busyThe real problem is that all the solutions cause other problems, because of factors driving the traffic.
Humans need nature. At first, all of them lived in it. Then only most of them. Now a majority live in cities. The less nature people have, the unhealthier they get. People need more nature than they're getting. So anything that restricts people's access and lowers traffic will necessarily worsen their health.
A crowded wilderness isn't really a wilderness, though. It no longer serves its purpose for wildlife or humans. Wilderness is about peace and quiet, about solitude. To a slightly lesser extent, the same is true for the outdoors in general. Not only does heavy traffic wreck the space, it wipes out the things that people go there for -- the opportunity to relax and get away from others.
Privacy, solitude, and quiet are also survival needs. Losing them causes stress, and stress kills people. It contributes to numerous problems that cause people to suffer and die. This is expensive. Again, lowering access to nature harms people by denying them access to these survival needs.
It's not equal either. Poor and ethnic neighborhoods have much less green space compared to rich and white ones. Increasing green space raises health and lowers crime, and it's urgently needed. It's a win all around.
The catch is, almost all of the proposed solutions for the national parks basically amount to turning them into refuges for the rich. It is absolutely a dominance fight; whenever resources become scarce, the higher-ranked individuals hog them and leave little or nothing for anyone else.
A reservation system completely removes spontaneity, which restricts it to people who have reliable control over their own schedules. A large portion of workers have unpredictable schedules, overwhelming those in lower-paying jobs. A reservation system would mean that they could never get to a national park, because they couldn't simply take advantage of a rare day or few off work.
Any price on admission will shut out some people, but a price high enough to reduce traffic effectively will shut out most people -- first the poor and then the middle class, as the price goes higher.
Also, if you have to pay to use something, it's not really yours. This fuels a disconnection with nature in general and public land in particular. If people don't feel a sense of connection and investment, then the parks become "someone else's problem" and the public won't protect them or the rest of nature. That's already a problem; we can't afford to make it worse. Connection with nature is absolutely essential both for human health and for the environment.
Solutions that would actually help:
Generously fund national parks and other public land using tax dollars. No user fees onsite; you pay taxes, so you already paid for it.
Expand both local greenspace and national greenspace. Act to preserve what we have instead of clearcutting or paving it. The more parks people have locally, the less intense the craving to gorge on faraway sources. The more space available, the more people can spread out, the less crowding, and the less impact on those spaces.
Separate some refuges for wildlife from areas for human use. Wildlife needs places to call its own, just as humans do. Layering the uses will create a slope from zero human use through wilderness with occasional access to parks with higher traffic.
What are some of your ideas?
March 4 2019, 05:58:39 UTC 2 years ago
If it were up to me, I'd make every last acre of remaining wilderness a Global Wildlife Refuge, with humans either prohibited, or their activities very strictly limited and regulated. That may sound extreme, but the Anthropocene Extinction is already upon us; we're losing species every damn day. Let people build their new parks and outdoor recreation areas out of the reclaimed suburban sprawl, as we decolonize the earth and build our cities denser, greener, and more pleasant to live in. Climate change means a lot of other changes: the single-family home is highly inefficient and expensive.
As far as practical present-day solutions go, we necessarily have to start with aggressive political activism, to vote out the science deniers, robber barons and 'centrist' trimmers, get the corporate money out of our elections, and tax the ballast-existence billionaires out of existence. We need to support legislators who will fight for economic equality and strong environmental policies, and keep on advocating for the solutions you mention, in all the ways. Now's a very good time to write to all the Democrat presidential candidates and tell them what you want from them if they win.
Well ...
March 4 2019, 06:12:19 UTC 2 years ago
I don't think that's going away. There are still some people in far-flung areas, there are still towns with no tall buildings. While it's possible to build concise urban spaces that are healthy for extroverts, that's not the way the trend is going; and it's really hard on introverts. Crowding kills people with stress. The trend is leaning toward microapartments and tiny houses. That's dire. The more that happens, the more people will say "Oh HELL no." There are cohousing plans that are excellent, balancing small private space with large public spaces, which saves on everything from land to materials. But they're not popular; I wish they were. Live-work buildings are marvelous; in addition to the old town square style (apartment over office or store) there are skyrises like miniature cities with all the amenities. But most apartment buildings are just the housing.
To do away with single-family houses, we'd have to rebuild almost everything, and we have neither the time nor the resources for that. We'd lose more than we'd gain. I do think that going forward we should consider more concise housing, and find ways to make that affordable.
>>As far as practical present-day solutions go, we necessarily have to start with aggressive political activism, to vote out the science deniers, robber barons and 'centrist' trimmers, get the corporate money out of our elections, and tax the ballast-existence billionaires out of existence. <<
It's worth a try.
Re: Well ...
March 4 2019, 19:21:36 UTC 2 years ago Edited: March 4 2019, 19:58:04 UTC
"While it's possible to build concise urban spaces that are healthy for extroverts, that's not the way the trend is going; and it's really hard on introverts."
I don't know about that. The most hard-core introverts I know, including my soon-to-be son-in-law, are in IT. They don't love everything about the city, but they very definitely prefer it to the country, and not just because the jobs are there.
"There are still some people in far-flung areas, there are still towns with no tall buildings."
Yes. That would be me, here on the Olympic Peninsula in a town of 7000 (the only tall building of which is the historic 5-story grain elevator) surrounded by farmland and wilderness. My rich friends here live in beautiful mansions surrounded by exquisite green space, and pay through the nose for it. My poor friends live in ratty little mobile homes surrounded by exquisite green space and broken-down vehicles, and also pay through the nose: it's damn hard to be poor in a place where you HAVE to have a car.
My young protégés - mostly introverts - tend to flee for Seattle as soon as they're grown, despite how hideously expensive it is there, because there's nothing but poverty for them here. Introverts or no, they're not getting apartments all to themselves there - not even studio apartments - because even a room in a tacky Seattle rooming house costs as much as a tacky 3-bedroom rental house out here.
"There are cohousing plans that are excellent, balancing small private space with large public spaces, which saves on everything from land to materials. But they're not popular; I wish they were."
They might get to be more so. A lot of people do that informally - I do myself; I don't have 'co-housing', I just have housemates, because this is a single-family house that could easily accommodate a family of ten without undue stress. So could every other house I can see out my windows, but most of them have only two: highly inefficient and expensive.