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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

US is one of the very few countries that is left with irreplaceable natural beauty. It is sad that we’re at a point where a multi trillion dollar economy cannot leave this public treasure alone because private interests want everything to be a race to the bottom.

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nitpick: I think almost every single country has irreplaceable natural beauty.

It is incredibly sad that the US has come to this though. Yet another example of the country self-harming in ways that will leave permanent scarring.

A quote I've repeated before: "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment".

I haven't studied this but isn't it the case that England basically completely transformed their ecosystem over time? Like there are essentially no parts of it that look like they did before humans arrived.

Personally, I'm a big believer in upscale cities massively and leave lots of nature. Like Hong Kong.

Many areas for sure, although there is the Lake District, the coasts of Cornwall, and so on which are fairly untransformed, so to speak. Looking at Great Britain overall, the Scottish Highlands of course come to mind, as well. I think your overall point stands though, farmlands and villages which are regarded as positive through the romantic lens nowadays are of course a man-made change to the whole ecosystem.

There is hardly any wilderness left in Europe.

There are many, many places of natural beauty. They've actually contained suburban sprawl better than the US. It doesn't have a lot of completely trackless zones the way the US does, but places like the Alps and the Scottish Highlands are quite pristine.

> private interests want everything to be a race to the bottom

This is also about rich guys wanting to play rancher.

And a nice, wide, security perimeter between their ranches and the hordes they imagine will come for them.

What makes you think that is happening, the announcement looks more like a reorg.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/reorganization

Moving headquarters out of DC seems like a good idea on the surface.

It is explained in the article. You should read it.

The article is sensationalist, I actually read the policy, did you?

No, since I don't expect the article to be wrong. Sensationalist - yes, a little.

This seems opposite to my experience. Sure, the US has beautiful places (and national parks), but also many visually polluted spaces with ads etc.

I see many other countries in LatAM, Asia etc having just as many beautiful places of nature. And then in Europe there’s the beauty of e.g Gothic architecture in cities that are kept (mostly) clean.

No matter how beautiful architecture is it's still not natural beauty.

I do agree there's plenty of places in other countries that have natural beauty, but the US has a combination of very large natural spaces, kept in a mostly natural state (not over developed), and does a decent job maintaining it. This is relatively rare (although the US is not the only one).

The US Forest Service has nothing to do with the amount of ads and billboards in US cities.

Canada & Australia are better examples than the US.

How is that relevant to this conversation?

> How is that relevant to this conversation?

Because it's important to put Americans in their place. They are not good, and must be reminded that others are better.

I'm 90% sure this is satire, but given how things are and how fashionable it is to hate on America/Americans I'm not sure. I guess that says something ha

It’s not as rare as you think.

Anyway not hating, just giving some other examples.

There's hundreds of countries in the world. I said "relatively rare" and I said explicitly US is not the only one with worthwhile nature. Where did I give the impression I thought it was uniquely rare?

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