Three years back, I made the rational choice to leave because I could barely see a way to home ownership - not to mention having a family and sending children to a good school.
California can solve all of it's problems if it wanted to. I think the problem is the number of people in California who have barely left the state and view the rest of the country as this underdeveloped backwater.
Food for thought, California currently:
- Is tied for the 3rd highest unemployment rate https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
- Has the 5th highest Gini coefficient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_...
- Has the LOWEST high school graduation rate https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/high-school...
The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.
PDF, page 25: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20484267-2020-annual...
The bigger problem is water supply reliability, and that's going to need some serious attention whether or not new people come.
The water rights system in this state are absurd, and we use water in terrible ways because of it. We need to reign in the farmers, who have been abusing aquifers and living without thought for the next generation. And we probably need to start taxing water rights, based on the water rights value.
I don't think this takes into account the ongoing decreases in CA's current water sources. Some of those sources are shared by multiple, growing, states.
> The bigger problem is water supply reliability, and that's going to need some serious attention whether or not new people come.
This seems to undermine any arguments about not requiring much water to support more people.
But more people will help our water situation in other ways too. Those new people also bring the resources with them to address a changing climate that has more water variability. Because of Prop 13, a static population will starve local governments of funds to deal with their water issues. We require new people to reset tax assessments and bring in funds.
A third way that more people help the water situation is that it wrests more control of water from economically exploitive water usages such as industry and towards more socially supportive uses. The current coalition of residents does not have sufficient political power to reform our awful water rights system. It will take an expanded electorate of residents to overpower the i democratic influence of the industrial uses of water that would be far better suited to other areas of the country.
https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/LA-vs-Exports...
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/11/cows-not-almonds-...
California has a rich delta, the San Joaquin River Delta, which is a natural rice growing region.
People who are ignorant of geography, and think water is much more fungible than it is, would prefer that some small amount more of this water be expelled into the San Francisco Bay, as the great majority of it is already.
Contrast with alfalfa, which is grown mostly from aquifer water in the Central Valley, constitutes 50% of the entire agricultural water use for the state, and is used as cattle feed. That we can do without.
It's a fake issue, made up to disguise a classic NIMBYist fear of changing "the character" of California.
Which, I've been to Yosemite recently, so I get that. But the ship sailed long ago.
California does have unsustainable agricultural practices. Alfalfa growing for feedlot cattle is the big one, eliminate that and Cali can in fact expand on her comparative advantage in growing fruits, nuts, and specialty crops like asparagus and artichoke.
But this is completely unrelated to residential use of water, which is a) a rounding error next to agriculture and b) provisioned through a largely orthogonal system of reservoirs and, yes, aqueducts, which agriculture simply isn't competing with. Expanding that system and stewarding the available water better wouldn't take away from agriculture, which is fed by rivers and aquifers.
Again, the big offender is alfalfa. Rice, irrigated from canals off the Delta, is an irrelevant distraction to agricultural sustainability, let alone residential growth.
California's system of water rights is ancient and corrupt, and isn't serving the state well. But "pricing ag water like residential water" is a nonsensical way of solving that problem, it's just not the same water. Actually auctioning available water, and setting hard limits on aquifer withdrawal, is both necessary and quite sufficient.
How would limits on aquifer withdrawal be enforced? In general reforming water rights seems politically infeasible due to entrenched interests that benefit from the status quo.
Agree in the need to ramp up water availability. Though certainly simple solutions like reducing the number of water intensive crops would provide enough water for decades of population growth without new sources. The key is to allow people to imagine a slightly different California and not panic that there just aren't as many almond growers as there used to be.
Are you in agreement with changing zoning laws to accommodate many more high rises e.g in norcal and around the bay? (I'm presuming your location from your bio. Correct me if I'm wrong)
(I live near DC. DC itself has a height restriction that dates back to the building of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo, and I quite wish DC's height restrictions would change at the very least in its residential areas, but people are NIMBYing the heck out of that too)
There are no jobs or industry anywhere near where we grew up but people like him make sure that stays a reality and then he has the nerve to complain about how I live so far away. He's the ultimate NIMBY. He and others like him all truly believe that as soon as their house was completed no further changes can ever allow to happen or else it will ruin the landscape. It's not just hypocritical it's outright selfish.
