OT - One of my most personal profound moments was chasing this winter photo [0] and sharing it with a coyote.
I wanted to take a night shot of the Cathedral Rock (that I had seen a few years earlier but didn't take a good photo of it) under the full moon and fresh snow. It took me several years of driving up to Yosemite when there was snow storm and one night I got lucky.
It was around 11 PM when the storm stopped and sky started to clear up. I drove to the spot set my camera and I was able to take two images before the mist disappeared.
While I was taking the long exposure photo all alone in middle of night. There was such profound sense of being so small in a universe so much vaster than what I'm able to comprehend.
Out of nowhere, this coyote quietly walked up to me and stood right next to me looking the same view. I wasn't sure if it was going to bite me or do anything, but it seemed so harmless that I just looked at it and then we both looked at the view. Shortly after the coyote walked away and the mist vaporized, but left something indelible in me.
I kind of feel like if you somehow combined a succinct version of the origin story with the photo in the right format, it could become a popular poster or similar. That's a powerful story and it's a very special picture in a world with no shortage of good photos, so that's saying something. It that makes sense.
And I'm not really asking you to commercialize it per se. I'm more saying that the story adds something of value to an already breathtaking photo and it's the sort of thing people hunger for, especially now with a global crisis uppermost in the minds of most people.
I mean it could be a one page static website. It doesn't have to be a poster. But it seems like a worthy thing to package together and make more readily accessible to a world hungering for beauty and spirituality and sustainable practices so we don't go cutting our own throats, so the world continues to function so we can continue to live and breathe.
As a reductionist I'd have to agree, but I like the idea that the coyote was wanting to share that moment while thinking (and not being able to articulate) "Nice view, huh?"
Not totally absurd that animals would have some sort of innate appreciation or sense of beauty -- infants certainly come hard-wired for recognizing symmetry. I wouldn't be surprised if the "awe" that we get from a large landscape or a rothko painting is some sort of reward system biased towards exploration.
Epic photo. Spending anytime with a coyote seems to be mystical in a way. I shared some time with one at another national park some years ago. It’s crazy when you are both experiencing the same thing, but not. There is something about looking a coyote in the eye that words can’t describe.
That's one heck of a shot, nice work. Puts my landscape work in perspective. The 2 min exposure does wonders there, especially with the stars suggesting motion. Something I would have probably done in post, had this been my shot, would be to either crop out or burn the bottom to avoid leading the eye there, given that the mountain is the true center piece.
I think it's amazing that wildlife is flourishing in Yosemite right now. I feel conservation is important in the preservation of biodiversity.
But I want to point out an incorrect historical assumption on the author's part. This paragraph caught my attention:
> Tourists aren’t allowed in California’s most popular national park, but if they could visit, they might feel as if they had been transported to another time. Either to a previous era, before millions of people started motoring into the valley every year, or to a possible future one, where the artifacts of civilization remain, with fewer humans in the mix.
In fact, Yosemite, like much of North America, was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years. The Miwok people and others lived in Yosemite before it became a national park.
It's a shame the L.A. Times author didn't include this, especially considering there are plenty of articles to be found about the indigenous history of Yosemite merely by Googling it.
Here's what I found:
> When the Yosemite Valley was first preserved for public use by President Lincoln in 1864 (giving the property to the state of California), much of the local indigenous community had already been devastated by a state militia group, the Mariposa Battalion, as a part of what is today known as the Mariposa War. [0]
Thank you for pointing this out, I had wanted to say the same thing. You can tell the wording is dancing around the fact ("before millions ... motoring"), but to make people think it was only inhabited by animals and leave out the idea that Native Americans lived there is a serious omission.
Unfortunately, the native inhabitants are no longer around to "reclaim" their domain. Imagine if that started to happen, and I don't mean the homeless camping more openly in parks these days.
I visited Yosemite, while beautiful, it is so commercialized. It feels like disney world for nature. It did not seem wild at all in the valley. More like a hippy tent city, with a pioneer village. I saw some deer, wanted to take a photo from maybe 200 feet away. And I literally could take photo with two other photographers in my line sight with the deer. It was a little ridiculous. 3 in one head shot. And a little moment of self reflection later, I realized I'm part of the problem by being there.
Yosemite Valley is about 2% of the total area of Yosemite National Park. It's deliberately concentrated so that most of Yosemite can remain wilderness.
I did a fair bit of hiking all through the park in my youth. We'd go days/weeks without seeing anyone else up there. Most of the Sierras and the west coast/southwest parks are like this. You are very much alone if you choose to be.
There really isn't much else like hanging out with your best friends, fishing for dinner, all alone in the wilderness for days/weeks at a time, hiking and sleeping out under the stars. It's so unique and intoxicating, I have trouble remembering it back home. I transmogrify in the dust of the trail.
I can't wait for this all to be over so I can get back out there like that again.
That's a problem I have with Parks. There is a conflicting mandate. They 'protect' but they also 'promote'. My parents took us up to Yosemite on weekend trips in the summer growing up. 50 years ago they tended to studiously avoid the valley proper.
The farther you're willing to hike the fewer people and more bears and Germans.
It's a stereotype with a grain of truth. In general, European tourists seem to be more accomplished or more enthusiastic hikers. You come across a lot of German-speaking people. But also Scandinavian and various others. Like all stereotypes, it breaks down on close inspection.
