Occupational Hazards
Nov. 19th, 2021 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormGoddammit I am really tired of people's ecological hot take memes.
I just listened to a podcast where they interviewed Dan Barber. In that interview he said, basically, that the reason we have so many ecological issues is that people choose what they want to eat and then force the land to grow it, rather than eating what grew well and was available (the podcast is "Gastropod" and I like it the two episodes in I've got so far). That's apparently not obvious to folks and it was nice to hear someone say it.
But I went from that to a meme that basically tried to invoke arguments from authority (Sepp Holzer and some indigenous quotes, likely out of context) to imply that if BC just, um, built our roads on mountantops instead of valleys the roads would be fine. And that, um, if we just work with the landscape everything will be fine. I think there was an anecdote about planting perennials around a creek in a pasture.
I guess it's fashionable for folks to just share these ideas without taking half a second to think of consequences and ramifications. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be working with the landscape and not against it. But what does that mean in a province where the flat land is maybe 2% of the landbase, and of that anywhere that doesn't get to -40C is in what used to be a wetland (and incidentally contains over 90% of the people)? Well, let's see:
-First Nations often moved seasonally, to the water to fish and provision and then away from the water. This kept them in manageable relationship to high water and to wildfires (as opposed to deliberately set fires). Mobile or disposable housing and a lack of fixed or permanent structures wouldn't fit well with private property, our concepts of ownership, lots of manufacturing and infrastructure, etc. This is a great way to fit into the landscape of this area. It would mean a tremendous change to our society on every level.
-The reason there's water at the bottom of the valleys is because it lands all over, including the top, and moves down. It brings soil and rocks with it either frozen (avalanche) or as landslides and mud or really flashy (get huge and then small again) creeks, depending on whether you're in the interior or the coast respectively. One of the highways that took the most damage from water (the meme shows a picture of the road at river-level where it's been washed out) is most often closed because of snow issues where it goes through high elevations. There's not just a simple solution to where to build roads that everyone is ignoring. This means: travel can be seasonal on nonpermanent roads including frozen lakes and rivers(coast/boat and then overland was super common, the grease trail network was enormous and my town used to be enormously powerful because it was on a huge lake nexus), it can be by plane, or we can fix our permanent roads pretty often.
-Which maybe leads to my actual issue, which is: nature wins. Natural forces are big and they will disrupt and uproot us from time to time even if we do everything "right". I am in no way arguing that we're not deeply wrong right now. I am arguing that while natural disasters absolutely should cause us to evaluate our infrastructure (or ideally periodic reviews before natural disasters, honestly), the fact that a particular piece of infrastructure has failed doesn't mean it was built wrong and if it was just "built right" it wouldn't fail. Sometimes it means our social goals aren't supportable without occasionally (or maybe even frequently!) replacing infrastructure. Living "in harmony with nature" doesn't mean that nature turns into a neutral backdrop. It means there is *give* and there is *take* on both sides, and that give and take is accepted as part of a harmonious life and not viewed as a failure or a slight or a sign from god(s). Or maybe it's viewed as a sign from god(s) to do some introspection and make sure we're both giving and taking.
-This was also posted by someone living on a fucking floodplain in the location that doesn't declare all the weird uncharismatic minifauna there that are going extinct as endangered because they'd have to reflood the wetland. Which, let me say, infurates me on many layers: that used to be very rich farmland. Good farmland almost by definition floods some-definition-of-regularly. Before that is was marsh/swamp/etc and highly productive of fish and birds and biomass. But over time it's been taken out of swamp and then of farms and put into homes which means those homes endanger two super important things -- agriculture and rare productive ecosystems -- and require the highest control of nature because farmland can handle being flooded from time to time. So yeah. Move everyone. Rejig our society in almost every respect. I am actually really, really down for this. But it's not as simple as you think it is, and literally you are the problem.
Bah.
I just listened to a podcast where they interviewed Dan Barber. In that interview he said, basically, that the reason we have so many ecological issues is that people choose what they want to eat and then force the land to grow it, rather than eating what grew well and was available (the podcast is "Gastropod" and I like it the two episodes in I've got so far). That's apparently not obvious to folks and it was nice to hear someone say it.
But I went from that to a meme that basically tried to invoke arguments from authority (Sepp Holzer and some indigenous quotes, likely out of context) to imply that if BC just, um, built our roads on mountantops instead of valleys the roads would be fine. And that, um, if we just work with the landscape everything will be fine. I think there was an anecdote about planting perennials around a creek in a pasture.
I guess it's fashionable for folks to just share these ideas without taking half a second to think of consequences and ramifications. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be working with the landscape and not against it. But what does that mean in a province where the flat land is maybe 2% of the landbase, and of that anywhere that doesn't get to -40C is in what used to be a wetland (and incidentally contains over 90% of the people)? Well, let's see:
-First Nations often moved seasonally, to the water to fish and provision and then away from the water. This kept them in manageable relationship to high water and to wildfires (as opposed to deliberately set fires). Mobile or disposable housing and a lack of fixed or permanent structures wouldn't fit well with private property, our concepts of ownership, lots of manufacturing and infrastructure, etc. This is a great way to fit into the landscape of this area. It would mean a tremendous change to our society on every level.
-The reason there's water at the bottom of the valleys is because it lands all over, including the top, and moves down. It brings soil and rocks with it either frozen (avalanche) or as landslides and mud or really flashy (get huge and then small again) creeks, depending on whether you're in the interior or the coast respectively. One of the highways that took the most damage from water (the meme shows a picture of the road at river-level where it's been washed out) is most often closed because of snow issues where it goes through high elevations. There's not just a simple solution to where to build roads that everyone is ignoring. This means: travel can be seasonal on nonpermanent roads including frozen lakes and rivers(coast/boat and then overland was super common, the grease trail network was enormous and my town used to be enormously powerful because it was on a huge lake nexus), it can be by plane, or we can fix our permanent roads pretty often.
-Which maybe leads to my actual issue, which is: nature wins. Natural forces are big and they will disrupt and uproot us from time to time even if we do everything "right". I am in no way arguing that we're not deeply wrong right now. I am arguing that while natural disasters absolutely should cause us to evaluate our infrastructure (or ideally periodic reviews before natural disasters, honestly), the fact that a particular piece of infrastructure has failed doesn't mean it was built wrong and if it was just "built right" it wouldn't fail. Sometimes it means our social goals aren't supportable without occasionally (or maybe even frequently!) replacing infrastructure. Living "in harmony with nature" doesn't mean that nature turns into a neutral backdrop. It means there is *give* and there is *take* on both sides, and that give and take is accepted as part of a harmonious life and not viewed as a failure or a slight or a sign from god(s). Or maybe it's viewed as a sign from god(s) to do some introspection and make sure we're both giving and taking.
-This was also posted by someone living on a fucking floodplain in the location that doesn't declare all the weird uncharismatic minifauna there that are going extinct as endangered because they'd have to reflood the wetland. Which, let me say, infurates me on many layers: that used to be very rich farmland. Good farmland almost by definition floods some-definition-of-regularly. Before that is was marsh/swamp/etc and highly productive of fish and birds and biomass. But over time it's been taken out of swamp and then of farms and put into homes which means those homes endanger two super important things -- agriculture and rare productive ecosystems -- and require the highest control of nature because farmland can handle being flooded from time to time. So yeah. Move everyone. Rejig our society in almost every respect. I am actually really, really down for this. But it's not as simple as you think it is, and literally you are the problem.
Bah.
