> The only people this is relevant to are Albanians.
That's a short-sighted view. Nature destruction is relevant to people everywhere. The locals might not even care much (unlike in this case, fortunately).
What if this construction project would wipe out animal species x, y or z? That's a permanent, irreversible loss for the world as a whole.
What if some species loses its breeding ground, decimating a population elsewhere? Or takes out a stop halfway a migration route?
Destruction of nature always has 2nd order effects. Don't ignore just because you don't live there.
Going forward, a big factor in (lack of) "made in Europe" isn't high wages. It's that a) much manufacturing capacity was lost because it was offshored decades ago. It takes ages to restore that. And b) "how many jobs does it provide?" has traditionally weighed heavily in policy decisions.
Once robotization kicks in bigtime, it doesn't matter where labor is cheap. It matters where energy or raw materials are cheap. Or supply lines are short.
Large amounts of pesticides which are banned from use in EU and/or US, are produced there then exported.
Afaik there's some EU work towards closing this loophole. But nothing major that made it into legislation (so far). No doubt Monsanto, Bayer & co have lobbyists + lawyers working to slow down or prevent that.
But "organic" also targets soil health, biodiversity, animal well-being, and the environment in general.
Some synthetic pesticides / herbicides / fungicides hardly break down in the environment. Which leads to accumulation of a cocktail of such chemicals in soil & ground/surface waters. Ultimately appearing everywhere in air, drinking water & food. Not unlike microplastics, PFAS etc. How this affects humans' health is largely unknown.
Generally, chemicals produced by plants also break down naturally. So they don't accumulate in soils over time.
So it's kind of "exclude nature as much as possible, cleanroom style" versus "work with nature to keep things in a healthy balance".
Temperature is a big factor, as well as current density.
But there's also the # and magnitude of thermal cycles (which translate into mechanical stress, leading to metal-fatigue like effects on contact points etc), attack from chemicals in the air, cosmic radiation, ESD damage & more. Some may matter, some not.
That's why "new" > "used" in case of electronics. Especially since you don't know the (ab)use history of used parts.
Not really. Having offspring & re-mixing genes in them, is one way how species (not individuals!) adapt to a changing environment.
Bacteria do that in ~hourly intervals, humans take decades, some plants can span millenia.
So you could say the 'update interval' is tuned to how fast-changing a species' environment is. A balance between energy 'wasted' on re-building individuals from scratch, vs wasting energy by having poorly adapted individuals.
So 'immortal humans' to me reads as: humans optimized for a caveman hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while living in Star Trek like tech-heavy surroundings.
If anything, humanity would be served by shorter lifecycles, until tech advances stabilize somehow (?). Okay a few individuals living way longer could be good. Eg. billionaire tech bros taking that spot? Please nooo!!!
We stopped using evolution for adaptation the moment we started using tools. Our brain size was the last "gift" from evolution. We have been on our own since then.
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