economic (and certainly no practical political ones) to transition to some restrained model.

The current economic plan: let it get so bad that the actual supply/demand curves of markets are "disrupted" enough. This probably means war, famine, displacement of billions, loss of arable and livable land, etc.

The fact the elite have increased their wealth share shows that since the rise of widespread science on sustainability, the power structure has doubled down on sociopathy, selfishness, denialism, and procrastination.

This is not good. The only positive trend is the miraculous fact that EV drivetrains and solar/wind turned out to be cheaper than ICE/fossil fuels once sufficient infrastructure and research had been performed.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, stops habitat destruction, soil erosion, squandering of water resources, pollution, and mass extinctions.

Happy days!

I would also call myself an environmentalist, yet statements like this are the major reason I've been reluctant to identify as such loudly or often. Misguided environmentalists have for a long time been steadfastly opposed to nuclear energy for example, and I have not.

The on-the-ground reality is that concern for and protection of the natural environment are relatively recent practices and must be balanced against the continued technological and sociological progress of humanity. Otherwise, the answer is easily that the best thing for "the environment" is the complete extinction of humans. While some people may want to give that a serious treatment, I've always wondered why those people don't volunteer to go first.

Likewise, poorer societies produce less pollution than wealthier ones, so environmentalists willing to forego any kind of human progress in favor of protecting the environment should at least consider migrating altogether to countries without telecommunications infrastructure.

We don't yet know what all of the benefits and costs will arise from a lower barrier to space exploration. But, humans exist all over this planet right now because exploration is part of our nature. Rejecting space exploration out of hand is to reject our very nature -- a curious argument, from a naturalist.

> The on-the-ground reality is that concern for and protection of the natural environment are relatively recent practices ...

What do you call "relatively recent"?

GPS has generated over $1.4 trillion in value in the US alone since it was opened up to the public in the 80's [1]. Millions of people use satellite TV and radio. Commercial imaging satellites are used for mapping, weather forecasting, wildfire detection, and scientific research. SpaceX's own Starlink system has revolutionized satellite internet for regions too remote or underdeveloped to be served by traditional internet providers. And who knows what we'll be doing in 50 years! Imagine if we are able to use rockets for point-to-point travel on Earth, or we figure out how to mine asteroids, or if the economics of space-based manufacturing work out.

Also, abusing environmental regulation to set space policy is just straight up a bad idea. It's fine if you think we shouldn't be investing in space, but don't try and force that belief on the rest of us in an undemocratic manner. It's very NIMBY-esque

[1] https://www.space.commerce.gov/doc-study-on-economic-benefit...

NIMBYism has no answer for the department of defense.

SpaceX and the super heavy payloads are a massive massive massive strategic advantage for the defense department. Imagine:

You want a functionally operational combined arms battalion deployed within two hours to the middle of Siberia? And then regularly supplied? Forget about having expensive foreign bases. You can deploy boots on the ground forces within hours.

Starship is a cheap platform for 100-150 tons of ... whatever ... deployed ... whereever ... whenever. To say nothing of orbital battle platforms or other stuff, simply the rapid deployment alone makes SpaceX absolutely critical to US "defense".

I can imagine the US DoD taking renewed interest in those midwestern remote ICBM sites as ready launch sites for rapid deployment forces. That's right, launch from Kansas, land whereever in hours. Australia? Africa? Antarctica? Sure.

Imagine fighting a conventional war and local general thinks they have a US affiliated fighting force pinned down. Suddenly, a combined arms battalion appears right behind his lines. The mobility Starship would provide the US military at very palatable costs is a battlefield revolution.

I don't buy it, for several reasons. In no particular order:

1) 100-150 tons is the estimated payload to LEO, not back down to the ground. For Starship to land (on Earth) it will need to be mostly if not entirely empty.