Yes, but aren't we all to at least some degree? "Self-focused" is perhaps an easier adjective to digest?
The reality is that the boomers dominated politics (local and national) up until now. That starts to change inside this decade. So we are going to see dramatic shifts by 2030 and we will see if that is for the better or the worse.
http://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/
If we allowed four-story apartment buildings again like we used to, the state's population could easily double in size without even having to raise a single height limit anywhere.
(However, I should mention that I, for one, think six-story apartments are where it's at.)
i’d support a bill allowing all mixed-use buildings to be 13 stories/150’ by default, and taller along transit corridors. and all residential to be 4+1 by right, and bigger within 1/2 mile of a transit corridor. CA politicians don’t even let such bills get to vote oftentimes, but vote them down when they do. i’d be down to put them on the ballot as a voter proposition instead.
[0]: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/l-a-s-changing-skyline-a-...
San Francisco's state senator Scott Weiner has been leading in he charge. A few good bills have gotten through, but opposition from LA has been a serious hurdle to upzoning.
and LA isn't the principal opposition, that's broad among the state's landlords and homeowners. let's not let (geographical) divide-and-conquer obscure the goal here.
Really the key is to ban single unit detached homes, get rid of setbacks, get rid of parking minimums, establish parking maximums, even.
Basically, the entire planning profession has gotten every single thing wrong. Take any limit they have established, and reverse it, IMHO. All that feeder street nonsense has destroyed an entire century's worth of planning.
I stayed in an Airbnb in a central neighborhood in Barcelona (l'Eixample IIRC) and I found it to be pretty cramped quarters. I'm not sure how much difference there is between one apartment building and the next, but I have more space living in San Francisco right now and I still would like to have more. I personally would not like to live in SF if I had to live in housing that small.
I want a garage, I want another room in my apartment, and I want a driveway where I can wash my car. I also want to live in a thriving city with lots of interesting people to meet and things to do. I recognize that these are contradictory desires. I think the latter desire is more healthy for society, but I think there is definitely a reason I feel the former desire. It's because that's how I grew up.
I think that Americans, culturally, value space more than perhaps some other cultures do. I think that trying to fight against that is a losing fight. You will not get any policy passed if you lead with "banning single unit detached homes". That is far and away the most popular housing option in the United States and absolutely what the average American thinks of when they think about "buying" (vs renting). I walk by people living in their modern, rectangular condos big glass windows that let me see everything in their house at once and I cringe - who on earth wants to live in tiny terrarium that costs $4000 a month? Like it or not, most people feel this way about condos. Also like it or not, a lot of people basically think that these are the only two options, because that's all that they've seen.
I think we need to just allow the missing middle. There are people who like high-rise condos, and there are people who like single family homes, and there are probably a lot more people who, when presented with the financial advantages of the middle options, would choose something in between.
I don’t want to live in the suburbs. I also don’t want to live in a high rise. I think there is a case for something in between.
I can understand people having different preferences. What I can not understand is refusing to believe that people don't love living in a place like Barcelona.
> who on earth wants to live in tiny terrarium that costs $4000 a month
Why not ask the people that live there rather than pretending they don't exist or that their desires don't deserve to be allowed? Seriously, this is a strange way to think of other humans, seeing that they are right in front of you but trying desperately to pretend that they are fundamentally fooled, or nonexistent, or don't deserve to exist, or something. People pay waaaaay more than $4000/month for a detached home, and far less than that, but only they exist as people with valid desires, somehow?
I don't think it's clear at all that Americans "culturally value" space more. We have done lots of top-down planning to prevent density, disallowing it in nearly all places. But it's hugely in demand, and far more people want it than we allow to live in it. This despite nearly a century of media, law, and political movements on both the left and right vilifying cities as places of disease, crime, and inherent poverty.
