Opinion of this Image III

[Tetro Kornbluth]

It's from America, of course.

[Zioneer]

Well, I despise suburbs, so...

EDIT: Also, where in America?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

kinda cool how they made the streets wavy like the sand.

[IceSpear]

This picture gave me cancer.

[Sol]

I can't see it...

[Edu]

A quick google image search, tells me that it's in Las Vegas. Looks pretty horrid.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...

[Mechaman]

This picture has turned me into TNF.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This picture has turned me into BRTD.

Fixed.

[Oakvale]

The steady march of progress!

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

"The real Vegas is not the casinos filled with chain smoking grannies who just flew in on a Southwest flight from Houston. The real Vegas is off the strip-you know, the dusty, 75% foreclosed upon suburbs"-Daniel Tosh.

[Mr. Smith]

Here's to the sand, for being so lively and colorful...pity about the other part.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

The thought of living in the Desert terrifies me.

[Rooney]

This forum hates progress, nothing new. This is of course an awesome image. Deserts used to be baron wastelands of death and now houses are built on them. Swimming pools are produced where once there was nothing but dirt and sand. Anyone who is not pro-dying of thirst would see this picture as awesome. Yes, I know Las Vegas is named for the watering hole it was but the point still stands.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Are you familiar with the concept of sustainability? The archaeological record is littered with settlements built on marginal land that were subsequently abandoned when economic and environmental factors changed. In this case the most obvious issue is water. Where do you think all the water needed for such projects comes from? A factory?

[traininthedistance]

Are you familiar with the concept of sustainability? The archaeological record is littered with settlements built on marginal land that were subsequently abandoned when economic and environmental factors changed. In this case the most obvious issue is water. Where do you think all the water needed for such projects comes from? A factory?

It comes from the free market, duh.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Are you familiar with the concept of sustainability? The archaeological record is littered with settlements built on marginal land that were subsequently abandoned when economic and environmental factors changed. In this case the most obvious issue is water. Where do you think all the water needed for such projects comes from? A factory?

Speaking of that, why oh why, does this places have lawns?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Are you familiar with the concept of sustainability? The archaeological record is littered with settlements built on marginal land that were subsequently abandoned when economic and environmental factors changed. In this case the most obvious issue is water. Where do you think all the water needed for such projects comes from? A factory?

Speaking of that, why oh why, do this places have lawns?

When archaeologists dig this place up in a thousand years time they are going to be very very confused aren't they?

[Rooney]

Since the 1700s the very existence of human life has been declared as "unsustainable", yet all of the doomsday prophets have been proven wrong time and time again. Desert land has been used for living in the 20th century because life there is sustainable. There is no water shortage as water can always be found. It is a highly renewable resource. There is no shortage of water. Our planet is not running out of water, nor is it losing water. There's about 360 quintillion gallons of water on the planet, and it's not going anywhere except in a circle.

As for desert areas water sustainability can be easily handled. Where can water be produced? A factory you say? But of course. Private industry has, and continues, to research the process of desalination. Soon the market will take plentiful seawater and that can be used. Sustainability is not limited. The powers of technology and economic growth make life so much easier. Deserts are now an oasis and life keeps getting better. It can be sustained due to the genius and ingenuity of the innovator.  

[Rooney]

Are you quite sane?

I am quite sane, at least that is what my analyst tells me...

Society, due to innovation, is a lot better off today than it was in the 1600s. Would a city of the size and power of modern day Los Angles be sustainable in, say, 1777? Of course not. Yet, innovation and the market, combined with some decent regulation, has made Los Angeles into a sustainable city for a human population. Is there pollution and crime? Yes. There was pollution and crime in London in 1888, yet much of it has been cleaned up due to innovation. Innovation and invention allows for sustainability.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Let's deal with this madness in a little more detail.

Since the 1700s the very existence of human life has been declared as "unsustainable", yet all of the doomsday prophets have been proven wrong time and time again.

Malthusianism (whatever you think of it) is an entirely separate issue to that of constructing settlements on - beyond in this case actually - marginal land. The latter is not sustainable over the longterm; worsening environmental or economic factors may strike, and so may other changes, such as a withdrawal of state support. The United States actually provides us with one of the best recent examples of this. When the English first settled in New England they did what their ancestors had done thousands of years before in the old country; they cleared the woods and created vast tracts of farmland. New England was, alas, not nearly so hospitable to agriculture as old England and life was difficult; most of the new farms were on marginal land and a vast amount of work was needed to get anything out of the soil. And then in the 19th century, the West opened up. People left New England in droves and countless farms were abandoned. Almost all of the arable land that was so painstakingly cleared began to revert back to woodland, and now most Americans aren't even aware that the great woods of New England mostly quite new.

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There is, however, most definitely a shortage of water in the desert. And, increasingly, around the desert. Water shortages are a major problem in the American South West, or have you not heard?

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lmao

[Rooney]

lmao

Mock scientific and technological progress if you so choose but sustainability is NOT limited to environmental dictates. History has shown this time and time again. 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Do you have any interest in dealing with any of the substantive points that I raised, or shall I just write you off as a dull-witted crank and move on?

[DemPGH]

Well, what would Hunter S. say? Ha.

No, human beings can and will go to great lengths to manipulate their environment to make it more habitable, and that hit me hard in that photo. If someone works near there, they need a place to live. That's what happened, although it's not for me, no.

[The Other Castro]

Is this from Sim City?