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Roads Worst Threat EUSD Claims

Roads Worst Threat EUSD Claims

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 21 Dec 2016, 14:11:12

Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development

Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development claims that road network expansion is actually the largest environmental threat from now through at least 2050. Personally I find the concept of Sustainable Development to be a totally fallacious oxymoron, there is no such thing as infinite growth on a finite planet. Advocates of such claiming to be environmentalists are trying to paint themselves green to achieve some other goal, and the number of potential goals sought is only limited to the imaginations of those proclaiming themselves green under these false pretenses.

The new study, led by Pierre Ibisch at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Germany, ambitiously attempted to map all of the roads and remaining ecosystems across Earth’s entire land surface.

Its headline conclusion is that roads have already sliced and diced Earth’s ecosystems into some 600,000 pieces. More than half of these are less than 1 square kilometre in size. Only 7% of the fragments are more than 100 square km.

That’s not good news. Roads often open a Pandora’s box of ills for wilderness areas, promoting illegal deforestation, fires, mining and hunting.

In the Brazilian Amazon, for instance, our existing research shows that 95% of all forest destruction occurs within 5.5km of roads. The razing of the Amazon and other tropical forests produces more greenhouse gases than all motorised vehicles on Earth.

Animals are being imperilled too, by vehicle roadkill, habitat loss and hunting. In just the past decade, poachers invading the Congo Basin along the expanding network of logging roads have snared or gunned down two-thirds of all forest elephants for their valuable ivory tusks.

The solution is to use human eyes to map roads. That’s what Ibisch and his colleagues relied upon – a global crowdsourcing platform known as OpenStreetMap, which uses thousands of volunteers to map Earth’s roads.

Therein lies the problem. As the authors acknowledge, human mappers have worked far more prolifically in some areas than others. For instance, wealthier nations like Switzerland and Australia have quite accurate road maps. But in Indonesia, Peru or Cameroon, great swathes of land have been poorly studied.

A quick look at OpenStreetmap also shows that cities are far better mapped than hinterlands. For instance, in the Brazilian Amazon, my colleagues and I recently found 3km of illegal, unmapped roads for every 1km of legal, mapped road.


https://theconversation.com/the-global- ... ture-70489
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Roads Worst Threat EUSD Claims

Unread postby yellowcanoe » Wed 21 Dec 2016, 14:24:22

It's not just roads -- the development of modern four wheel ATV's has also opened up a lot of country as they only need a narrow track and can traverse pretty steep terrain. In my youth, snowmobiles provided relatively easy access to backcountry lakes during the winter months but the rest of year you had to walk to get to those lakes. Now any lake with even a hint of good fishing is reachable by ATV. In Ontario, logging roads are generally supposed to be closed to access once logging is finished but in practice it is almost impossible to keep ATV type vehicles out regardless of what obstacles are placed on the road.
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Re: Roads Worst Threat EUSD Claims

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 21 Dec 2016, 16:08:50

Personally I have only bought capable 4WD vehicles in the last three decades. I have used them for both on and off road travel. The deteriorating road infrastructure only leads credibility to this choice.

Not everybody has the patience, the skill, or the courage for off road travel. If it comes down to a choice in a resource-constrained future, I would favor building high density net-zero-energy residential structures (i.e. arcologies) located along electrified railways, and let the road system die a natural death via decay.

Where you live would be up to you. How you get from your residence to a rail station would be up to you. The government would regulate the transportation infrastructure, and provide support via taxes.
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Re: Roads Worst Threat EUSD Claims

Unread postby Subjectivist » Wed 21 Dec 2016, 19:34:50

KaiserJeep wrote:Personally I have only bought capable 4WD vehicles in the last three decades. I have used them for both on and off road travel. The deteriorating road infrastructure only leads credibility to this choice.

Not everybody has the patience, the skill, or the courage for off road travel. If it comes down to a choice in a resource-constrained future, I would favor building high density net-zero-energy residential structures (i.e. arcologies) located along electrified railways, and let the road system die a natural death via decay.

Where you live would be up to you. How you get from your residence to a rail station would be up to you. The government would regulate the transportation infrastructure, and provide support via taxes.


Never owned a 4 wheel drive but I gre up on a grale road that was frequently six inches deep in muddy gravle for three to six weeks each spring. Had a few close calls but never had to be towed free. Learned how to read the surface and ride the ridges, and that 1st gear can be your best friend.
II Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
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