Do cities ruin the earth?

Do termite colonies ruin the Earth? If we go, I’m taking termites with me.

On the contrary – with this population size. If you were to distribute the population outside of cities – it’d be much more harming to the environment. Unmanaged waste, unmanaged energy production, unmanaged food and so forth.

It is city design that harms the earth per se. That is, if cities were designed to manage waste better – turning it back into usable forms, Reducing their effect on the rest of the environment. Also the behaviors and choices of the citizens mind you. But otherwise, we’ve to live too – and we’re many. I can’t see another setup work aside cities.

There’s actually a new book out stating that cities are the best, because they allow us to exercise humankind’s greatest strength – the ability to learn from and build on each other.

@MyNewtBoobs That’s a pretty weak, and downright ethnocentric, argument for cities. It’s not like we didn’t do those things before cities, and it can easily be argued that we did it better before cities.

Cities can never be sustainable, but neither can country living if it still requires more resources than the immediate landbase can provide. Cities were originally designed to centralize power, and therefore are dependent on importation.

The most efficient way to support the human population is cities. It allows people to use less energy on transportation for everything from people to food. It helps reduce heating costs. It helps reduce our footprint on the earth.

Farming can be very destructive. It can let all kind of fertilizers into our streams. It can speed up erosion. Pig farms are notoriously noxious.

If we have to have humans, then cities are the place where they will have the smallest impact on the earth.

@incendiary_dan Cities aren’t a new invention – since the advent of agriculture, they’ve pretty much made up most of the population.

They are saving the Earth as our total population keeps growing.

@MyNewtBoobs Actually, they’ve only housed the majority of humans since the last century. And agriculture is only 6–10 thousand years old, less in most areas of the world, which is only a tiny fraction of our time on the planet.

Don’t lecture me on history and anthropology. It’s not something you can win.

@incendiary_dan Wow, thank god you’re open to a discussion in which people freely exchange ideas. And I take it that you’re an expert on all of history and anthropology, even though you’re then the only one on the planet? And somehow you have tons and tons of records for prehistoric times, when the rest of us have very few?

@MyNewtBoobs Sarcasm is also not a proper argument (and something I’m pretty good at, too).

@incendiary_dan Did I somehow insight some sort of bottled up anger in you? Cuz it kinda seems like you’re picking on for no good reason. And sarcasm aside, your comment that you cannot be schooled in such broad fields makes you seem like you’re suffering from “has taken a 101 class and now knows everything expertitise”.

@MyNewtBoobs In no way did I imply or explicitly say that you cannot be schooled in those fields. I have a bachelors degree in anthropology, focused primarily on hunter-gatherer peoples and with a key interest in understanding the formation of cities, and have spent years since researching prehistoric peoples in my spare time. I am simply pointing out that with your obvious lack of that level of research, I will win any such argument. And I was doing so in a rather curt way, because yes, I am in a bit of a bad mood (but not in any way due to you). You’ll excuse me if I get a bit annoyed when I am repeatedly told I don’t know about the thing that I happen to know a damn lot about.

@incendiary_dan Well, try to keep your bad mood out of Fluther. If you aren’t mad at me, then I don’t deserve any of your wrath.