It’s happening all around the world. Places like India has seen a remarkable drop in pollution levels. People are able to see Himalayas for the first time from their homes near by. Everest gets a break from the climbers.
And even Ganges is showing levels of purity never seen before : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/destinations/gang... [..] When the ancient Yamuna River in Delhi has reached a remarkable level of purity due to the absence of industrial pollutants in the last many days of India-wide lockdown, how can River Ganga show its sparkling clear waters to the nation?
Well, news has it that Ganga waters at Rishikesh and Haridwar have become very clean according to the observation made by BD Joshi, Environmental Scientist and Ex-professor at the Gurukul Kangri University. According to Joshi, it is after a long time that Ganga water has become good for achaman (ritual sipping) in Haridwar. Joshi also added that the cause behind cleaner Ganga water is a 500 per cent decrease in total dissolved solid (TDS), industrial effluent, dharmashalas, sewage from hotels and lodges. [..]
Perhaps this is the solution when pollution markers reach a certain threshold. Shut down everything for a month.
We would have done it already, no? Perhaps only punitive measures work. Pollution and environmental damage cannot be quantified ...it is invisible and we assume that it is a function of time.
But it isn’t..it is because of consumption and population growth(which leads to more consumption)
No, lots of countries had a problem with water pollution, including the US (Tom Lehrer wrote a satire song in '65 on that issue[1]), and then they implemented measures to improve it. India can and will do the same, I'm sure.
”the Himalayan jumping spider, is a small jumping spider that lives at elevations of up to 6,700 m (22,000 ft) in the Himalayas, including Mount Everest, making it a candidate for the highest known permanent resident on Earth“
This is nice, but I bet you the moment SIP is lifted Yosemite is going to be absolutely flooded with people and will receive an all-time high level of visitors. Enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts, animals.
Let's not be negative, this period should definitely raise awareness. I find myself picking plastic litters on the road-side while cycling, because currently it's so silent, pure and beautiful, growing fast, with plenty flowers, insects.
People will take time to go back in dense public spaces, entertainments, with still that (irrational) fear of viruses
As noted in the article, the headline is misleading.
The population obviously hasn't quadrupled since Yosemite closed to visitors on March 20th. It is remarkable though to see how quickly wildlife is willing to re-enter areas that have historically been overrun with humans!
I respectfully disagree. Yosemite is massive, and the population of bears simply did not quadruple or migrate from other areas 4x.
After a few seconds of thinking about it, it’s obvious that 4x the bears were not born there, but it’s just interesting enough to get a click, to find out what the headline really means, and therefore is a type of clickbait.
Thanks for changing the title. When I checked, the top comment pretty clearly interpreted the title's claim literally, so I think people were genuinely confused. Thank you for your faith in us, but it seems it was perhaps misplaced this time. :)
The population of a city is based on humans, which take 15 to 20 years before they have young. Wildlife typically takes "some crazy short period of time" like a year, and so when we say the population has double, tripled, etc. most people will (reasonably) understand that to mean that's because of reproduction, not because of migration.
So if the cause is migration, the headline kind of needs that, as we're talking about wildlife and not human settlements.
> most people will (reasonably) understand that to mean that's because of reproduction
Subjective claims are fine, maybe you misunderstood the headline (although by definition anyone complaining about the wording actually didn't misunderstand it). But that's an empirical claim that could be tested. And my suspicions are that almost no one in the target audience would think for one second that the bears have reproduced enough in less than one year to quadruple in population.
In Yosemite specifically, the bears and bobcats have been trying to push into the built up areas of the park forever. Of course this used to be because the human area was guaranteed food but now it's probably just curiosity. In Yosemite, the rangers are very good about not killing/injuring the wildlife and only driving them away.
The typical ranger response is either paintball guns or pepper spray so the animals don't think humans are a threat, just that the food is not worth paintballs and pepper spray. With no humans to push them back, they'll take over the park scouring for the food that they expect to find.
Most national parks operate on a strike system for the wildlife, Yosemite is the only one I'm aware of that will keep annoying a bear away even if it steals food every day for a week.
I live in the Bay Area. Since SIP, I have had bobcats, wild turkeys, deer, fox, coyotes all come by curious and interested. We have always had seasonal jack rabbits, possums and raccoons...plus the resident raptors and snakes. The other wild life is not rare either but the sightings are increased.
I appreciate every sighting. Not complaining. If they are going to venture in an urban setting like my Bay Area city, I can only imagine how it must be to test the boundaries unabused at Yosemite.
The wildlife is trying to enter all the time. This isn't sudden, like you said the population hasn't quadrupled in this time, the wildlife tens of miles outside the populated areas aren't suddenly aware of the reduced tourist population these last few weeks.
This is just the natural response of the local ecosystem from having reduced numbers of competitors for resources.
They define "population" as the number of bears living in that area. That could easily quadruple if bears move there from surrounding areas, which is to be expected if humans are out of the equation.
This is no different from the human population of cities - it goes up or down not just due to births and deaths, but also due to individuals moving in or out.
Yosemite Nat'l Park is 1,187 square miles. There is no way that enough bears have migrated into the park to have quadrupled it's population from surrounding areas. The title references a quote regarding bear sightings in the tiny part of the valley that is normally populated with people. It's not only an inaccurate title, it's doubly misleading...
Nature has been trying to remove us since the very beginning. The process of preventing our removal is called surviving, we've been at it for as long as we can remember.
