Avnimelech also wants more public transport. More roads means more cars and more cars means more accidents, more noise, and air pollution. Avnimelech also notes that the 1.1 million cars on the road need parking places - often different ones for day and night. Not all the possibilities mooted for solving the land scarcity are well accepted by the environmentalists looking towards the future. The impact on coastal erosion would be huge, he says, and adds that not enough thought is give to maintaining projects rather than just building them.
Technology is a tool.
Warburg says there's a tendency to rush towards technological fixes. I'd put desalination in that category. We should first begin to talk more rationally about water allocation and pricing and better use of treated sewage before building a chain of desalination plants along the coast which has its own problems such as land usage and fuel consumption. Forging ahead without considering the long-term affects of poorly planned mass construction could lead to a disaster, environmentalists say. But both he and Sagi say the increased awareness is a sign of hope.