2) Even if Starship could get that much payload down to the ground, how do you unload vehicles from an upright Starship? A built in crane maybe, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

3) Once you land a Starship somewhere remote, how do you get it back? It can't fly back (from Earth). It's too big to realistically airlift unless maybe you have a very large runway nearby for something like a supped up Super Guppy / Airbus Beluga. Do you plan on just leaving this cutting edge hardware in Siberia?

4) Missile defense systems could easily shoot down a Starship landing near enemy territory.

5) Why is this needed? Wars tend to have weeks of warning, at least for those who need to plan them. This is plenty of time for military planners to get their assets prepared to be deployed from nearby military bases or navy ships, both of which America has in spades around the world. American military logistics are already so excellent, there doesn't seem to be much margin for improvement.

Nah, that's never going to happen. Rockets are inherently dangerous. Loading tons of people onto one is gambling with a 1 in 20 chance (possibly higher) that all of them die. Even if nothing goes wrong with the rocket per se, how do you land it somewhere where you don't already have infrastructure, or worse still, in a hot zone? On the best days landing a rocket is a delicate and error-prone procedure, can you imagine if there's someone actively trying to stop you?

>Suddenly, a combined arms battalion appears right behind his lines.

That "suddenly" is pretty funny. Can you imagine trying to sneak up on someone from aboard the loudest vehicle in the world as you're trying to gently guide it to the ground to avoid exploding? If the enemy has SAMs or artillery, your rocket and everyone in it is toast. Even if you successfully land, you better hope you've used all your fuel before the enemy has a chance to start shooting small arms. Even if a mostly empty rocket can't explode, it can still easily be engulfed in flames.

You don't think satellites have been a godsend for environmental conservation?

Would banning space development in the U.S. help us actually fix any of those low-hanging problems?

> go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar.

Are low-income folks at a local dive bar particularly knowledgeable about the subtle tradeoffs involved in effective government regulation?

> Are low-income folks at a local dive bar particularly knowledgeable about the subtle tradeoffs involved in effective government regulation?

If they were, they'd be high income. Or be about to be.

> Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar.

Sorry, I don't mean to be gatekeepery here, but "low income folk at my local bar" is the last demographic I would seek the opinion of on anything scientific or of broader scope than car maintenance.

Anecdotally, my experience is that many of these people love conspiracy theories, and applying "common sense" to global problems like climate change. For example, I've heard these people say that because we got snow in October climate change is a hoax.

Whatever you think of other people's technical opinions, their opinions on the use of common resources, including land, environment, and money, are as valid as yours.

It's easy to rationalize writing off others - for politics, education, etc. - but I find they have insights that I lack, and I learn a lot by listening (and do bad things when I ignore them). Also, they don't go away, and then you're shocked and outraged when the vote doesn't go your way.

> Whatever you think of other people's technical opinions, their opinions on the use of common resources, including land, environment, and money, are as valid as yours.

The government treats them as being equally valid for the purposes of elections (as it should), but that doesn't mean "people at your local dive bar agree with me, therefore I'm right" is a compelling argument

That statement is not compelling unless you are making a claim about something within their expertise, such as their opinions.

Gatekeeping? Nice word to hide your blatant bigotry.

> Launching rockets is quite literally the last possible thing we need to achieve a sustainable and equitable future for our planet.

I can think of a long list of other things, starting with nuclear war, that are FAR bigger concerns.

Rarely have I seen such out of touch and vacuous opinions expressed with such surety… ;-)

Good job making environmentalism sounds like nonsense. Sometimes I wonder if takes like these are planted by the coal industry so that real environmental concerns are taken less seriously. But that's enough conspiracy theories for today

What is the goal of environmentalism? Avoiding short term harm or fostering sustainability in the long term?

You don't think reaching out further into the universe will give more people the pale blue dot viewpoint and could cause more people to care more about earth when they realize how fragile and insignificant it is?

What about moving industry off the earth in the distant future? Wouldn't that be good for earth in the long run?

100% of people at dive bar's would hop on a rocket if a civilization ending asteroid was headed for the planet. Asteroids are also bad for the environment.

> Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar.

Now ask them for their opinions on fossil fuels.

Western environmentalists live blessed lives even as they seek to kick down the ladder for the people of the future in order to promote fiction over reality.

Modern trope rendition of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_on_the_Moon

You’ll also find that 90+% don’t care about research into basic science at all, art preservation, art creation, environmental preservation, or even obscure medical research.

It’s a bad signal because it’s from a bunch of reactionary people.

But Elon needs to shake his willy around in public ... why would you seek to oppose that with your vague assertions about the hopes and dreams of ordinary folk here on earth?

Those same people will microwave a meal for dinner and then make breakfast eggs on an anon-stick Teflon pan the next morning.

It's worse than that, SpaceX is a major military contractor which had been working with the Trump administration to stage weapons in low Earth orbit.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23733/spacex-exec-says...

Also see Starshield

Glancing at the article, doesn't it say something very hypothetical and prospective?

SpaceX Exec Says Company Would Launch A Weapon Into Space In ‘Defense Of This Country’

It might not be a hypothetical question for long now that Congress has asked the US military to develop anti-missile defenses in space.

Elon founded SpaceX with Michael D. Griffin and offered him the role of Chief Engineer but he declined. Griffin instead went to Washington to steer NASA funding to SpaceX, before they ever launched any rockets.

Griffin was Chief Architect of the Brilliant Pebbles 'missile defense using weapons in space' program and has been advocating for it his whole life. After NASA, Griffin started the Space Development Agency--what that article is talking about--and gave contracts to SpaceX. When Biden came in he deweaponized everything, and then the lines were clearly drawn between him and Musk.

Check out Michael D. Griffin and also Will Roper.

Anti-missile defences don't really sound like a bad thing to have though?

It has plenty of flaws and would be net destabilizing. "Iron dome in Space" doesn't work when it comes to nuclear weapons. Heck even Iron Dome can't protect against large barrage of small rockets from Gaza. It would just make first-use of nukes more likely.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/space-based-missile-defense...

There's a balance: If you have enough defense to give you first-strike capability (i.e., you could nuke the other side and could destroy their reponse), then it's destabilizing. Other nuclear powers will be very alarmed thinking that you could destroy them at any time.

But you also want to be able to destroy a few rogue missiles, such as from North Korea. If NK nukes Los Angeles, the argument that 'we must adhere 100% to the principle of no missile defense' would be unconvincing.

There are plenty of ground-based missile defense solutions for NK (aircraft and drones near NK are also an option if boost-phase interception is considered critical when their program advances).

The problem with space-based orbital missile defense is it necessarily threatens the entire planet while being predictable and easy to shoot down with relatively small missiles. Those anti-satellites attacks, which are justified by threatened countries, lead to a cascade of space debris, that leaves an unusable space environment for centuries and may in itself trigger nuclear conflict.

Not everything has a technological solution. Staging weapons in space is not a path to world peace, it just heightens the stakes and shortens the escalation. As Israel learned, you can try to seal off your border and your sky, but there are always holes. There are many ways NK or Russia can deliver nukes besides ICBMs. Dreaming of a shield in space is a false promise. Building bridges rather than walls is the only path to peace.

If the U.S. can be a model for the world, it is not it's military might to emulate, but the idea that people of all nationalities and backgrounds can come and live together and resolve their differences. It is possible!

I agree. I temporarily forgot what the topic was and was thinking of missile defense in general and not space-based particularly. My mistake.

> Not everything has a technological solution. ...

> If the U.S. can be a model for the world, it is not it's military might to emulate, but the idea that people of all nationalities and backgrounds can come and live together and resolve their differences. It is possible!

Here I abolutely agree. Even warfare ends with political solutions. It is possible, especially today. It's not the 19th century any more. It just needs us. Thank you for posting that; people need to hear it much more!

> ... the idea that people of all nationalities and backgrounds can come and live together and resolve their differences.