We are part of nature, not separate from it. We can either choose to live in harmony with nature or try to overcome/dominate it. When we try to dominate, the non-human parts of nature will try to snap back, or we see unintended consequences. For example, cutting down trees for firewood or paper goods leading to environmental problems.
While you may be suggesting this more as a not-to-be-taken-entirely-serious, there probably is some truth to it: evolution. Accoriding to the red queen hypothesis, noone (species) can ever win evolution, you can only constantly adapt and select. There is no reason to believe that humans have overcome this. Now with billions of humans in existance, any small weakness all these humans have that another species can exploit will make it enourmously profitable for that species: A) there are many humans so independent where on the planet you arise you have a big chance to hit a human and B) there are many humans so its is easier to jump to another human once the one you have be thriving on becomes unprofitable.
I’m getting a few downvotes but it’s honestly something I think about a lot. I believe we are incapable of understanding some things about how this (waves hands around in circles) all works. And one of those things could be how the earth might view us as it tries to survive as well.
Probably a little wolololo for this HN post but still something I enjoy dwelling on.
My wife had somehow never had The Sixth Sense spoiled so we watched it recently. It obviously blew her away with the twist, but I also really enjoyed it again, the acting and story are all great.
The lack of any evidence or potential mechanism to the contrary. You can't prove a negative, but after a long enough while of no evidence, nobody will take it seriously anymore.
Mom loves us. (If she wanted to remove us we would be gone.)
I've come to believe that humans are meant to serve primarily as gardeners. Once we consciously understand ecology we can enhance ecosystems (Permaculture and other forms of applied ecology) and increase the rate of growth of biomass.
This is probably the worst possible forum to admit to believing the earth could be sentient and could have a soul.
But I don't think there is any goal to remove us. More like slap us upside the back of the head and say "Hey, stupid! Stop doing certain things already!"
While articles like this always bring a smile, I'm saddened for the animals, knowing that their ecological reprieve will soon be dashed by human recklessness. I've actually begun to enjoy many aspects of the quarantine, and would like it to continue a lot longer. The planet is better off without us.
The problem is the constant drive to monetize national and state parks. It results in over-developed strips of "wilderness" crisscrossed with roads and packed with voyeurs.
I greatly prefer the model Ontario has taken with Algonquin - it is expensive to camp there, camp sites are very limited, and the park can only be described as pristine.
I wonder if we can create ways in which this will remain enabled even post the COVID crisis. Limit the amount of visitors, keep the parks open only during certain months of the year, etc.
Lottery systems are already used in some places, but they're very frustrating for those that miss out. Charging makes things less accessible to poorer people. I think tiers of experience are part of the answer - scenic shuttle/route at the easy end up to paid backcountry permits at the challenging end. Parks already do this but I think they could do more.
One thing that can make overrun scenic routes a challenge is parking for photo stops and I suspect a solution to that lies in changing the way people think about photos and documenting their experience.
It's probably changed since, but many years ago I hiked a couple of days in Tiger Leaping Gorge in China. There was a lower route for tourist buses and an upper trail for hikers. Upper route required greater commitment - better fitness, multiple days, guesthouse stop, etc. As both routes were on the same side of a steep gorge, neither was really aware of the other.
I'm excited about the possibility that the covid experience (and data) will strengthen the arguments and motivations for various ecologically sound cultural shifts, but I'm less sure about the specific issue of bears getting comfortable in close proximity to human campgrounds.
It's nice to know that the earth starts to heal so quickly after humans are gone. Although by the time we are actually gone we might make it uninhabitable for other life too.
This article doesn't demonstrate the earth "healing" (certainly not in a 1-month timeframe), and there isn't a quadrupling in bear population; the headline is a lie as the article later clarifies. The headline is referring to bears spreading out from their habitat to temporarily-vacated human habitats.
Yes, of course. Things matter, even if there is no observer, (animals can observe in any case.) unless you're going to argue that "things mattering" is a matter of human perception in the first place.
A month without humans, bears are moving through survey zones more frequently. The problem highlighted here is our methods for setting up survey zones is terrible and is severely UNDERCOUNTING the population.
Even more troubling is systems of surveillance like these provide the inputs for the climate change models we've depended on and which have predicted we'll all be extinct in 50 years.
I swear by the end of Covid19 we're all going to look back at the models and determine what climate skeptics have been saying for decades: Models are easily manipulated by bad inputs - and generally trash
You take temp readings from various wildlife zones around the world, and calculate how many less bears you see for each degree increase in temperature. Then extrapolate that to humans by a simple equation designed to compare bear survivability to humans.
Obviously the models need to be able to understand how temp readings equate to survivability. Population counts from various sites would obviously fit that need
Earth temperature and vegetation biomass readings are done by an army of earth facing satellites checking the entirety of the earth daily using a variety of different sensors and techniques.
Yeah, I didn't understand how hard it was to get wildlife population surveys right until I read about some of the work of MacArthur Grant winner Ted Ames (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Ames). Some years, the random sampling wouldn't find any fish. Some years, it would end up sampling a school of fish that happened to be moving through the area (as far as I understand it). That data is used to determine fishing limits, so it's important to figure out how to survey (local limits might be different in different areas, etc.).
> I swear by the end of Covid19 we're all going to look back at the models and determine what climate skeptics have been saying for decades: Models are easily manipulated by bad inputs - and generally trash
Humans often do over-react to threats, and they usually have inaccurate data, and often, predictions of dire catastrophes are proven incorrect. If you look back at the past 80 years, most predictions of large-scale catastrophe have been wrong. But that also doesn't show it couldn't have happened, or why it didn't.
