So what would Climate Stalin have to do?
So what would Climate Stalin have to do?
With the fires in LA it’s hard to feel optimistic about the future. I want to be reminded that all is not lost, we need to do a lot that likely won’t be done but there are still things to do.
So let’s say Climate Stalin became Supreme Leader of the World or just President of the United States tomorrow. Whats next? What steps do we take to stop climate change getting worse and mitigate the damage we’ve already done?
curious about this one. cities aren't perfect and suburbs are pretty much the worst but I thought generally city dwellers had a much lower impact per capita. not that rural communities should be disinvested either, just wondering what specific climate angle you had in mind here
I guess investing in making rural communities more... communities and not just individual suburban-style or farmstead style houses miles from civilization would be a start?
High density cities are ideal for resource consumption, but commuting out of one to do agricultural work from sunrise to sunset isn't ideal. Part of the antithesis between town and country is that rural communities are so underdeveloped that nobody would want to live there and those who do are subject to additional alienation. Agriculture is something that a single digit percentage of the population already born into it does. I go ten miles outside of my current city and there are suddenly no bike paths, no libraries, no decent schools, and no quality internet/water/power. There are just massive cattle ranches and corn farms that pay minimum wage. By investing in those communities and making them livable, I want to expand who participates in food production and reduce the land consolidation under a few ranching/farming businesses who only have an incentive to deplete the land because the scale of their production is so industrialised.
One important angle of this issue is that people in cities don't feel a direct connection to nature or natural production. They'll eat bananas in December without thinking of the cost of a 10 cent banana, and the supply side responds by always ensuring there are bananas in December regardless of the impact on those communities growing them. I want a society in which most people have some kind of direct connection to nature which depends on their stewardship of it.
Switzerland is an example of great rail infrastructure for rural areas. There are bus services to nearly every town, even if it only has 100 people. The rail services also stretch deep out into the countryside, with interurbans and rural rail lines servicing many small towns. This allows people to live in the countryside car-lite or car-free.
I live in a rural farming town, population has always been <1k people, flyover state, about an hour by car to the nearest city. Everything is walkable. We used to have passenger rail service before they dug up the tracks, and there's rail lines still operating near by that wouldn't be too hard to hook up to. Having rail infrastructure is good in general since quite a lot of food is grown here and needs to be distributed out either way. Seems not-terribly-complicated to use the same rail infrastructure to bring goods in and move people to/from the city.
In order to make the town more appealing so people didn't need or want to leave it as frequently (thereby reducing carbon footprints here), you'd need to add healthcare (doctor, dentist, optometrist, pharmacist, etc or one person who can do the basics of most/all of it plus some staff to support them), re-open the school that got shut down by libertarian experiments so kids didn't need to go to a neighboring town for education every day, and reduce the cost of groceries in town (which is literally 2x as expensive as in the city). Some version of a food truck schedule or other rotating restaurant situation would be good too for more variety (the only place that serves food is the bar which only does artery-clogging fried stuff and meat). You'd also need to add more stuff to do and places to hang out besides churches — there's a park and a walking trail and a basketball court, but it's pretty boring otherwise.
Make this #1 and I'll give my life to this project