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Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?
- bdf 3y agoRoads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
- pvaldes 3y agoI must admit that this phrase hits different in the context of the six extinction.
- tony_cannistra 3y agoRoad ecology is a very interesting and important field, particularly the modeling of animal interactions with road crossings - all very interesting and important. The rhetorical title is absurd, however, and I'd argue even Ben Goldfarb would agree with that. Habitat loss is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss, as a result of many, many drivers. You've heard of all of them. The presence and proliferation of roads is, of course, one of those drivers.
- alphanumeric0 3y ago"We're in the middle of this biodiversity crisis and extinction event that is human caused, with cars kind of at the center of it in a lot of ways"
- tony_cannistra 3y agoI'm just not that compelled by that argument. If cars are at the center, then so are a hundred other things that are impacting biodiversity at least as much. I'm really not trying to be a car stan here, I don't really care about cars. But focusing on cars is kindof a dumb distraction, in my opinion.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoIt's not so much cars themselves as it is car-centric development that causes many problems. In the US at least, this is pretty clear: when you design new areas and cities around cars as the primary or even only way to get around, this hurts the environment a lot more than denser, multi-modal style of developments. It results in more total space needed per person, and it results in higher energy expenditures. If you look at vehicle miles traveled per capita, the US is around 2x that of major Western European countries, and nearly 4x that of Japan: https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/PCMT-US-just-driving-no-legend_0-scaled.jpg https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02...
- Tade0 3y ago> It's not so much cars themselves as it is car-centric development that causes many problems. I wouldn't call it car centric, more like everyone-gets-to-have-a-lawn-and-2000-sq-ft-home centric. Herein lies the crux of the problem, not in the mode of transportation. Americans are used to such huge spaces per inhabitant that driving appears to be the only option. We have districts with detached houses where I live and to me they were always sort of a dead zone. No shops, no restaurants, not even a way to get across, as every square metre is someone's property, so at times you'll have to take a huge detour on the way to your destination. Do the people living there drive everywhere? Apparently not all of them and instead they accept that they have to walk a significant distance to get to the next bus stop. All because they're used to having a lot of space and will never sacrifice it for an apartment in a place where everything is closer.
- geraldwhen 3y agoApartments are horrible. If you get a crying baby neighbor, or a dog, or neighbors who blast music at 3am, there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing. The police will not help you, as noise ordinance is not enforced. Your apartment manager won’t do anything because none of them do anything. Other fun apartment specific happenings: constant clouds of marijuana smoke, curry spice smell seeping through the walls and sticking to everything, and constant thuds from anyone walking above you. Without rigorous enforcement of rules, apartments suck. And there is no enforcement.
- truculent 3y agoPerhaps, but... 1. Roads being inextricably linked with car-dependence and urban development is clearly part of the implication 2. It is a pun! It seems a bit needlessly nitpick to call it absurd, in my book.
- toddsiegel 3y agoMy understanding jibes with yours: habitat loss in all its forms.
- pengaru 3y agoThey've certainly decimated the Tortoise population in the hi-desert near JTNP where I own property. Automobiles are way too fast for those to stand a chance.
- explaininjs 3y ago> where I own property You hit the nail on the head workout realizing it. The real problem is mass property ownership in remote areas. The huge uptick in car travelers and according roads are a result of that.
- defrost 3y agoYes | No. The classic "road trueism" is If you build them, they will fill. Four lane highways with occassional gridlock when expanded become six lane highways with occassional gridlock. The connection corollary that follows is roads | train lines built to connect A and B will often be followed by small townsites along the way and the spread of "off the grid" living at blocks T junctioning dirt road access from the new A <--> B route.
- bobthepanda 3y agoAlso, the roads built are for the most part free, which certainly doesn't help regulate usage at all. The moment you introduce tolls onto major roads, often they don't meet financial projections, have to be bailed out, etc.
- anamax 3y ago> The classic "road trueism" is If you build them, they will fill. That's only when new roads satisfy pre-existing demand. The fact that someone can't do something doesn't imply that they don't want to do it.