Most people who were supporters of those predictions later dismiss their inaccurate predictions or apologize for them. And everyone collectively ignores when their predictions of woe don't come to pass, because they're in the past now, and they don't have any tangible effect on our present or future, and also, it might be a little embarrassing.
But none of that is the point of the predictions, really. If we perceive an impending and potentially serious problem, we have to at least try to raise an alarm and do something to try to avert it, even if it turns out later there wasn't a great threat, or it wasn't caused by what we thought. We use the best guesses we have, often over-estimating on purpose, because under-estimating would have a worse effect.
Saying the models (or inputs) are "trash" is like saying covering your face with cloth to prevent a virus is "trash". Is putting a thick cotton cloth over your face going to prevent you getting the virus? No, of course not; it's not filtering nanoparticles, things can still get in or out of the corners, it doesn't stop you from touching your face or an open sore, etc. But it is one of several imperfect tools that we can use to mitigate the threat.
And ultimately, logic doesn't win in cases like these. I saw someone reasonably intelligent who was sharing a single paper a few weeks back with projected US death tolls to COVID-19, based on models with data that the researchers directly stated were incomplete. They were sharing the paper because the numbers were very scary, and on the off chance that the numbers were right, they wanted to scare people into action. The pertinent question to me in that case was, would scaring people into action cause more help or harm?
So I don't agree that the existing inputs are troubling. They may be inaccurate, and if so, they should be improved. But what I do find troubling is the possibility that people are suggesting their inaccuracy is a reason to remove them, rather than improve them. Basically, I think that to ignore the warning because the data is flawed is missing the bears for the woods.
Red-tailed hawks are pretty prolific at hunting squirrels in urban areas. There are even pairs nesting in Central Park in NY and subsisting almost entirely on squirrels. Peregrine Falcons also hunt pigeons in Urban areas and again there are dozens of pairs nesting in the NY City metro area. Predators generally tend to find an equilibrium with their prey animals in an area, so they're not going to completely eliminate their prey.
> The best available research indicates 95% of an average rural fox’s diet consists of meat, both hunted and scavenged, and mainly rabbits, rats, birds and small mammals. Insects and worms may constitute another 4% and the remaining 1% may consist of fruit.
http://foxproject.org.uk/fox-facts/red-fox-diet/
Probably because they would also not discriminate against taking a swipe at small dogs and pets. So people complain and now your suburb is free from foxes and coyotes
You can. They sell pellet guns at Walmart. Good ones that will kill a squirrel. From experience understand giving one to kids will likely end with a pellet through a window or through a shoe.
I hope we keep it closed, more or less. They could restrict visitors using a lottery system. No motorized vehicles within the park boundaries. The valley would have a chance in that scenario. Otherwise it will just be swamped by even greater crowds rushing in to "enjoy" (really destroy) the beautiful nature.
I visited Yosemite valley proper for the first time last year after living in California for five years. I was blown away by the scale of development and the sheer number of people.
If we truly want to save these places, we need to keep most humans out.
The goal of a park (particularly the valley) is to allow as many people as possible to see and appreciate it. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles of empty wilderness in the Sierra (including in Yosemite) , with much of it similar in scale to Yosemite.
Your story is a good example for one of the goals of parks, but you seem to have missed the point. If you've never been to the Yosemite after living in CA for a few years, then you likely wouldn't expend a lot of effort to see wild places in nature. Thus, Yosemite is a perfect place for you to see and appreciate since it is spectacular and relatively accessible.
With your newfound appreciation, you now can advocate for the preservation and protection of wild places – though preferably not in the sense that you want to prevent others from having your experience, and rather in the sense that you should want to advocate for the protection of undeveloped wilderness.
Not hundreds of thousands, the Sierras are about 23,000 square miles, but the point still stands. The Sierras are massive and the majority of it is desolate. I spend about 10-20 days each year (for over 15 years now) exploring these areas and have barely made a dent in covering them.
Even if you just consider Yosemite National Park, the main valley where you mostly see overcrowding, is a relatively small portion of the park. Most of the Sierras are inaccessible to your average weekend camper. Having a few of these hotspots with high tourist activity, in my mind, is a good tradeoff to preserving the vast majority of the Sierra's.
I think if we made it even less accessible to your average Joe, we wouldn't have as much support for preserving these places.
If you really want to see untouched nature, there are many places in the Sierra's where you can drive for hours without seeing another car or hike for days without seeing any trace of humans.
what's the point in allowing people to go to a park in such a way that it destroys the park? a national park simply cannot handle a limitless amount of traffic.
i went to rocky mountain national park on what happened to be labor day weekend. it sounds weird, but we actually didn't plan on going there while in colorado but ended up going due to other things changing. it was insane. cars, traffic, lines, massive congestion on trails, trash, etc. the park was completely overrun. lines for the shuttles were hours long. obviously, myself and my girlfriend were part of the problem (in terms of adding to the visitor numbers), but many didn't seem to care. it felt like almost being in a gold rush. people swimming with god knows what chemicals in delicate ponds and glacial lakes, trash, etc.
unprompted by anything other than my experience, i asked one of the park rangers / shuttle drivers if the park planned on implementing some system to reduce numbers in peak travel times. she basically said that it had been considered and talked about and that she felt that they were going to have to. she mentioned that the traffic of people on foot and cars was destroying the park. wildlife are constantly hit by cars, ranging from big to small. just a month or two earlier, a bear, already in dwindling numbers in the area, had been hit and killed by a car.
humanity acts as if the world must bend to its unchecked population growth. well, it will bend, then it'll break, and then it'll snap back.
