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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I too hope for that future. Megacities for some, sustainable homes for others, the rest of the world returned to the wild.

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Sustainable homes are a joke in poor taste. Cities are vastly better for the environment than the same number of people in so called ‘green’ homes in low density areas.

Nothing wrong with low density areas if the homes are sustainable and transportation is electrified.

Sure, you can minimize global harm from pollution etc., but locally even something as simple as a house cat can have large scale impacts. Further, people want large changes like dams to reduce flooding, drainage etc.

Aesthetically, it might seem more natural than asphalt, but lawns are a long way from ‘nature’. Realistically to have anything close to 'nature' assuming zero farming you’re looking at ~1 person per square mile if that.

> Aesthetically, it might seem more natural than asphalt, but lawns are a long way from ‘nature’. Realistically to have anything close to 'nature' assuming zero farming you’re looking at ~1 person per square mile if that.

Not sure I terribly agree with your person per square mile argument. Yes, lawns are a terrible waste (footnote: did you know that lawns trace back to medievel times? How much land you could afford to grow lawn on was a measure of wealth) and should be heavily disincentivized. But at the same time, if my house is zero net energy (solar power, solar thermal for water, tight envelope), and the transportation of myself and the goods I acquire are provided via renewable energy (electric cars/trucks powered by clean renewables), there isn't a strong argument against rural living.

Roads in low population areas take up a lot of space and kill a lot of wildlife.

Unfortunately, I think the more realistic outcome would be that the rest of the world would be turned into farmland or pastureland.

Possibly. We're already providing more than enough food in the US with existing farmland (although the problem is it isn't distributed properly to people who need said food). Pastureland could be reduced with meat grown in vats instead of raised on farms (or people simply shifting from a meat-heavy diet).

The population trajectory appears to be ballistic, with us hitting the apex in the next 5-15 years (educated women have less children and prolong having children until later in life; almost all first world countries are already below replacement rate, India and China won't be far behind).

In fact everywhere of any significance except Africa is already at or bellow fertility rates of 2. As you say education and low child mortality creates smaller families.

The problem is not population (or even food production) but energy consumption. But that effects our first world lifestyle so no one in the first world wants to take it seriously.

> The problem is not population (or even food production) but energy consumption. But that effects our first world lifestyle so no one in the first world wants to take it seriously.

The first world is rapidly getting more efficient with regards to energy usage, and while I can't speak to the rest of the world, the US is quickly deploying renewables. With wind generation alone, we can supply 10x our annual energy consumption.

Enough sunlight hits the earth ever 5 minutes to power the entire world for a year. Its not an energy problem, its a capture and distribution problem.

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