- bluGill 3y agoThere are plenty of rural roads and highways that disprove your point. We fill roads in cities because the population wants/needs to travel. If we would instead build trains those would fill instead. Trains are a lot more cost effective in cities, but no city (not even transit cities like Paris) builds enough of them to make trains a better alternative than cars. Note that by the time anyone realizes roads are full and they need "one more lane" the road has 6 times more cars on it than it can safely handle - people just give up their safe following distance. One more reason to build trains.
- LanzVonL 3y ago[flagged]
- woodruffw 3y agoOn top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going to remember us for this, much like we remember our grandparents for leaded gasoline and DDT.
- tony_cannistra 3y agoThis is most definitely the case. It has also caused enormous problems for places where flooding was already a threat, by removing the natural buffering capabilities that places like wetlands have. In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this.
- schiffern 3y ago> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.
- tony_cannistra 3y agoI don't really know. I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds.
- schiffern 3y agoThanks. Hey it's a start! Village Homes in Davis has an interesting distributed stormwater system, which was specifically designed to maximize infiltration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_05oRQxssQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_05oRQxssQ
- worldsayshi 3y agoI wonder if an AI revolution can allow us to move most of our commuting and logistics needs underground thanks to labour cost reductions...
- a_gnostic 3y agoYou AI bots sure love to talk about AI revolutions (o)_(o)
- worldsayshi 3y agoWhat made you think I'm a bot?
- jokethrowaway 3y agoThere's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?" Besides the simple idea of neighbours building and maintaining small roads, I argue that I wouldn't want the highway. Between the ecological damage, the noise, air pollution, increased reliance on shipping things from far away vs buying local - are we really sure building the massive road network in the US was the best option? Consumerism may be good for the economy, but I argue it's not in our best interest. Sure, I love the freedom to drive fast anywhere but at what cost? And who knows, maybe if we didn't have a central entity redistributing resources in an arbitrary way and shaping the market, some entrepreneur would have worked on flying cars and skipped the road altogether.
- galdosdi 3y agoHow strange. I imagine the argument is propagated by the historically illiterate. When I think of the origins of modern roads, I naturally think of English turnpikes at the dawn of the industrial age -- all privately owned toll roads. > There's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?"
- a_gnostic 3y agoZeppelins are way more efficient. Use water as ballast, or compress the helium you don't need.
- ants_everywhere 3y ago> some entrepreneur would have worked on flying cars and skipped the road altogether. In practice, a society without a government is just a collection of local warlords depleting all the resources in a violent struggle for power. For example, consider the history of Somalia or the general concept of a power vacuum. So I'd think the chances of such an environment supporting an entrepreneur working on flying cars to be near zero.
- roenxi 3y agoI'm not sure why you've been downvoted at the time of my commenting; but you've probably upset someone who deserves to be upset. The sheer amount of space that is killed off in many cities to support roads and car parking is insane. If there wasn't that much dead space, walking around would be more than feasible. Car-centric design sits in competition with pedestrian-centric design, and the bias towards road over-construction has ruined a lot of urban spaces. At the very least, rolling back government involvement in road construction would be helpful.
- beebeepka 3y agoI have a couple of stories 1. Last Easter my wife and I were travelling across the country. We drive reasonably slow, mostly about 100km/h. I guess it was a special time of the year because we must've killed at least several thousand insects in the first two hours alone. It was non stop. One car out of thousands on the road. Made us feel pretty bad. 2. Second story is about four years old. Travelling on a brand new highway around Easter. I guess wildlife was not used to the road because the asphalt was - i kid you not - littered with squashed snakes and birds. I couldn't believe what I was seeing - several kilometres of straight road covered with untold amount of bodies. One of ugliest things I have seen. Roads are absolutely horrible and I very much hate travelling because of stuff like this. I think some countries don't have such problems problems because they barely have any wildlife left. It's a tragedy and barely anyone I know cares enough to even consider what we are doing.
- bamboozled 3y agoThe killing of insects thing is wild, one car seems to be able to create untold amounts of carnage to insect populations which would have some other function within the environment. Where I live, there are frogs everywhere at certain times of the year after rain, people literally drive over hundreds of baby frogs per hour. I avoid driving after rain now. But yeah, nice to hear from someone who has similar feelings about driving. I hate it for the damage it does. Tyre dust is another one. I was recently doing a renovation and would only drive to the store unless absolutely necessary. I'd batch my shopping jobs. For me it's about emissions, I have a real problem with burning fossil fuels.