Not sure they did miss the point, by my reading at least. Outside of impact of vehicle traffic on animals who otherwise roam, you're talking about a very specific part of the park, not the entire park. Huge portions of it are inaccessible to tourist vehicles and seen by very few. The difference between the main areas and backcountry are significant. Both you and the grandparent had experiences that confirmed their comment - you came away very aware of the human impact on our environment.
I don't mean to discount your broader position, I just don't think you're actually arguing against your comment's parent. Yes, the parks are absolutely swamped and many will gradually bring in shuttles or lotteries and the like. Zion runs a shuttle, Bryce also. Half Dome and The Wave have lottery systems as it is. Getting a camping spot in the big name parks during peak season is miserably difficult. When I went to Rocky Mountain last year, we drove Trail Ridge Road and found a parking spot just once that allowed us to stop. Every parking spot was otherwise taken along the entire drive. And the main, named trails' trailheads fill up daily too which meant we didn't even try. But that's not the entire park. Think of it like the ocean where almost everyone plays on the beach but you have to be well-equipped, skilled and aware of risks to dive at a continental shelf or cross oceans or whatever. (Just pretend cruise ships and trawling boats don't exist for this comparison...)
From “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin [1]:
“The National Parks present another instance of the working out of the tragedy of the commons. At present, they are open to all, without limit. The parks themselves are limited in extent—there is only one Yosemite Valley—whereas population seems to grow without limit. The values that visitors seek in the parks are steadily eroded. Plainly, we must soon cease to treat the parks as commons or they will be of no value to anyone.”
He includes a lottery in his list of possible solutions.
> This month is typically a busy month in Yosemite: Of the almost 4.6 million tourists that visited the valley in 2019, about 308,000 came during April.
"This month is typically a busy one: less than 1/12th of the number of annual visitors." ️
The total is skewed by visitors in July, August, and September. During that 3 month period, approximately 50% of total annual visitors visit the Park, with July and August each routinely exceeding 600k visitors/month.
Traffic jams getting into and out of the park in July and August can last for 4-5 hours and extend nearly 30 miles.
yeah, this sentence jumped out on me too, making the whole article so less convincing. those schools of journalism should really include basic math in their core corriculum.
April is the median, but below the mean, which is skewed by the visitor totals in July and August, the busiest months of the year, at more than 600k visitors each. Knowledge of basic math is very important before you accuse a journalist of lacking basic math skills.
Left out of the math discussion though is that Tuolumne Meadows is usually still closed in April to activities and also frequently to through traffic, meaning that all 300,000 visitors are bound for Yosemite Valley, which represents about 2% of the total area of Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite definitely feels busy in April, even if it feels busier in the Summer and Fall.
> "The bear population has quadrupled," said [Ahwahnee Hotel employee Dane] Peterson...
> "It's not like they aren’t usually here," he said of the bears, bobcats and coyotes that he and other employees now see congregating outside their cabins and apartments. "It's that they usually hang back at the edges, or move in the shadows."
Edit: The title used here omits the quotation marks of the article title, making it more misleading.
It was during the colder months. There were three of them on the path. I think it was a female and two adolescents. One of them tried to get closer to me by heading up the back of a hill. I threw a rock at it to deter it, then we turned around and headed back down.
The eyes and the way it moved in the dark were very catlike. I've not seen any bears or coyotes that would move like that.
I hope this inspires our generation. I hope we remember that the way things were recently aren’t they way have to be, or the way things naturally are. We need more pollution controls, clean power, and less driving. I also think we need to reduce how many people visit certain places as the harsh reality is that impact is clearly related to visits. It will mean a shared sacrifice but a healthier planet. Hopefully limits can be done in an equitable way like a lottery or apportionment somehow.
National Parks are the sacrificed land that gets people interested in preserving public land. It's much easier to get national support to "Save Yellowstone" than to get people to care about saving Bridger-Teton National Forrest. However, the policies that benefit one often benefit the other.
Let as many people in to Yellowstone as possible so that they can look back on that one trip through Wyoming and feel like they have a personal interest in saving our public lands.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than this -- even within the "name-brand" national parks, like Yosemite or Yellowstone, the sacrificed part has the hotels and other facilities that cater to humans, but there's still a ton of land that is actually preserved and is ecologically significant. E.g. 90% of Yosemite is preserved wilderness with much more limited access to humans than in the valley (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_National_Park#Nationa...).
Me too. This is the reason I absolutely don't want to see airlines or airframe manufacturers bailed out. That industry needs to shrink. If that means fewer flights available and higher prices in the future, that's a net positive for the planet as people will have to be more selective about travel.
Just advocate for a carbon tax and be done with it. Don't arbitrarily decide which industries get to stay and which ones have to go.
You ban air travel and suddenly people cover a big chunk of the difference with mass driving, causing significantly more deaths and increased CO2. (Remember: Southwest's most popular route is Dallas<->Houston which is drive-able)
I think the biggest blocker on high speed rail is being able to get places once you arrive, without a car. The Northeast Corridor works because you can get anywhere in New York, Boston, and DC with public transportation once you arrive. A lot of cities with intercity train service don't really have that option, so you end up driving to the train station, taking the train, and renting a car at your destination. At that point, you might as well fly because the steps are the same, but it's faster.
