I was disappointed to see that this article didn't mention livestock agriculture. Rethinking cities is important for many reasons, but the climate impact is a drop in the bucket.<p>We use 50% of the habitable land on earth for agriculture, and 77% thereof is used to produce meat and dairy. At the same time, meat and dairy only make up 18% of the world's calory supply, and 36% of the protein supply.<p>It's crystal clear that the best thing we can do to free up land is to reduce livestock agriculture. This also has some more advantages, for example increasing biodiversity, decreasing zoonotic diseases like the current shitshow we're in, decreasing antibiotics resistance (the next shitshow we're about to enjoy), increasing the number of parks for recreation (which has a positive psychological impact on people). Oh yes, and animal welfare.<p>Source: <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food</a>
This is way off target: "the kinds of neighborhoods that permanently reduce total driving"<p>People change jobs without changing where they live. It won't matter what kind of neighborhood a person lives in if the person still commutes a long distance.<p>Transaction costs are high. For a dense city, moving to a different apartment means losing rent control. Elsewhere, the process of selling and buying a house will eat up about 10% the value of the house. Switching kids to different school districts is often unacceptable.<p>The typical modern two-income household makes this far worse. Moving close to one employer just means moving away from the other employer. Cutting one person's commute just lengthens the other person's commute. Why bother?
Except, this does nothing for the already-existing cities, so it is just a planner's fantasy, unless the price of transportation becomes so high to cause the cities to transform. I think this is rather unlikely.<p>I am thinking, couldn't we consume less energy for transportation just by making lighter vehicles? 95% of the energy used by a car is expended just to move the vehicle itself, not for its ultimate purpose, which is moving a human.
The obvious way to get rid of most cars is by squeezing as many people as possible into extremely dense high-rise cities, small areas in which mass transit can function.<p>But who actually wants to live like that? To live in a tiny property in a noisy city, to save a planet that you then have far less ability to explore and enjoy?
Does anybody think climate change will actually be resolved without an incredibly dramatic event taking place?<p>I'm talking about something like Clathrate Gun Hypothesis [1], not increased hurricane activity or Miami slowly sinking. A runaway heating event or worse.<p>Humans mostly don't want to invest in things that don't have immediate payoff, where "immediate" <= one human lifespan. (Typically we want things even faster than this.)<p>I doubt lecturing a generation of kids will change policies. Those kids will still consume economic products that cause carbon emissions. Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- is willing to do a shutdown to the level that would be required to stop warming.<p>This article that proposes more dense cities. Nobody is going to do that for the climate. Think about how many stakeholders in reaching an 80% population vaccination rate didn't show up. These people are wasting their breath.<p>The human species <i>cannot</i> solve this problem unless we manage to kill off all the plants and stop having oxygen.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis</a>
>We must prioritize development in the kinds of neighborhoods that permanently reduce total driving and consume less energy. Such human-centered neighborhoods have the added benefit of helping us adapt to climate impacts, improve public health, and promote access to activities. Encouraging their development should be a central part of any national climate resilience strategy.<p>I wonder if a moratorium could be issued to freeze all land zoning changes beyond the border of all cities, stop cities from growing outwards. This would force growth to turn inwards, and improve neighborhood density.
Let me guess: Everyone should live in a city and houses should be owned by gigantic holding companies. You are getting predictable.<p>I wrote this comment before reading the article because there are indeed articles that aren't worth reading and you know the content.<p>I think in this case, it is good to not read the article for once. The headline supplies enough information to extrapolate the data.