I heard brand talk about his 2009 book Whole Earth Discipline. He surprised me as not being a rabid environmentalism but what he called a pragmatic environmentalism supporting urbanization, nuclear and genetic engineering as a way to improve humanities environmental footprint. Take the first for example: until then I hand realized that dense Manhattan has one of the lowest per capita carbon footprints in the developed world. Density reduces transportation and building interior cost.
i think there is something to this but we shouldn't
forget that big cities depend on a lot of goods being transported there. So a lot of the emissions of rural areas should be counted towards big cities.
Exactly this. All of these systems are so complex that we can only ever make the crudest estimates. Similarly, people want to "fix" something by changing X and don't bother to account for all of the ripple effects of said change.
One train saves 100 trucks. Yes. For sure. Cities consume. Perhaps diffuse population would have a lower cost. I sorta think moving diverse goods to a central depot is easier and less damaging than point to point transfer.
