ltsorry

Picking up after your dog. Putting the grocery cart away after unloading. Shoveling the sidewalk in front of your house. Waiting to the side of the subway doors. Not talking during movies.

We are asked to do hundreds of little things that mildly inconvenience us in order to maintain some social contract. Sure they could be made easier/nonexistent with better technology, but I:

1) don't see why asking people to do their part is silly

2) don't see why this particular problem would be more frustrating than e.g. the others I've mentioned. I feel like they are all similar on the "effort" scale.

Although I guess I'd admit that asking people to sort recycling properly is very different than relying on them to.

I don't know anything about the Sierra Club. I EXTRA don't know anything about their California chapter. Looking in to some of what you've said, I can see why they were a poor choice lol.

I just googled "mainstream environmentalist organization" and "housing policy" and clicked the the first one I found. Sorry if it seemed like I was pretending to know something about them - I was honestly just confused about what kind of evidence/organizations you wanted.

I found the statement "most environmentalists detest tall buildings" to be wildly cynical and unqualified, but I think what this is coming down to is that we have very different definitions of "environmentalists"(which I was hoping you would clarify).

To me (and to the dictionary, it seems), if you act/advocate in the interest of the environment, you are an environmentalist. Could be by protesting outside your local natural gas plant, but could also be by setting up special financing programs for CLT buildings, planting pollinator gardens in your front yard, limiting exclusionary zoning, etc. Given this - and given the fact that most of the environmentalists I know actively support building taller - it makes no sense to me to say that the majority of environmentalists are against tall buildings.

I get the feeling that your complaints lie with a very particular flavour of "environmentalist"*, which I don't think is at all representative of the true gamut of people who are doing actual, productive work on (vastly different) environmental issues. Suggesting that we need to "break the back of environmentalism to save the planet" is bogus doomerism... unless you are limiting your definition to something like:

"environmental organizations that oppose taller buildings in urban areas"

Which, yeah, I am not going to disagree with... because I am an environmentalist...

---

*of the NIMBY, COEXIST-sticker-having, (probably) white-haired variety.

I don't know what you consider a "mainstream environmentalist organization". Do you mean companies like Greenpeace or WWF? If so, here is one mainstream, generic, environmentalist organization with a density-focused housing platform: https://www.sierraclub.org/california/housing-land-use.

It's probably more worthwhile to look at what the actual people building housing, planning cities, and advocating for sustainable housing are saying. You would be extremely hard-pressed to find a reputable group in this space that doesn't support infill, missing middle, taller, and higher-density developments. There are countless organizations within my (Canadian) city advocating for this.

I am surrounded by people considered "environmentalists" all day. My wife also works in the field. I just got out of a meeting consisting of planning organizations, construction companies, academics, and sustainable-housing organizations that was literally about adding density and sustainably building taller buildings. I can tell you that every single "environmentalist" who's opinion I know - from my extended research group, to my neighbours, and even to the SFH developers - view densification (within reason) as a more sustainable style of housing development.

I keep track of major developments in my area. There are several condo towers going up in my previously low-density neighbourhood, and the response from the majority of the community has been: "that's good to see, we need more housing". Of course at CoA meetings and community consultations there will always be some loud NIMBYs, but this has always been the nature of change in general, nothing to do with tall buildings in particular. It has honestly been empowering to see the amount of support these developments are getting in my community.

What sort of additional evidence can I provide that would convince you that your statement "most environmentalists detest the tall buildings" is simply not true?

---

Wood, when sustainably harvested, is the definition of a renewable material.

I am doing my PhD in sustainable housing. I also help out with quite a few naturalist and political organizations within my community: an unfortunately low-density suburb in a very large city currently suffering from a lack of housing.

All this to say that I consider myself reasonably well versed on both "academic" notions of environmentalism, and on what my left-leaning, SFH-dwelling neighbours consider environmentalism.

That "most environmentalists detest tall buildings" seems untrue, in my anecdotal experience. My environmentalist neighbours are some of the most vocal YIMBYs in the city, and also some of the people that stand to lose the most from changing "community character". YIMBYism is widely associated with both social and environmental sustainability, at least in the North American country I live in.