Decades of Air Pollution Undermine the Immune System

Re:Decades of Air Pollution Undermine the Immune System by soperj on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @05:21PM (#33712382)

I honestly feel that people have got away with one with this type of thinking. In my province (British Columbia), there's a few major issues that have all been attributed to climate change; forest fires, flooding & decline of the salmon populations. Since there's this big boogeyman that they can't solve themselves (climate change), they don't even have to look into their forest management practices (spraying round-up to kill Aspen - a firebreak species - to plant mono-culture round-up ready pine stands - a serotineous species), or their off-shore fish farms that are located at the mouth of some of the most important rivers for salmon (spread sea lice and disease) or power generation (almost exclusively hydro dams), or that they've drained lakes for farm land and when the levees can't keep up the land floods again.

Great Barrier Reef is another prime example, pollution is causing a lot of issues, but you only hear of coral bleaching because of climate change.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Decades of Air Pollution Undermine the Immune System by VancouverMan on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @06:10PM (#33712860)

The government-imposed greenbelts around some major Canadian cities have also backfired.

The reduced supply of land drives up prices within the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt.

This in turn just encourages more sprawl on the outer edges of the greenbelt, where land can be cheaper.

Those living in these new developments often commute into the urban area for work or other reasons, and now have to drive much farther each day as they pass through the greenbelt two (or more) times.

Infrastructure development in and through the greenbelt becomes bureaucratically challenging, preventing public transit or more efficient road infrastructure from being built.

Environmental regulations can too often have unanticipated (or ignored) environmental impacts that negate many of the supposed benefits.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Decades of Air Pollution Undermine the Immune System by ripley12 on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @06:30PM (#33713043)

Ehh. The Agricultural Land Reserve really isn't the problem in Vancouver.

Cities already have a ton of land where they can+should be allowing more housing but aren't (ex: the vast majority of residential land in Vancouver bans townhouses+apartments+condos). With the exception of maybe some parts of Richmond, I don't think there's much a case that the ALR is the problem here.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Decades of Air Pollution Undermine the Immune System by elmalto on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @07:12PM (#33713351)

Agree. Just drive down main once and look at all the 2 story buildings… not even talking about the neighborhoods that are primarily detached. Vancouver is so expensive yet nobody is allowed to create denser housing. Nimbyism at its finest

[ Parent | on HN ]