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Quotation of the Day…

… is specially selected for this Earth Day; it’s from pages 104-105 of Pierre Desrochers’s and Hiroko Shimizu’s splendid 2012 book, The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet (original emphasis; footnotes excluded; links added):

[T]hriving cities are not an environmental problem, but rather the best means to lighten humanity’s impact on nature.  To quote the applied scientists and policy analysts Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, the skyscraper is “America’s great green gift to the planet” for it “packs more people onto less land, which leaves more wilderness undisturbed in other places, where the people aren’t …. The less real estate we occupy for economic gain,” they add, “the more we leave undisturbed the wilderness.  And the city, though profligate in its consumption of everything else, is very frugal with land.  The one thing your average New Yorker does not occupy is 40 acres and a mule.”

In the words of economist Edward L. Glaeser, “residing in a forest might seem to be a good way of showing one’s love of nature, but living in a concrete jungle is actually far more ecologically friendly … If you love nature, stay away from it.”

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