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Jakarta Is Crowded And Sinking, So Indonesia Is Moving Its Capital To Borneo
Indonesian President Joko Widodo says his country will create a new capital city on the island of Borneo, revealing new details about his plan to move the central government out of Jakarta. The capital's current location faces a number of problems, including the fact that it's sinking.
Widodo's announcement Monday comes months after he said he wanted to move the capital, seeking a place that can offer a break from Jakarta's environmental challenges as well as its relentlessly gridlocked traffic.
While rising seawater levels from climate change are a widespread concern for island and coastal areas worldwide, experts say Jakarta has played a central role in its own predicament. "Jakarta's problems are largely man-made," NPR's Merrit Kennedy reported earlier this year. "The area's large population has extracted so much groundwater that it has impacted the ground levels, and many surface water resources are polluted."
Jakarta has a population of around 10 million, with 20 million more in the greater metropolitan area.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @12:59AM (13 children)
The Orangutans are fucked, and not just the ones locked up in brothels.
No human being on this planet has the balls and power to stand up and say that we will not rape the ecosystem until it dies of suffocation. We have the technology, what we lack is the political will.
http://5050by2150.wordpress.com [wordpress.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:04AM
That does seem to be the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:19AM (1 child)
>The concept is very simple: reserve half of the Earth for nature by 2150
OMG what a pipe dream. You do know world population will be peaking exactly by that date? Nature is going to be lucky to get 5%. look what is happening in the Amazon
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:50AM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/ [forbes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:19AM (1 child)
what does "political will" even mean?
people are selfish and short-sighted.
people will vote for politicians who appear to aim at improving people's personal well-being.
(and afterwards you have to deal with lying politicians etc).
first you educate, then you try to convince.
most people don't understand the implications of losing bio-diversity.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:01PM
Most people don't want to understand the implications... if they understood, they might have to feel bad about their actions, and people don't like to feel bad, so they choose ignorance - whether consciously, or unconsciously.
At the level of national politics, more players pretend to be ignorant than actually are...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:32AM (7 children)
This is not a good idea. The most destructive human life gets is when it's grouped up in tight quarters. Because cities kill the earth, hog the money, attract even more people and need heavy infrastructure for power, water and food.
Unless you want to go full malthus and reduce the population with a good old culling, the solution is to let humans spread and use modern communication technology so they don't think like they lives aren't worth living outside of the city.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:41AM (5 children)
Nobody wants to do this, but it is coming. We are closer to a forcible culling than we are to Malthus - timewise.
How does that seem to be working out so far? We've had instant global communication for well over 100 years now, cheap jet travel to anywhere for 60, and all I see happening in that period is a population explosion - "trends of voluntary birth control" are the lie in the big picture, we've had the pill since the 1960s - and what has happened to world population since then?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:00PM (4 children)
You already know [soylentnews.org] that is false. So why do you keep repeating it? From the link:
It's interesting how the narrative continues even in the face of evidence.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:43PM (3 children)
Nope, what I know is that your selective comprehension firmly believes you have proven something, from this side of the conversation you have only proven anything to yourself.
It is interesting how your narrative continues to extrapolate and infer the future, and as the future rolls on the goalposts continue to push back for zero population growth. Take your arguments back to 1975, they were making the same ones back then, see how well they've turned out in the ensuing 44 years. But, no, you've got your evidence, I must be wrong.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 27 2019, @09:29PM (2 children)
Ok, fine so you didn't learn from the last time.
There are objective facts out there such as declining population for developed world populations that are beyond second generation immigrants.
Indeed. That's how empirical argument works. It doesn't matter how explodingly population growth looks to you when it's not.
Actually, the opposite happened. My narrative continues to grow stronger as all national level populations continue to decline in fertility.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:27AM (1 child)
And you never learn, either.
I'll sign off with these: your empirical evidence is attempting to predict the future, using the same flawed tools and arguments that were predicting future Zero Population Growth / peak population of 6 to 8.5 billion when they were making these arguments back in the 1970s.
All predictive models are uncertain and flawed, but one thing is certain: if you tell the masses that everything is fine - no need to worry, enjoy the party, they're gonna eat that shit up just like they did for climate change up until about 5-10 years ago. While nobody knows the future, one thing is certain: present perception influences outcome, and pushing the "party on people! it's gonna be just fine" picture is indeed pushing the future toward a Soylent solution.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:33PM
That's a pretty weak parting shot. First, who was predicting future zero population growth in the 1970s? For example, the author of The Population Bomb [wikipedia.org] wasn't predicting that. Instead, he was predicting much as you, a Malthusian outcome with population collapse by now - unless of course, there was undemocratic, ruthless population control implemented. The control wasn't implemented yet the population collapse didn't happen.
Meanwhile we have seen radical declines in birth rate and human fertility worldwide. The real world is fitting that model despite your claims to the contrary.
This isn't the first time that someone has claimed you need to fool the population in order to save it. The same game has been played with climate change. It works to some degree.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:53PM