The idea is decent, and Australia has that mostly working ok.

Isn't the the US though well known for it's internal racism issues?

They break MAD, and there's a lot of people that justify the existence of XY,000 nuclear weapons with a yield of ~4,000 MT as 'It's fine, they'll never be used, they prevent war because of MAD.'

If MAD was what was preventing them from being used, and MAD is no longer a thing, it's no longer fine that we have them. Anybody pushing to destabilize that balance of terror is going to need a damn good and through review of that question.

This seems a strange way to say "they'd be amazing because then we could safely decommission some of our nuclear weapons".

And others would interpret it as "We could safely fire our nuclear weapons." And I'm not counting on the guys responsible for building the weapons to decide the more altruistic interpretation.

Maybe, or maybe not. It's complicated.

But what's certain is that it's politically polarized. SDI has support from [some/most?] republicans but not from [most/any?] democrats.

> I was a professional environmentalist/preservationist, I'd be very frustrated with the total lack of empathy by the tech community and their efforts (often cutting-edge science!) getting described as backwards or in the way of progress almost constantly ...

Please list out all of the other wetlands being destroyed by space exploration. Then list them as a percentage of global wetlands or list out what would be endangered by this one location being used as a launch site.

there was (yes was) lots of protected wetland near me, but the right politicians friends wanted it for warehousing now its no longer there... apparently it's ok to remove it for some projects just not others? who you know kinda thing in my experience

Right, but the problem with that is corruption, not regulation.

yes but regulation in the power of the corrupted is worse loose/no regulation . I've not seen a solution to the corruption problem, and I've seen even the nicest most altruistic get into politics later in their careers and become corrupted. regulation can hurt more than it helps in practice even if it seems in theory it is only a tool of good

It's worth noting that a recent Supreme Court decision, Sackett v EPA, has somewhat curtailed the more... creative wetland designations.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf

It's actually kind of disgusting how transparently the EPA has been playing their hand to maximize exploitable/monetizable authority and jurisdictional area without regard for real environmental concerns, development impact, or indeed their own legal mandate.

There's absolutely an element of that organization that doesn't care either way what happens to the environment or community, they just want infinite authority under the guise of environmental protection so that you to have a reason to bribe them.

> maximize exploitable/monetizable authority and jurisdictional area

You're implying corruption for monetary gain, that is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

Of course, Texas is notoriously pro conservation and definitely not full of people who would complain about any sort of environmental protection given the chance.

Conservation in many places is about bribe-extraction and using it as a political weapon. The environment is just a useful cover

The state has pretty significant water security issues. You have 30 million people and a 178 million acres of agricultural production.

Maintaining some basic protections on remaining wetlands is probably a good idea.

There are many things society can do without. Water is not one of them.

A swamp near seashore is not going to help to provide water for people or agriculture. The whole seashore is covered with swamps like this that do not have any particularly interesting ecosystems.

I would say this is true....

But then, Texas politics is Texas politics, so I wouldn't be surprised if there indeed turned out to be significant abuse of protections laws for political gain...

It depends on your conception of what it means to own land. We don’t generally view land ownership as absolute in the way we would for say a coffee mug. In some sense all land is partly owned by society, the deed owner has many rights, but not absolute ownership.

you make it seem like the added complexity is morally sound, but as soon as you start asking about which society, you get into moral troubles

I’m not making a judgment, just explaining the world as it is.

Given that the air and water are shared with surrounding land owners, I have a hard time seeing how else it could be.

There are externalities, but also a sense aside from them that land is special.

> likely based on political favoritism.

I'll be that person and ask "do you have evidence of this"?

Nope! At least, not really. Not evidence that I would find persuasive, anyway. I can only tell you that I know of a few stories from individuals who tried to get things built on their own property and hit impenetrable walls of bureaucracy at every juncture, while the next patch of land over is suddenly being developed into a $2 billion industrial plant of some kind by GloboOil.