Sure, you can tax carbon, especially passenger automobiles... but you will cause a much larger recession than Coronavirus as people suddenly can't afford to go to work anymore. The country was built on cheap driving. It has a disastrous climate impact, but it's too established to just will out of existence. It is a tough situation, which is why nothing is being done. (We can't even get our train tunnel between New York and New Jersey repaired, and that brings 200,000 people to and from work everyday.)
> Sure, you can tax carbon, especially passenger automobiles... but you will cause a much larger recession than Coronavirus as people suddenly can't afford to go to work anymore.
What you do is give the proceeds of the carbon tax back to the populace, as Canada is doing. There may be some hardship, but it should mostly work out—on the whole, the rich create more carbon than the poor, so wealth will be redistributed to the more vulnerable.
That last quality is also likely why conservatives don't like these plans, but until they provide an alternative I don't see what else to do. ("Do nothing because climate change doesn't exist" is not an alternative.)
I am not sure that works as well as you think it does. People don't live far away from work and commute 2 hours a day because they're rich. They do it because they can't afford to live near their workplace. I can walk to work, but pay $2700 a month in rent. Most people do not have that luxury.
(OK, the Bay Area is different. Well-off people do commute two hours a day because there simply isn't any housing near where they work. I stayed in some corporate apartment in downtown Mountain View once and could bike to the office... but the apartment was going for something like $3500 a month for one bedroom. Just incredible.)
Then they'll still drive to work and pay the tax. If everyone does that, there will be more money in the fund and so the rebate will be higher too.
Now of course, if everyone just pays the tax and gets the rebate, there won't be much emissions impact. But over time, people will realize they can get ahead by buying smaller cars instead of SUVs, or carpooling, or lobbying their local governments for more public transit, or switching jobs.
"If that means fewer flights available and higher prices in the future, that's a net positive for the planet as people will have to be more selective about travel."
I've lurked near daily on HN for over five years - and this is the unfortunate comment I finally feel the need to make an account to reply to.
I presume you're living in the U.S. based on your comment.
I too live in the U.S., with severely debilitating health issues. I've been chronically ill for over half of my life now, and only just recently could I legally consume alcohol.
I'm in the MidWest, and have to somewhat regularly fly to California and Massachusetts for medical treatment. I have no parents, and haven't throughout the duration of my illness. I receive no government assistance financially, because our medical system is shit on recognition of many musculoskeletal illnesses. My insurance is also shit in general, because medical care availability is shit in the U.S.
Anyways, I'm practically only alive/still somewhat sentient because of availability of cheaper airline tickets to get to my care.
Don't advocate for making accessibility even more expensive unless you're going to also make sure that people like me (which there's a surprising fuckload of) don't have to rely on it.
Check your privilege, or something like that. Or maybe I should, and just let my body die ^__^
> The problem is not availability of cheap airline tickets, it's availability of healthcare.
If we're talking about a rare disease, there is no solution other than moving to one of the few specialist centers in the world if air travel goes away.
That's reasonable though - my step-son has a serious kidney issue and being close to the reneal specialists in my area has always been a consideration for where to live.
Living with a rough disease is tough and my heart goes out to everyone that has to struggle in their daily lives but, it'll always be easier to relocate closer to the facility unless the trips are extremely infrequent and other factors are more important (like family, work etc...)
In Canada this is less bad since being forced to move away from work for medical care doesn't prevent you from affording that care - in the US this can result in an impossible choice but :shrug: the US is broken and unable to afford a good standard of living for their citizens.
Unfortunately, the best solution is for you to move to a more densely populated area. Not necessarily to a mega-expensive city—although we should make those more accessible too—but somewhere close enough that you don't need air travel to get treatment. And there should be social programs that can make this financially possible.
It would totally suck for you, I realize that. Unfortunately, our society simply cannot continue on as it has. We either change now, proactively, or we change after the climate catastrophe has forced our hand. Under the latter scenario, the change will be much worse.
(We should also make healthcare accessible in more places, but it sounds like your needs are highly specialized. There are some treatments we cannot realistically provide everywhere.)
There are many large cities in the Midwest. Flying to California/Massachusetts implies that the problem is a rare disease, not that it's a population density issue.
Yeah, and so that needs to be a consideration in where GP chooses to live. I realize I'm asking them to upend their entire life, but I don't know what else to do. The status quo simply isn't an option.
I don't get to choose where to live. Unless you want another homeless in the streets of SoCal who plagues Greyhound for their doctors appointments.
I was born in the 8th poorest community in the U.S., by parents who were born and lived their lives in the 8th poorest community in the U.S., and had to drop out of my full-ride scholarship college I somehow got from being at the top of my highschool (can't really remember how at this point, partial amnesia from untreated chronic pain) because of complications caused by lack of medical treatment. Couldn't afford it/the ability to get care as a minor without a guardian is near impossible.
If you think you can just choose where you want to live, no matter the desperate circumstances to do so, you must be gleefully unaware of the realities of life, which is something I wouldn't expect from a H.N. poster, for the most part at least...
Some people just had no real chance. It's unfortunate.
No, the ideal way for it to be solved is for the U.S. government as a collective to give a shit about science, which they don't, and I doubt will within my lifetime.
