Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

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I'm sorry, is this a joke? The Sierra Club? Opponents of the "Wall on the Waterfront". Opponents of AB 1633 to prevent CEQA abuse against housing?

Dude, they literally lobby the government to prevent homes being built in San Francisco the densest place in the nation and the perfect place for parking lots to become housing towers.

In my lifetime of living here in San Francisco, the Sierra Club has talked a big environmental game and opposed all housing. In fact, I recall the first year I was interested in policy and was curious why SF finds things so hard. I remember my uncle having Sierra Club posters on his wall so I went to look. I remember very clearly Sierra Club endorsements https://www.sierraclub.org/san-francisco-bay/2015-sf-endorse...

I remember their opposition to 8 Washington. I remember their opposition to 75 Howard (which became 17 Steuart, I think). In fact, every single time push comes to shove, the Sierra Club has opposed housing. Explain this.

My family used to work in Cross-Laminated Timber and Dowel-Laminated Timber structural design, my man. You don't have to convince me about wood. We have encountered who stalls construction and who opposes specific projects while talking a grand game. And it's the environmentalists.

In fact, if you think the Sierra Club is a pro-housing group after I've seen them, with my own eyes, oppose housing on the grounds of shadows, lobby against pro-housing bills, and protest it, I really do question what you know about things. I don't mean this in an online "gotcha" way. I mean in actual practice. What do you know about the Sierra Club that is not from online research? If you only know them through online research, I can understand your confusion. Sierra Club BC is a very different game than Sierra Club in California.

I don't know anything about the Sierra Club. I EXTRA don't know anything about their California chapter. Looking in to some of what you've said, I can see why they were a poor choice lol.

I just googled "mainstream environmentalist organization" and "housing policy" and clicked the the first one I found. Sorry if it seemed like I was pretending to know something about them - I was honestly just confused about what kind of evidence/organizations you wanted.

I found the statement "most environmentalists detest tall buildings" to be wildly cynical and unqualified, but I think what this is coming down to is that we have very different definitions of "environmentalists"(which I was hoping you would clarify).

To me (and to the dictionary, it seems), if you act/advocate in the interest of the environment, you are an environmentalist. Could be by protesting outside your local natural gas plant, but could also be by setting up special financing programs for CLT buildings, planting pollinator gardens in your front yard, limiting exclusionary zoning, etc. Given this - and given the fact that most of the environmentalists I know actively support building taller - it makes no sense to me to say that the majority of environmentalists are against tall buildings.

I get the feeling that your complaints lie with a very particular flavour of "environmentalist"*, which I don't think is at all representative of the true gamut of people who are doing actual, productive work on (vastly different) environmental issues. Suggesting that we need to "break the back of environmentalism to save the planet" is bogus doomerism... unless you are limiting your definition to something like:

"environmental organizations that oppose taller buildings in urban areas"

Which, yeah, I am not going to disagree with... because I am an environmentalist...

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*of the NIMBY, COEXIST-sticker-having, (probably) white-haired variety.

Okay, that’s fine. I’m happy to amend that to “We must break the back of the mainstream environmentalism movement of the US” because every mainstream environmentalist in the US is an active degrowther and pro-sprawl lunatic.

I’m not going to No True Scotsman this over “Yes, we’ll Democratic People’s Republics aren’t really democratic so when you say you want to end them you specifically mean blah blah”. But now that you know what American green organizations are like you know better. And knowing that you’re not pro-sprawl suffices for me. No friendly fire under this tent. But we will burn the rest of the green out of the US.

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