The hypothesis that "money talks" is usually enough to explain stuff like this. Perhaps instead of political favoritism I should have simply said corporate power is always able to find a way around such obstacles and the little guy never is.

I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else?

The right logic is the other way around. Why should the public compensate the land owner for something that also benefits the land owner?

By your logic, restaurant owners should also be compensated for not being allowed to serve spoiled food, and bosses should be compensated for not beating their employees.

If someone buys a piece of land, how does it benefit them if that land is then made unusable? If it's for public benefit, and restrictions for public benefit, then it should be owned by the public. Taking what cost a mans life savings doesn't seem the right way to go to make that happen.

> I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else?

If you listen really close, you can hear Henry George spinning in his grave from the existence of this comment.

It would be a useful way to balance the costs vs benefits. If the gov't would put a price on it, I could violate the law here but compensate 100x as much elsewhere.

My town has a law where if a tree is over 10" in diameter, there's a fine of 5k if you cut it down. But actually, it's worse, because if they find out you plan to do this, or did it intentionally, they can continue to fine you arbitrarily and force you to re-plant a tree!

So you may own some land and have approval to build human habitation on it... but the tree prevents you, and you simply cannot do it via any legal means.

Otoh if I could... pay the town 5k, and also permanent preserve say 100 trees elsewhere... I could use my own land. I love trees as much as the next one, but it's just a huge risk to allow them to grow on my land cause once they pass that threshold, I irrevocably lose control of land I've paid for and continue to pay a lot of tax on.

It's also funny that if your enemy owns land, and you "help" his trees grow that thick without him knowing, property he planned to use as say an ultimate frisbee field will be permanently unusable for him, with no way out (except begging the city council, etc. and other behavior which is indistinguishable from bribery (money or psychologically))

My city also has a similar law for trees and I think it is the wrong approach. I think it incentivizes people not to grow trees since you might not be able to take them out later if needed. Instead we should have some sort of property tax discount per large tree or something.

That's exactly what Hawaii does. You can deduct $3000 from your taxes per exceptional tree. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/exceptional-tree-deduction/

Similarly, if you discover some endangered species on your property, current law encourages you to bulldoze it immediately before anyone else finds out.

Similar if your building has features that might get it designated as historically significant.

Indeed. Best to destroy old buildings and pave over natural ecosystems, just in case. This is the way of perverse incentives.

Oh, and when building new buildings, make them as unremarkable and boring as possible, so they won't become historic in the future. Why take the chance? Indeed, make them ugly so the government might decide to pay you to get rid of them.

What happens if the tree dies on its own?

Depends on if they find the circumstances... suspicious.

I am not sure how much surveillance they do - in reality for large lots this restriction may not hold, since trees can disappear at night, be chipped up, etc. But for people in the suburbs, to cut one you need to get a crew in, and there are probably reporting requirements. Also the neighbors love to get involved.

But I do wonder if a tree imperceptibly had branches die, be removed, and then just gradually shrunk over time?

A lot of these laws don't cause much harm in a pre-surveillance world. But once there are full cameras on everything, seeing how they apply at 100% enforcement can be scary. But by that point there are defenders for each one, so they hardly change.

The way people do it is to hammer in a nail that poisons the tree.

The tree dies, and needs to be cut down because it's dangerous to leave standing

A copper nail, specifically (drill a hole first).

Some jurisdiction will make you replace the tree in that case, just to avoid this sort of mechanism.

Yeah but the tree only has to be that diameter at final size. You can plant a dozen tiny trees too close then let them stunt or choke each other out

Some jurisdictions seem to be attempting to counter this sort of thing, and an aspect is: if you can't do it properly, we will, and send you the bill at our chosen rates. And we are going to check.

You'd claim large losses for being prevented from placing a toxic waste dump on your property. I'd not want to pay for that.

They already benefit from it though? Eg. Wetlands ease flooding during hurricanes, and quality of life improvements by being close to nature without pollution

I could see a one time payment when the restriction is first added, but once it's there, that's priced into the value of the property, and influences who will buy it

Why should tax payers foot the bill for somebody who wants land by the wetlands because they're an avid birder?