Care for one of my issues is only conducted as Stanford and Cedars-Sinai. There's a little more specifics/a split subgroup to it, and Stanford cares for the subgroup I'm in. The majority of the rest of healthcare in the U.S. claims that it does not exist, is impossible, and that symptoms are completely psychosomatic.
Care for my second large issue is an incredibly misunderstood surgery that is led world-wide at Massachusetts General Hospital. 10 years ago, the condition wasn't really accepted as being real across the majority medical community. 5 years later, things are a bit better but many doctors believe some hoo doo it's only X because Y and definitely not Z.
8 years later, vascular surgeons are still basically at war with each other on deciding the correct course of surgery... Despite 1 of 3 being successful in over 80% of cases and the other 2 of 3 leading to permanent disability and chronic pain in ~50% of cases. To be fair, there's about 5 truly good surgeons in the U.S. right now, but only MGH accepts out of state Medicaid, and coincidentally/luckily enough for me, that surgeon is widely regarded as the best.
Anyways, now I'm just rambling off topic in this thread. Yes, I agree that society cannot continue this way. I'm actually in the realm of wishing we said fuck medical ethics for as long as it takes to figure out how to cure most of disease/conditions that can be seen before birth. Would probably happen fairly quickly in the grand scheme of things if the medical community had the funding and ability. But, that's something that will also never happen. Science is the only way forward to have a civil society (which the U.S. claims to be, but is clearly not), but the bulk of the U.S. populace, especially those who vote, seem to be quite anti-science and willfully ignorant in a time where we have near all of thousands of years of knowledge condensed in the palm of our hands. And then there's the sociopathic portion of the government masquerading as "civil servants" who exploit that for money...
I'm honestly happily awaiting the downfall of what the U.S. believes itself to be. I expect it within my lifetime.
I'm truly sorry to hear about your health issues and the lack of resources available to you.
Of course I would like to see better healthcare available to everyone as well. Can't we focus our attention on making healthcare (even specialized treatments like yours) more accessible and affordable, instead of artificially propping up a massively wasteful industry in perpetuity?
I think you pretty much don't - but what you can do is shift the burden of healthcare off of an employment expense so that when someone is in this terrible situation they can move to a location where they can receive better care without being concerned that they will be unable to continue receiving insurance from their employer.
The poster above is between a rock and a hard place, it's a really terrible situation to be in no matter what safety nets are in place. But the US tends to go out of its way to make things just that little extra bit terrible.
1. Accept that a tiny portion of our population has extremely rare diseases (true by definition of rare disease lol), and that some portion of our socialized healthcare system involves flying the doctors to this population, or vice versa
2. Dump funding into telehealth solutions, including robotics.
"My healthcare is so expensive, I cannot allow my air travel to get more expensive."
Why not lobby to have your healthcare become cheaper instead?
I am sorry you have a condition that causes you this much stress. I know these must be especially terrifying times for you (even more than people that are for the most part healthy). I would just suggest you aim your frustrations at the industries that are actually causing you problems.
>I receive no government assistance financially, because our medical system is shit on recognition of many musculoskeletal illnesses. My insurance is also shit in general, because medical care availability is shit in the U.S.
This is your problem, and the ultimate solution to that problem is not "cheap flights" - that is no more than a workaround, with huge collateral damage.
I can't understand the line of thought some of you are having.
I can barely live and function in my daily life, as well as trying to not become homeless and die.
How do you expect me to successfully lobby anybody, especially when they can say "well X amount of doctors don't even believe this specific rare disease even exists? Obviously, he's just lying to in an attempt to financially cheat the system"
Get out of your bubble haha. While cheap airfare may be a plague upon the world, things like the U.S. government is as well, and for quite some time has been (see overthrowing other countries in S.A. and trying to deny it) - but cheap airfare is really the only option I've been given for an attempt at a normal life. The U.S. government... for the most part hasn't. The small handout of Medicaid I get tries to haggle me, probably in a hope that without the care I'll die sooner and no longer be a drain, every step of the way...
I'm sure we all know solutions to a lot of problems. However, we should know, that those solutions are simply unattainable. Which I guess, would in the end... make them not a solution?
I respectfully disagree that airframe manufacturers should not be bailed out.
Airframe manufacturer definitely should be preserved and not allowed to wither away. That kind of engineering/institutional knowledge should be preserved and developed.
For the sake our environment, I think COMMUTING to office work should become the norm.
Transportation (including commuting) is the country's second biggest source of carbon emissions, after the electricity sector. Both are far greater source of carbon emission than airline travel.
I think that this Pandemic might be just enough to shake up sales culture. For quite a while we've semi-illogically held on to in person sales being a premium experience - instead of salesmen being able to dial in and demo something remotely they'll be flown around from office to office to show it off in person. They do this because it works, because western culture values that "personal touch" and it actually pays for the price of flying these folks around.
I am hoping that we can at least ditch the majority of business related flights when we come through this crisis as that alone would really dampen air flight volume.
I agree about globalization, but Climate Change is just as likely to cause the type of instability that could lead to a WW3. It will certainly lead to massive suffering regardless.
Until we have carbon-free or at least greatly-carbon-reduced air travel, we need to cut back on it.
> Scaling back civilization is not the solution. Technological progress and smart regulations are.
Scaling back tech is definitely a solution. Especially a modern spin on "older" tech (e.g. bullet trains, passive solar heating). You speak so matter-of-factly yet there's no evidence that more "progress" is the solution, when there is no way to be sure (its a gamble), whereas its a fact that scaling back our reliance on more tech is a known solution.
