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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

> For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says […]

That someone is Natural England, who is tasked, by law, with enforcing laws that protect wildlife and the environment and needs to sign off on disruptive work:

> A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said "multiple options" had been considered, including green bridges and restoring habitats, to "comply with laws protecting vulnerable species".

> It said through "extensive engagement" with Natural England, "a covered structure was designed".

* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo

If you don't like it change the law so that the environment/wildlife isn't protected, or these kinds of sign offs are not requirement, or can be overrided in the enacting legislation of infrastructure projects.

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> If you don't like it change the law

There is currently a bill going through Parliament to simplify this stuff - https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3946 - though not going so far as to remove all protections.

"But the law says they have to" is just a fancy way of saying you've outsourced your morals to the legislature.

The fact that there is a law saying this drag must be applied does not make it right. I'm fully aware we need to protect natural species, not create fire risks, etc, etc, but the idea that every project must incur cost to prove up front that it is complete is an asinine drag on everything, especially seeing as like 99.9% of projects are effectively compliant from the get go and the bulk of the time wasting consists of circulating correspondance and nit picking to this effect.

you've outsourced your morals to the legislature

That's basically the whole point of a representative government, no?

>That's basically the whole point of a representative government, no?

That attitude is the problem. They're supposed to represent you (or some approximation thereof) not tell you what to think. It's in the f-ing name.

So vote for somebody else.

The laws exist because we, collectively, thought they were a good idea. They can be changed if/when we change our minds.

For this specific thing, the drag while proving lack of damage is the point. Once the road/rail/bridge/whatever is built, it's often too late to simply say "oops". That, plus industry has a well deserved reputation for ignoring the environment when it becomes inconvenient.

> "But the law says they have to" is just a fancy way of saying you've outsourced your morals to the legislature.

Some folks don't have morals and so legislation is enacted to act as a floor for bad behaviour.

There is definitely a long gap between "Don't care about env at all" and "Preventing everything being built because it hassles some small animal". I'm afraid and you and many people are biasing towards the other end even if you believe you are a white knight.

Anyway, I'm not in UK so I don't care. Good luck.

Thank you for that non-caring contribution

It's more like caring for prosperity and long-term growth instead of getting scared and inventing a huge amount of red tape.

We probably won't agree with each other, though. We definitely have different definition of "care".

The legal basis is there to protect wildlife from man-made disruption and provides a kind of ecological basis to limit the kind of boundless growth that politicians appeal to.

Unfortunately, for those laws to be effective, they have to be strong enough to beat the various legal shenanigans / loopholes which can be used by developers to effortlessly leapfrog them.

Finally, if the laws are strong enough, they might be effortlessly wielded to prevent even reasonable developments from occurring.

The law lands somewhere in the middle and I think there are always people at either extreme trying to take advantage.

Blocking high-speed rail in the name of conservation makes me want to bash my head against a wall. Guess we'll buy 10000 diesel trucks to move goods north-south instead. Car-world isn't good for conservation, rail is. It's missing the forest for the trees. These laws are selectively invoked by interest groups, they don't event serve the legitimate cause of conservationists - there is enough ammo in UK law to block any development.

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