I too could get behind a one time payment. That would hopefully prevent landowners deliberately destroying the environment just to prevent it becoming protected.

It might even start a new class of landowner who buy uninteresting land, then cultivate lots of nature and wildlife, then make a profit when the government designates it a nature reserve.

I can't find the article where I read it, but an interesting thing about the environment is that it's connected and we need it to stay alive.

Texas is a low service state, so I don't think they'd be interested in subsidizing you unless you want to drill.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/0...

I was just reading about a converse case that involved public land that was effectively "landlocked" by private land. The private landowners had assumed exclusive access to the public land. The case was made that their private land value should be adjusted commensurate with the additional public land value, since they were the only ones with access.

With a «right to roam» law this isn’t a problem. Most land around me is private, but with the right to roam I can move over private land as long as it is not farmland or someone’s house property (garden, parking lot etc). You can also move over grazing land as long as you remember to close the gate and you can move over farmland in winter time. You can also walk through people’s garden if needed to access trails etc. usually land owners have no problem with this and works together with local groups to maintain trails and access to trails. Granted, there’s not very much good farm land here, mostly mountains.

Out of curiosity, where are you located geographically? In the US, property rights generally extend to the right to exclude others.

Norway.

This is the crux of environmental misalignment in our system. There is not actual tradeable value for environment. Most importantly, how to set a price for a view? In some cases we have comparison for a tourist economy where we value the benifit of a view, but intrinsically we have no way to measure the value of a: Pristine forest Beautiful view Clean lake Healthy aquifer Free space for camping, etc. Future worth?

A carbon tax would put a price on one aspect, no? Same with various EPA fines. It seems like we have mechanisms to do so, it just comes down to whether we leverage them.

That entire category of laws are commonly used to apply selective leverage. NIMBYs love this one trick. They can be selectively waived too. In fact earlier this month the Biden administration waived 26 laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration...

The laws waived:

National Environmental Policy Act

Endangered Species Act

Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act)

National Historic Preservation Act

Migratory Bird Treaty Act

Migratory Bird Conservation Act

Clean Air Act

Archeological Resources Protection Act

Paleontological Resources Preservation Act

Safe Drinking Water Act

Noise Control Act

Solid Waste Disposal Act

Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act

Antiquities Act

Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act

Farmland Protection Policy Act

National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act

National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956

Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act

National Trails System Act

Administrative Procedure Act

Eagle Protection Act

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

American Indian Religious Freedom Act

Federal Land Policy and Management Act

Texas & wetland in the same sentence???

Perhaps someone can expound cos I'm a brit. Thanks

The state of Texas is about three times the size of your country, and as a result, it contains several different ecological systems. There can simultaneously be a hurricane on one side of the state and a drought on the other.

The distance between Houston and Amarillo, both in Texas, is comparable to the distance between London and Berlin. I have driven at highway speeds for 10 hours without leaving Texas before when crossing it east to West.

Interstate 10 crossing Texas (East-West) is 877 miles, 1412 km.

US Highway 83 (N-S) is 906 mi, 1458 km.

I’ve done the whole I-10. It is crazy.

The vast majority of the Mexican Gulf coast of the US is relatively swampy. Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida all have extensive areas of swampy wetlands.

If I correctly recall, Houston has frequent issues with flooding because so much of it is built on basically paved over wetlands.

If you look at Texas on Google maps or earth.google.com you'll see the west half is very dry and has little vegetation, but the east half is actually quite wet and verdant.

additionally, most of the population is east of the wet/dry line, just as most of the population in the US is as a whole.

the stereotype of dusty, desert Texas applies only to west Texas

The Texas coast is very long and has several islands, and many wetlands.

I went to Scotland and couldn't see Big Ben anywhere. Very confusing!

That's just because of all the fog.

Wetlands are like swamps. Texas is a state.

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