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I think here it's worth distinguishing between actually ecologically important, and the ability of campaigners to raise environmental arguments to try to preven
by pm215 1mo ago
I think here it's worth distinguishing between actually ecologically important, and the ability of campaigners to raise environmental arguments to try to prevent development when their underlying reason is something else (i.e. not wanting a nuclear plant in their back yard). There are definitely ecologically unimportant places in England, but it's almost certain that if you try to put a power station there somebody will raise an environmental concern anyway. This will probably eventually be dismissed, but you can gum up the works procedurally for a pretty long time.
- bpodgursky 1mo agoI mean that's my point, if the campaigners are not willing to be honest about ranking the places they actually care about beforehand (and occasionally letting a project happen), I'm not going to listen to anything they do say.
- pm215 1mo agoYou started here with "associated with the environmental movement". That's not the same as everyone campaigning on a local issue who puts "environmental issues" into their big list of why some local development shouldn't happen: most of those people aren't associated with the environmental movement at all. I guess my point is that I think the problem is nimbies, not environmentalists, and since I think we need a faster and cheaper planning system in the UK I think it's important to identify the actual problem. Getting the Campaign to Protect Rural England or whoever to produce a ranking of places by importance does nothing if we still have a system where local residents can raise objections about building on locations at the bottom of the ranking and it takes forever to push something through.
- arjie 1mo agoSure, the environmentalism movement has sufficient independent organizations such that each of them can protest some site as environmentally sensitive while the others stay quiet. I'm sure some would conclude that this position of universally banning any human development everywhere is a pure accident and that distributed agreement to do so has no evidence of systematic coordination. I can believe there is no systematic coordination across these organizations, but if I had to meet someone in San Francisco and I knew nothing about where and there was no way to coordinate, I think we'd both end up in front of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.
- strken 1mo agoI think the point here is that there are two categories of "environmentalists", one of actual environmentalists who go out on the weekend and plant shrubs and monitor the Lesser Black-Tailed Whatever, and the other of people who don't want you to build something for other reasons but are willing to claim to be environmentalists to stop you. There's overlap between the groups of individuals, but their organisations are different. The first group are generally willing to say "hey, here's a map of critical Ramsar-protected coastal wetlands and surroundings, we don't want you to put a pipe anywhere BUT if you really have to then this section is regrowth and was drained in the 60s". The second group are just obstructing you by any means they can and want to push you to a neighbouring town, who will also obstruct you. They'll switch to heritage listing, archaeology, noise complaints, smell, neighbourhood character, the moral character of your workers, or literally anything they can use to shut you down. They're not going to accommodate you by shifting the pipe slightly left because they're generally motivated by not having a pipe near them at all.
- arjie 1mo agoSure, the John Does who make up Climate Action Now CIO say yes through that instrument and will go over the next Tuesday to No Building Ever CIC to say no through that instrument. There is neither any distinction of any significance to the legal structures they use to block things nor is there any value in saying "I'm not going to block this through Company A; I'm going to use Company B". Whether one uses Blue Eyes White Dragon or Exodia The Forbidden One, one is doing the same thing.