If people didn't want to live in these types of places, why is it necessary to ban them? We should definitely legalize missing middle, but also legalize far more dense walkable urban areas, at least enough of them so that they are cheap to live in rather than the most expensive form of housing.
"With this approval, California will adopt the entire series of the ICC approved change proposals for the design of tall wood buildings in California. California will become the fifth state to move forward with early adoption of the 2021 International Building Code"
Constant conflicts in the family because the grandparents want to watch TV, parents need to rest after work, and the child wants to study.
Constantly hearing your neighbors when they want to have a party, or do some renovation.
Trashed up common spaces because some guys just don't give a damn and will throw trash, or literally pee on the staircase, and you are forced to share some area with them.
I grew up with the biggest dream of escaping that hell and it was one of the main reasons I immigrated to the West, where having your own private house was still affordable for most people.
Now, through unwise fiscal policies and excessive centralization, the entire generation is completely priced out of it. But instead of seeking to change these policies, push for decentralization, and be able to afford freedom and independence, they seek to blame those who was born in a luckier time and want to force everybody to live in a concrete box. I don't think it's the right way.
Decentralization, on the other hand, is limited by the supply of land, that is fairly plentiful in the U.S. And it incentivizes taking care of your property, saving and paying off your mortgage (other than just giving money to the landlord). It would also create local jobs for owner-operated businesses related to construction and infrastructure maintenance, instead of corporate drones maintaining corporate-owned apartment towers.
And we got to that point without concrete boxes at all. Avoiding density isn't helping.
Let's imagine density, but with enough living space so that each person gets their own room. Let's imagine that we build so that we don't have to hear our neighbors' partying. Let's imagine that a full time wage lets somebody rent their own 1 bedroom apartment.
The only thing stopping us is an electorate that has your beliefs. We don't get crowding from building more housing, the idea is preposterous on its face. It doesn't pass a basic sniff test. We get overcrowding because we didn't build enough.
I’ve heard (and been kept awake by) my neighbors in every single place I’ve lived that’s not a detached home. Even the fancy condo with super thick walls/floors/ceilings only made it rarer. If nothing else, this is why I want a single family home and hate the idea that this is the desirable future. Invest in remote work and let people have space.
Somebody advocating for something they've never experienced but demand that it be the future despite most people who have experienced it saying it can be soul destroying.
Grow your smaller cities and stop pumping everything in mega cities.
Parents comment reminds me of the people drooling at the mouth for Tokyo style housing despite being told the truth by westerners who have lived/live there.
Is that not correct?
This is precisely what has resulted in lots of our overcrowding. We allow greenfield sprawl pretty much all over in the smaller cities, but modestly sized apartment buildings are banned nearly everywhere in the "mega cities." Yet, still, people still want to live in the mega cities.
You seem to be unable to comprehend that some people, even a huge number of people, want to live differently than you, in a bustling city, without cars, but surrounded by lots of people and experiences and culture. That's fine, you don't need to understand it! But what's not fine is saying that other people aren't allowed to want what they want, or to build what they want.
And then more and more people move out where we are because of how nice it is and complain that we don’t want to urbanize the place we moved to escape density. I’m sick of people moving to where I live and blaming me because where they moved isn’t what they wanted so it needs to change to accommodate them. Instead of blaming their job for forcing them to live somewhere they don’t like.
Like if you went to a French restaurant and demanded the owners turn into a pizzeria because yeah there’s a pizzeria a few blocks over you could have gone to in the tenderloin but there aren’t enough pizzerias in general and you want this nice restaurant to be a pizzeria too.
The Right Answer of whether to focus on encouraging companies to spread out versus encouraging people to squeeze together probably depends on how many people want urbanization for job markets versus how many want it for lifestyle.
Of course, personally I don't think we should "invest in remote work" or "build flats". I think we should simply allow the market to flow to optima by deregulating.
