Add new comment

When solar panels or LED lights are installed (or other “green” tech) they’ll say “congratulations! your carbon footprint has been offset by x amount which is is the equivalent of planting x trees!” which is the biggest bullshit ever.

As if trees could be reduced to sucking up co2. LEDs don’t give oxygen, nor habitat, nor shade, nor nutrients, nor contribute to air humidity and water cycle, etc etc.

The manufacturing of solar panels, batteries and LEDs entail pollution, and so does the extraction of materials to make them. Imagine a calculator that after you install the green tech thing it says “congratulations! your product is the equivalent of digging a hole in the ground of x depth and area and dumping x tons of toxic pollutants into rivers!”

Take that same logic and think:
disaster destroys x houses, as well as x trees.
replacing those x houses = (equivalent of) chopping down additional x trees.
the ecosystem only stands a chance to recover if x trees are planted in place of rebuilding the houses.
This is an oversimplification, but it illustrates a dynamic.

If coastal cities are increasingly at risk from disasters (sea level rise,storms,earthquakes,tsunamis) why double down on living there, fortifying them, making them more resistant to these threats?

We know why: the economy and T.I.N.A. and many other very realistic reasons. Incentives to develop every inch of prime real estate exist, instead of allowing for much needed gaps and buffers of reforestation and vegetation and diverse habitats. If the habits for biodiversity could creep back in as corridors from the small rural pockets, all through the suburban sprawl, all the way up to the city, overtaking the abandoned housing and infrastructure.