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Comment by okcwarrior | Hacker News Reader

Ok, this is a crazy comment, but I have been playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 a lot and almost every piece of land has something, somewhere built on it. Farm, suburb, etc It's depressing but maybe it helps me understand that we are using too much of earth. Do we really need endless farms?

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I believe in the contiguous USA the furthest you can get from a road is only 20 miles. There are no undisturbed places left, really. Unfortunately preserving roadless areas is politically contentious here. Clinton enacted a roadless area rule at the end of his administration and Bush tried to reverse it a week later.

Not sure I believe the 20 miles thing unless you could count an old road that hasn't been used in 100 years as "developed".

There are massive swaths of land in the lower 48 that are pretty much untouched beyond a few footpaths that are rarely used.

Well, go right ahead and name any place that is, say, fifty miles from a road.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/20/using...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42104894

The best one can do is 21 miles from a road - in Yellowstone

I just had a go and thought I'd found somewhere with a 60km road-free radius, then zoomed out and found that I'd strayed into Mexico.

Sugar bunker, just NW of Las Vegas has a few places with 50km (~30 miles) though.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that statistic includes every Forest Service road on the books.

Yes, clearly. In what way is a forest road not a road?

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7775746,-122.9327754,2401a,3...

I think when people think “road” they think something maintained and well used.

A forestry or old logging road that hasn’t been used in 50 years doesn’t come to mind.

I can't really know what people think is or isn't a road but these are objectively roads and I think you are understating the extent to which resource extraction activities use these roads today, and the degree to which any road, no matter how much or little used, alters the ecosystem through which it passes.

A road (dirt trail) that hasn't been in use for 100 years is not impacting the ecosystem to any extent at all.

Do you have any support for your repeated claims that the roads under discussion haven't been used for 100 years?

Virtually no forest service roads are older than 50 years old, as most were constructed after WW2 to assist in logging.

The point is that humans have touched it. There’s a perception there’s large segments of the American West and Midwest that haven’t been touched. Which is what they’re describing. Almost every place, at one point or another was close to the road. When we’ve only had cars for the last 100 or so, that’s quite a statement.

You’re splitting hairs.

People really believe there are parts of the west and mid-west that haven't been "touched" (we're changing the discussion here)?

The entire country has been surveyed, so of course it's been touched (as defined by some human presence at some point in time).

Looks in remarkably good condition for something that hasn't been used for 50 years. You can even see tyre marks: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7941501,-122.9358659,3a,75y,...

I agree, but the fact that there was a forest/logging road in that area as recently as 50 years ago does indicate that it is an environment recently impacted by humans.

It's a fact the furthest you can get from a McDonald's while anywhere in the lower 48 is only 115 miles!

http://www.datapointed.net/2010/09/distance-to-nearest-mcdon...

We got a lot of people to feed. The only right way to stop/reverse climate change is to control population growth.

Others ways, like reducing each individual’s carbon footprint or clean energy just gives us excuse to breed more and overwhelm the planet, but later.

Completely disagree. Tje richest 10% of the world is responsible for 50% of CO2 output. I don't know about other metrics, but that I'm sure that pattern isn't just limiter to carbon footprint. We don't have a population problem. We have a problem with Greer and resource use that slashing ourr population - even drastically - will not in any way solve.

The richest 10% of the world also come from regions with stable-to-negative population growth. Those regions are our only hope for moving to a sustainable technological platform while maintaining a high quality of life; we're talking about the people who buy solar panels, windmills, and electric cars, who at least can build nuclear plants, if they get over their political reservations.

The poorest 50% of the world would absolutely love to emit more CO2, and will do so just as fast as they can acquire the resources.

I don't think any steps to limit population growth really need to be taken, however, other than two things which are good in and of themselves: women's education, and improving access to birth control.

But concerns about Earth's carrying capacity need to be taken seriously. Malthus is wrong right up until he isn't, and we should strive to avoid hitting that limit.

If we are going to have endless people we need endless farms probably.

It would be cool if we could keep the population of the globe like 1/10 what it is now but I don't know of a humane and rights respecting way to achieve that.

Or maybe if we reduce our standard of living it would help but how low can we go? And people aren't going to go for that either. It's a tough problem.

Small scale farming is not always ecologically destructive. We Definitely don’t need endless mono-crop farms, but adding more small scale, diversified, local farms would probably be a net gain for climate. Look into silvopastures and the carbon drawdown benefits. Also helps build in resiliency to the supply chain for food, something we saw the need for at the outset of the lockdown when grocery chains were depleted.

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