Many people like single family homes in the suburbs. And clearly many people like a flat in the city. So let them have both by allowing them to sell their land to people who can build arbitrary density.
I've got to tell you that a lot of American construction is pretty shoddy in comparison. I don't know if it's a materials problem or just that America is so rich that $4k/mo flats aren't actually luxury.
It’s disingenuous to act like there are no externalities involved and what’s what regulation is needed for. Especially when government investment is needed for the essentials like utilities and transit.
The Command Economy style of "First build transit, then enable large buildings" just leads to nothing going anywhere and a lot of people complaining about prices while rent seekers eat all surplus.
I don't want to see my neighbors. I don't want to hear them. I don't want to smell their cooking. I don't want to have to deal with their problems that they drag home every day. I don't want to have to deal with their friends who bang on the wrong door at 2AM. I don't want to have the police always around because of whatever they are deciding to do that night. I don't want to have to park next to them so they dent every car I buy. I don't want to have to hear them complaining about whatever annoying thing I'm doing, because I'm probably an annoying neighbor just like them.
Politically, I'm totally fine if that's your thing. Go wild and build concrete honeycombs (as someone else here put it) all over the city, and live in them if that's what you like. We need the housing. But it's just not for me.
And people don't want to be evenly distributed throughout the state. There's still plenty of space in Fresno! But, many of the people who live there wish they lived somewhere else. Lots of people all want to live in the same places; doing some math based off 2010 census numbers, the San Francisco Bay Area currently has an average population density of about 912 people per square mile [1]. That may be getting asymptotically close to the carrying capacity for those areas for people who want to live suburban lifestyles.
California might be able to carry 80 million people, twice its current population, but that will require solving California's population distribution problem -- making some undesirable places a lot more desirable.
[1]: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm, includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties.
Distribution makes it more expensive to build that infrastructure. Thus inreasing distribution hinders rather than helps the ability of California to support a larger population.
That seems to directly contradict the points you were making.
Let's walk through some of the numbers and issues in detail, together.
As of 2019, San Francisco county has a population density of about 18,000 people per square mile. Let's say that San Francisco county is the ideal scenario for the Raldi Model. And clearly, lots of people do want to live there now, so it can't be all bad.
Let's take that model and cut the population density in half and extend it across the greater Bay Area. Magic wand, presto-chango, the population density of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties is now 9,000 people per square mile, uniformly.
That gets us 70 million people in just the greater Bay Area. Awesome! We did it. 30 million people get to share the rest of the state, everything is grand.
What was the cost?
Well, if the greater Bay Area were a country, it would now be the world's 3rd highest population density (give or take) [1]. In terms of scale, it would blow away any other competitors in the list, dwarfing most high-density countries' total populations by a significant factor, except Bangladesh.
There was a thread yesterday on California's water woes [2]. What impact would the Raldi Model have on the state's water demand? San Francisco County uses about 41 gallons of water per person per day [3], which is less than half the state average. Fantastic! We only need to find about 3 billion gallons of water per day to serve this area, or 5.6 million acre-feet per year. This amounts to only about 5% more water than the state is currently consuming, so we only need to build one new reservoir that's a little bigger than the Shasta Reservoir, the state's current largest, and, somehow, fill it. Or, build 175 more Carlsbad desalination plants at $1 billion each, your choice.
Okay, water's solved! Next, energy. We only need an additional 448 TWh to serve this area at current San Francisco County per-capita usage levels [4]. Well ... 449, since we tore down the Altamont Pass Wind Farm and replaced it with high density housing. California currently consumes around 260 TWh statewide [5], so... uhh... we'll build 10 more nuclear power plants somewhere [6], somehow -- handwaving away all the costs and political challenges, and also their locations, since Diablo Canyon sits on 900 now very valuable acres of real estate. And the rest, let's just say rooftop solar covers the gap, haha.
