this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I don’t live in a city, I live outside of one- they don’t block off the land around here and say you can’t live on it. I’m not interested in living in a city- I have a couple of acres, gardens, old oak trees towering all around giving me shade, I’m near a lake where I can go boating, I have space for my camper and garden tools. I’ve lived in apartments and townhouses, and when you live right next to work, then yeah, walking across the street to your job is great, but if you want something more than 1000sqft for your family and dog- you find yourself outside a city.

On the flip though, I can work from home so I drive a lot less than many, and our groceries are delivered so there are efficiencies gained by a single vehicle delivering to multiple homes instead of each making a trip.

And furthermore, I have enough space to put in a large solar array which I’m currently looking into. If I ever get an electric car, I’ll be able to charge completely off grid with green power. All of that is tougher crammed in a high density urban environment where you’re at the mercy of infrastructure out of your control.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Please tell us how environmentally friendly bringing infrastructure like internet, roads, electricity, water or garbage disposal to low-population density areas is, and how resource-efficient single family houses are. Go off living your happiest life, mate, just don't preach about the sustainability of it when your eco-footprint is twice that of a city dweller.

As advice: for solar panels to charge an EV, you're gonna need a fuckton of them. An EV battery is easily 50kWh, which means a 10kW solar installation producing full energy for 5 hours (assuming perfect efficiency on conversion). So be ready to buy a lot of panels.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well I’m on well water, and I live near Amazon data centers so power was already close by at large scale. I have a septic system, so there’s no sewage lines. Internet is fiber, also already here because of Amazon and it runs on common telco lines that have been there 100 years and uses almost no power for transmission. As for solar, whole home solar arrays are common in my area, I could probably fit 30-50 panels on the sun side.

I’m not arguing that it’s more sustainable, just that endless population growth crammed into mega cities isn’t a great solution either- I think smaller communities with some measure of independence is probably more sustainable than city sized archologies with people crammed in coffins- that’s no way to live. With fewer people the slices of pie can be bigger. Cities use an unbelievable amount of concrete for infrastructure which is a huge pollutant and a finite resource due to the limited supply of special sand required.

There’s no easy solution- I’m just saying for many, it’s not as simple as just taking a bike. I feel like reducing heavy industry and global population and making Chinese trash products illegal would have a far greater impact on global sustainability, as those things use orders of magnitude more energy and resources than every country dweller’s cars combined. And don't get me started on energy hungry crypto and AI farms- they use more power than the bottom 10 countries combined.

Industry has done a great PR campaign making people feel guilty and personally responsible while generating billions of tons of plastic bottles, bags, and packages which are 90% not recyclable regardless of the blue bins. Small changes at industrial scale would have far greater impact- like switching back to glass bottles or waste fiber bags. Not to say we shouldn’t each do our part, but we as individuals carry an unfair share of the blame for problems largely created by unregulated profit driven enterprises.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago
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