This is very true. I'm living in a big European city in a totally overpriced apartment that was originally a "worker's apartment" (according to the terminology of the time) around 1930.
Really, the amount of work one has to perform just to be able to have a couple of square meters is amazing.
I don't think on it's own that's enough, but it's a clear example of something significant and worse. Fewer species is obvious, but not something most people really care about.
Light pollution is on the other hand is something people are just used to. Having never known stars why would they care about never seeing them? Never mind the huge impacts of poor sleep that's just the way things are.
Air pollution is again something people downplay. Sure it kills millions but air seems fine where I am.
If you were raised in a self-sufficient rural mindset, owing property is a very important value - to the point that someone saying it's "objectively wrong" is offensive.
Is it a more important value than not having your children die by the age of five?
kmicklas said "more important". He/she is right. If you think available land is more important than your kids not dying, something's very wrong with you.
Consider that other people hold different axioms. For many of us, it's not that one is valued above the other, it's that one facilitates the other.
When much of your survival comes from the land, having sufficient (or more) land is a major factor in preventing your kids from dying, and in doing much better than "not dying". Food comes from land. Shelter (wood, brick, rocks) comes from land. Heat (wood, straw, dung) comes from land. Growing up, half my family's food came from our backyard, and most of our heat could have (easier to get firewood delivered, but the fallback was there).
You may look at a city and praise the wonders of modern upscale living. I look at a city and see a million people dead in a week if the water/gas/electricity gets shut off. You may look at a rural community and see sub-optimal living conditions. I look at a rural community and see a culture that will continue on thru major EMP/Y2K/etc technological disasters.
It's not that I think available land is more important than my kids not dying, it's that I think available land is a major component to ensuring my kids don't die.
But under actual existing conditions, why do children die? It's not starvation (at least in the US and Europe), or EMP. It's lack of medical care.
So, back to the question at hand. Isn't the availability of medical care more valuable than the insurance value of the land? Yes, the land lets your kids live if there's an EMP. But the medical care lets your kids live through all the years until there's an EMP, if there ever is. Isn't the actually-happening reality more important than the might-be?
Or, to put it in more brutal terms: How many of your kids would you be willing to have die due to lack of health care, in order to have the land to keep all your kids from dying if there ever is an EMP? For most people, I think the answer is "zero".
There was a lot of stuff in the 1930's that was not so great, but we don't know what the 2030's are going to be like. Making the question hard to judge. However, if you would have said 1900 vs 1800 that's a more interesting question and I would probably pick 1800. But, I would also pick 1950 over 1850.
More interestingly I would pick 10,000 BCE over 500CE if I was stuck in a random body, but 500CE if I got to chose my parents.
1900 WWI, WWII, Great Depression etc. Now, someone born in 1800 could have been born a slave in the US, but you could also be born into slavery in the 1900 or even 2000 in other places.