Recreational space! Well, look, I have some bad news here. A lot of parks are gone now. Mount Diablo, the entire East Bay Regional Park system, the wildlife refuges in the north bay, Point Reyes, Muir Woods, they're all gone. Fortunately, people have all the same walkable concrete that San Francisco has. But, if you want to get away from one of the world's densest population centers for the weekend, don't go to Yosemite: due to consistently high traffic and the impacts it causes, Yosemite is using a reservation system for day passes now [7], and they'll want no part of 70 million more people visiting from the Bay Area.
Waste management: here, the Raldi Model gets a big point in its favor, since San Francisco overall does a magical job of reducing waste and landfill usage through multiple programs [8], although I'm skeptical we're getting a complete picture [9]. Even so, San Francisco County takes advantage of nearby open spaces for things like composting, and those open spaces are gone, so more waste needs to be transported farther afield and handled there. But, compared to the last few logistical issues we've handwaved away, this one's a peach.
Let's fast forward a bit and assume that everything else is taken care of too. There are enough teachers. All the paving that needs to be paved has been paved. Everyone is still, somehow, able to get all of the locally-grown organic food products that San Francisco County currently demands, we just have to stretch the definition of "locally grown" a bit. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was found to be taking up valuable real estate, so it was relocated to let's say San Diego, they'd love to have it there. All the trillions of dollars needed to make all this happen just sort of flew in and everybody looked at the plan and went, "yep, looks good to me."
Now, honest question: do you, personally, want to live here?
Lots of people would, no doubt. Lots of people live there now. But it's unclear how many people actually enjoy living there, and that kind of population density brings some serious human problems along with it [10].
I am extremely skeptical that, even if all the logistical problems could feasibly be solved, we'd find 70 million people in this country that would choose to live in that region once all the dust settled.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27068716
[3]: https://sfwater.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=145...
[4]: https://ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx
[5]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/05/f22/CA-Energ...
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
[7]: https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/news/yosemite-national-park-t...
[8]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/how-san-francisco-became-a-g...
[9]: https://discardstudies.com/2013/12/06/san-franciscos-famous-...
[10]: https://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm, ctrl-f "excrement". Also https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/17/san-franc..., https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/technology/san-francisco-..., etc.
I suppose I should have instead just said, "if raldi were right, the whole world would be Tokyo by now, wouldn't it?" and left it at that.
Every major metropolitan area in the history of the world went through a process like this. Sometimes within a single generation.
If demand tapers off at some point, growth will stop too. That doesn’t seem like an argument against letting it happen.
As for “if raldi were right, then why isn’t the whole world Tokyo?”, the answer is that there are precious few places that people really want to live in (barring a state-created housing shortage making it unaffordable). Tokyo is one; California is another.
Well they'll have to, because there are a limited number of areas in the US making jobs. And the US population is growing not shrinking, so even if jobs fan out to other, less-crowded population centers, we're just kicking the can down the road. Let's not forget about all the pollution that vehicles cause, which is a direct side effect of suburban sprawl. According to US gov't data [1], transportation is almost 30% of our emissions.
Guess which California cities are currently the fastest-growing. Ready? Bakersfield and Sacramento [2]. The numbers suggest that the role of jobs tends to be overestimated when it comes to the places that people choose to live.
No disagreement from me that denser population centers have net lower carbon emissions when compared to the same population over a larger area.
[1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23130/san-francisco/popul...
[2]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article243402621.html
No, it has nothing to do with job growth. San Francisco and Daly City have tried to block as much new housing as possible, so everyone simply spills out into the rest of the Bay Area. Neighboring Daly City [1] gained 3k people out of 103k, so ~3% increase but looking southward, South San Francisco [2] went from 60.6k to 68.1k people, a 12.4% increase. Further down in the Peninsula, Redwood City [3] went from 75.4 to 76.4k people, an increase of 13.3%. San Mateo [4] went from 92.5k to 104.4k people, a 12.9% increase. A bit more South, Mountain View [5] went from 70.7k to a peak of 83.2k, growth of 17.68%. Palo Alto [6] went from 58.6k to 67k people, a 14.3% increase. And finally, San Jose [7] went from 894.9k people to 1M people, an increase of 11.74%. Most cities in the Bay Area have seen tremendous growth in the last 20 years, it's just that San Francisco and Daly City continue to block new housing being built.
