Re:Is Artificial Light Poisoning the Planet?
by aikinai on Thursday February 23, 2023 @03:36AM
(#34908271)
This is actually something that’s nice about Japan. The geography somewhat forces this sort of land use with urban areas and agriculture limited to the flat regions between the mountains. It’s clearly not an intentional choice since Japanese development policies will trample over anything feasible, but the mountains effectively protect themselves for the most part.
But the sheer amount of "flattening" and deforestation I "saw" (as it is easy to not notice it if you consider agricultural land normal) built up to a really unpalatable and disturbing feeling.
It was the first time I felt like I had some rational belief that the human population really should be reduced. Without some wonderful energy source that can provide a worthwhile substitute for sunlight, food production is necessarily limited to the top 0.2-1.5m of land (right?). From aesthetic to environmental factors, it really seems like an awful thing to reduce so much of the fertile lands to just that.