Where would all these bears migrate from? Most bears aren't migratory creatures. Something would have to be driving them out of there homes elsewhere, if they are actually migrating.
> We need more pollution controls, clean power, and less driving.
I don't know about the less driving part. Less driving implies higher density living and massive reliance on public transport. I think the higher density and massive reliance on public transport have been one of the big reasons why New York City has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the US and a much higher mortality rate than the rest of the country.
Speaking of cars, I for one have been very happy that I can go get needed supplies without having to ride a public transport system. My exposure risk with driving is basically zero no matter how far I travel, and depends only on my endpoints. However, with a public transport system, it increases with the time and number of stops since that brings me into contact with more people for longer periods who may be infected.
Throughout history, high density cities have shown themselves to be magnets for plagues and pandemics. I hope people and companies learn the value of spreading out and maybe allowing workers to work remotely, instead of insisting all their workers crowd into high density, expensive cities.
I think the outbreak in NYC is somewhat cultural. There are asian cities far more dense than NYC, and have much better control of the outbreak. They also have cultural norms that include wearing masks and gloves and more hand washing after using public facilities, and fewer handshakes and touching in general.
> I think the higher density and massive reliance on public transport have been one of the big reasons why New York City has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the US and a much higher mortality rate than the rest of the country.
There is a trade-off. NYC is not a plague city, we are suffering a global pandemic. How many times have we had these? Once every few decades? So what about all the other times where things are normal?
Urban sprawl is inefficient and not sustainable in a world with 8 billion people (and growing fast).
Hong Kong and plenty of other cities have had the same exposure to the virus as NYC but have handled it better. There are plenty of places that are much nicer to live and have a medium density but are much more friendly to other ways of getting around than cars. The only options for getting around are not public transport or a car. Biking, electric scooters, and so many more.
Broader visitation could help significantly without needing limits (not that I oppose limits). There's a lot of focus on the 'crown jewels', Yosemite, Yellowstone, Arches, Zion, a few others. But there are a lot of really great places, much closer to home, that get passed over in our collective obsession with top ten lists.
I'm all for pollution controls, clean power, etc, but I don't see how this is related to the article. There's no observable difference in the 'amount' or 'quality' of nature (except that it's meandering into temporarily vacant 'human spaces'), and limiting visits to these natural places will almost certainly drive down empathy and political support for nature preservation.
India has 1 billion more people and we pretty much consume everything more than them. The same goes for Africa.
Considering that china is moving towards a consumption based economy and india/africa/ASEAN/etc are desperately trying to follow suit, we are looking to add about 5 billion people to the wealthy western lifestyle in the coming decades. It will certainly increase wealth, but can the earth sustain that many people living the "good" life?
No, the earth cannot sustain ‘good life’ consumption for even the existing population.
If we learnt anything from this covid crisis, it should be exponential growth can be devastating. And that we must flatten the curve. Be it the virus or global population, it’s the same thing.
>How come the people who propose this strategy never put up their hands volunteering to make the required sacrifices?
I've known many environmental activists in my lifetime, and can confidently say your extreme characterization is wrong. It is common in the environmental activist subcultures in the US to choose not to have children while advocating for the reduction of population growth. It is also not uncommon to for them to live lives of severely reduced consumption of material goods, consumption of energy, and production of C02.
Never been to Yosemite, you? I would like to go one day, but I'd be happy to wait in a gov't queue to help limit human intrusion in wildlife preserves.
been there many times. Now only visit in winters. The solution is really simple - for a fixed supply (e.g park) the prices should just go up enough to lessen the demand
Practicing what you preach demonstrates your sincerity.
Why should people believe you’re genuinely arguing that the thing is worth doing, rather than acting out selfish authoritarian impulses, if you’re not actually willing to do that thing?
Starting with yourself, while making a negligible impact, makes an impact that is positive (according to you) and shows your commitment to enacting that policy.
Did you read the article? They didn't say bear reproduction; they said population. They are just moving back into Yosemite and being more visible.
> “It’s not like they aren’t usually here,” he said of the bears, bobcats and coyotes that he and other employees now see congregating outside their cabins and apartments. “It’s that they usually hang back at the edges, or move in the shadows.”
Yosemite is desireable to bears so long as humans aren't occupying it. They moved in from other areas -- allowing the now vacant areas they left to support more bears.
Because we have satellite coverage and people outside the park would be able to see smoke plumes, so if there were huge fires raging we'd know about it.
I wanted to take a night shot of the Cathedral Rock (that I had seen a few years earlier but didn't take a good photo of it) under the full moon and fresh snow. It took me several years of driving up to Yosemite when there was snow storm and one night I got lucky.
It was around 11 PM when the storm stopped and sky started to clear up. I drove to the spot set my camera and I was able to take two images before the mist disappeared.
While I was taking the long exposure photo all alone in middle of night. There was such profound sense of being so small in a universe so much vaster than what I'm able to comprehend.
Out of nowhere, this coyote quietly walked up to me and stood right next to me looking the same view. I wasn't sure if it was going to bite me or do anything, but it seemed so harmless that I just looked at it and then we both looked at the view. Shortly after the coyote walked away and the mist vaporized, but left something indelible in me.
[0] https://sf.smugmug.com/BW-Landscape/i-tPZrsLz/A