Moreover I really don't think jobs will get much more decentralized in the future. Post-COVID, some businesses probably will distribute themselves more, but not enough to have an effect. I only see urbanization increasing in the long term in the US. Clinging to our SFH only model of development is just short-sighted thinking based on our population growth alone, let alone environmental targets that we will need to hit to avert climate change disasters.
[1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/daly-city-ca-pop...
[2]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/south-san-franci...
[3]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-mateo-ca-pop...
[4]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-mateo-ca-pop...
[5]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/palo-alto-ca-pop...
[6]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/palo-alto-ca-pop...
[7]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-jose-ca-popu...
San Francisco is a horrible example because it notoriously does really bad at density. Then you halve that density to make it even worse, which will of course force massive problematic sprawl. This alone makes the rest of your long comment pointless as you spend the whole time talking about the problems caused by running out of space due to your low density.
In fact, all of the challenges you've listed are easier to solve with high density cities.
Higher density cities have less water use per capita, so they make it easier to supply any given population level with water. However, I don't think California can support 100mil without large desalination projects.
Higher density cities use less power per capita, plus lower transmission distances reduce upkeep per capita.
With waste management, again you get higher efficiences with higher densities.
Higher density cities mean that you have more room for green space and recreation areas and they can be situated close to the people who use them.
Sure, those who find nature and wilderness attractive will find denser cities less attractive... but those people already find them unattractive.
What I'm calling for is to allow the owners of existing single-family houses in urban and suburban job- and transit-centric neighborhoods to voluntarily tear them down and, if they choose, replace them with multifamily housing of, say, four stories.
This is a useless point to make. Of course its density is high compared to countries, because most countries don't consist of just one sprawling city with no land around it.
Where am I "basically saying" any of those things?
https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/news/release/wui-interface-intermi...
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/new-images-of-pge-...
(That being said, yes, it would be better if power generation were decentralized, and California seems like the right place to do just that.)
That said, power lines do have a tendency to spark fires in remote areas on the windiest days, which is not ideal. But eliminating power lines still wouldn't eliminate brush fires.
It turns out if you make homes unaffordable, people leave and look for a place where they can afford to live. Who knew?
So while this is an theoretical exercise but in reality it is very very hard to see happening under any short-term circumstances.
Even if we could magically upgrade every SFH to a multi-family building we'll have very unlivable cities with infrastructure falling well short of comfortably supporting the resulting population. So a realistic and worthwhile path to 100M would be a long and very expensive process.
Drivers are just much more visible. A bus can transport as many people as an entire block's worth of vehicles.
Never gets too hot, never gets too cold, doesn't rain at all for half the year, you can grow just about anything in your garden, there's natural beauty all around and you get get out there quickly and easily to enjoy it — beaches, snowy mountains, hiking, rolling hills...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_District,_San_Francisco...
Also what about the people that would inevitably arrive from your invitation that want to build plastic plants like in MO?
Point is I think you're hand-waving all the bad because of what it is today.
For instance, city families use far less water per capita than rural and suburban families, and they produce fewer "capitas".
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-residents-praised...
And compare "water used in California to produce almonds exported to other countries" versus "water used for all SF/LA homes and businesses" below:
https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/LA-vs-Exports...
Similarly, when you take people from elsewhere in the country and move them to places like San Francisco, their consumption of fuel and electricity go down, as does their production of garbage.
After that, you have smaller but water intensive businesses.
Being suburban doesn’t mean you waste water. I live in the suburbs and our water use is minimal. I use water saving shower heads, I turn off the water during most of the shower. In fact, the water never runs for more than two minutes. I wash my car extremely rarely. I don’t water a lawn. I only water a couple of small potted plants. I have water saving toilets.
In other words, public policies that divert people away from cities tend to increase water consumption (and harm the environment by just about any other metric you can name.)