Village homes compared to modern high density buildings (eg. apartments, skyscrapers) and dense cities with centralized services. You freely admit that what you like ("arcologies") doesn't quite exist yet and you don't even know if it's possible yet. That's my point. I'm not the one sitting here speaking as if we already have it figured out and it's a mystery why we're not there yet. Our current green city tech sucks and cool arcology solutions haven't been invented yet.

> Permaculture et. al. is all about "increasing yield and space/land efficiency"

Not exactly, that's one aspect of it but a core part of permaculture is some principle of conservative consumption and changing demand to fit supply instead of the other way round. Meat is a pretty classic example, most people love and consume a lot of meat. Permaculture ignores that, it focuses on sustainably cultivating stuff that is suitable for sustainable cultivation and limiting consumption of stuff that isn't. I don't want permaculture, I want all the meat that I want to eat. Now make that efficient too.

> My original question is how do you get buy-in on such a goal if only a few scientists care about it? I see the root of the problem as humankind's divorce from Nature. What prevents us from seeing the intrinsic value of "low-utility wild ecosystems"?

You get buy-in on such a goal by acknowledging that no one cares about the supposedly intrinsic value of these wild ecosystems, you get buy-in by giving people what they actually want. As far as I'm concerned, there is no intrinsic value to these natural habitats. If you invent a cheaper way to cultivate popular produce like meat and dairy, I don't need to be a scientist to see the value of that and buy it. If scientists give consumers what they want (cheap produce I actually like) then consumers will give scientists what they want (money to pay for sustainable technology). It was ever thus. What won't fly is telling people how cool Nature is if you just change your entire lifestyle around it.

> Except when we ignore externalities like degraded soil and overheated atmosphere, eh? I mean that's the whole problem we're facing now, isn't it?

We don't ignore these externalities, every government and corporation is talking about it (the topic of this very article). There are new laws and initiatives filling the gaps. Renewable energy has a lot of funding. Farming conglomerates look out for their own corporate survival and factor land degradation costs into their calculations, degraded land impacts their bottom line, short and long term.

But proposed alternatives have other externalities: they're more expensive, time-consuming, hard-to-scale or simply don't produce what consumers demand. That won't cut it. It turns out that it's a hard problem to solve. I don't really care who pays for it, the obsession with who pays for it is stupid and unproductive. Ultimately, the cost is passed down to the consumer. The problem is that the cost is too high and we solve that by making more efficient eco-tech, not by complaining that Big Co isn't signing the check.

> it's another example of having one's cake and eating it too: more "wild" biodiversity and fertility, fewer inputs, economically productive, etc.

Ok, what about cost? What about scale? Can you scale Homestead paradise into a system that feeds a country of 300 million people all the milk, eggs, leather and beef they want for a dollar? How about a billion? If it really can, then I've got good news: anyone can watch YouTube so anyone, including Big Farm Co, can profit from such improvements.

If it can't, then I don't want your eco cake.

> In other words, the "waste" of land you're talking about (to the extent that it's actually true) is really maintenance cost that has to be paid one way or another, sooner or later.

You could say this about anything, innovation and new technology is all about not accepting current limitations.