- pohuing 3y agoFor an awful observation on 1.: you might not have to worry about that soon. There's a common observation world wide that this phenomenon is declining, due to the horrific decline in insect populations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon
- jimberlage 3y agoOne thing you can do, in addition to advocating for public transit - if you have a lawn of short grass, grow native plants and let them get tall. They provide the habitats for animals that have gradually been taken away. Cut and burn the brush 1x/year and put some landscaping rocks between your house and the grass to encourage animals to stay in the landscaped areas, and you’ll be great.
- jimberlage 3y agoAnother benefit of this is - short grass holds almost no water because of the shallow root system, which means that during storms the water flows to low areas like your basement. Native plant gardens grow deep roots and absorb groundwater which would naturally move towards your foundation.
- shmageggy 3y ago"Noise is really a form of habitat loss." This really resonates. It's kind of obvious once it's stated, but the aural environment is part of the habitat. I bet the examples they give, such as owls listening for the sound of mice, are only a tiny subset of the ecological disruption caused by the noise of civilization, which is primarily road noise. Hopefully there will be more studies in the future like the phantom road noise experiment they mention.
- dukeofdoom 3y ago1) Animals make use of roads too, makes it easier for them to get around just as much as humans. For example coywolfs spread along the rail lines from Algonquin Park in Ontario to as far as Downtown NY. Seems like Fences are the bigger problem. Preventing some migration routs. 2) Animals are relatively quick to adapt. It might take a few generations but they will. There are street dogs in India that live their entire life on the busiest streets and manage avoid getting hit. Kangaroo's, Deer, and squirrels learned to avoid roads too for the most part. 3) While human development is bad for some species. Others thrive around humans. More Deer live now than ever before, for example. 4) Not really convinced that we have a net negative on the total biomass of animals on the planet. Lots of evidence that CO2 promotes plant growth. Greening the planet. More trees, would equate to more forrest habitat for larger animals. 5) Do spoons make you fat? ... Kent Brockman reporting
- nyc_data_geek1 3y agoNo, that's humans.
- goda90 3y agoI recall being taught that cowbirds, a brood parasite (they lay their eggs in other bird's nests), were causing more problems for other birds because they stay out of the deep forests, but roads and farm fields were fragmenting the forests.
- sirmike_ 3y agoUnknown. But if it means higher costs for routine shit. GFY. However, you can in fact go live in the forest in your underwear if you really want.
- a_gnostic 3y agoGovernments build roads, so governments are.
- taskforcegemini 3y agoand we the people only vote for governments that take care of our roads, so we are responsible, not somebody else.
- a_gnostic 3y agoGovernments also are the greatest destroyers of roads; Primarily to deny their use to other governments. We the people want clean functional roads, we don't want to bomb anyone's roads, and yet the government does. Curious. Almost as if government doesn't care.
- Yujf 3y agoExcept sometimes we do want to. It is easy to blame the government and they certainly do not always follow the will of the people, but acting like people are never supportive of war is dishonest.
- frabbit 3y agoI suspect it is a bit misleading to claim: And the desire for recreation. The explosion of cars isn't necessarily that cars are so useful. Certainly they did have utility. But really they were kind of liberating. In the late 19th century, nobody ever heard of a vacation We can see examples of other places where railways were the "liberating" technology that allowed people to go on holiday. For example: Up to about forty or fifty years ago travelling was a solemn act, not to be enterprised nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly,’ so writes the Belfast News-Letter in September 1888. But all of this had changed; from the inception of the railways ‘day excursions’ had become ‘entirely modern pleasures,’ the British seaside and countryside opened up to visitors who could travel there easily by train. https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/12/how-the-railway-revolutionised-the-british-seaside/ https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/12/how-th... The "cars are liberating, what a shame they destroy the wild place I went to meditate in" schtick seems like a deep-seated cultural echo of all the automobile advertising that has been consumed for about a century.
- BreadPants 3y agoNo. That would be monoculture farming.