Human Aversion To Urban Environments Makes CleanTech More Important Than Most Think
I recently came across a discussion on social media that both shows a common misconception and an important fact about human nature. Strangely enough, an idiotic political account started the discussion that led to something insightful.
https://twitter.com/zdeegs23/status/1614666515722440704
For those who are using a screen reader or those who need a little more help putting this all in context, the basic idea here is that many environmentalists live in cities. In this case, a picture of Manhattan is shown. Manhattan isn’t very green, especially if you look at it from the sky between the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island. There’s a lot of concrete and very little nature. Checkmate, libz!
But, appearances can be deceptive, as several people pointed out. High-density living both reduces energy usage and reduces the impact on wild spaces outside of cities. The per capita carbon footprint of people living in a place like New York City is a lot lower than people in Suburbia or further out in the rest of rural America. After all, those of us outside of dense urban cores drive more, have larger houses to heat and cool without neighbors on the other side of the wall, and otherwise have higher emissions per person.
Several people responding to the conservative account closed their retort with something like, “If you like nature, you shouldn’t try to live in it.”
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