will never cease to boggle my mind and absolutely infuriate me: “California has spent 15 years trying to build a 500-mile high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, now expected to cost $128 billion, quadruple the original estimate. In that same amount of time, China has built 23,500 miles of high-speed rail.”
The unfortunate reality is that we need a unifying voice governing this mess. If concessions were made to try and get green projects greenlit despite the mosquito-buzz of NIMBYs and quacks, businesses would immediately ram their own destructive builds through the same needle.
I’m also not keen on how the author lumps Martha’s vineyard yuppies in with Native Americans. The former scoffs at their precious view being tainted, the latter is holding onto scraps of stolen land that we keep trying to take for our own purposes.
The article cites several fossil fuel-backed academics who argue that individuals and local governments have too much ability to delay the gazillionaire-funded projects that are proposed for their midst. Sure, let underfunded nonprofits like Natural Resources Defense Council handle the really ugly stuff that actively pollutes. But all us little Davids should just sit down and shut up when Goliath wants to chop down a forest, send topsoil tumbling into a creek, and generally exacerbate the stupefying ugliness of modern life. /s
Mandatory Circumcision
pro nuclear propaganda disguised as a “reasonable” think piece.
“oh, look ppl don’t like wind turbines… so lets build a nuclear plant”
what the powers that be are really fighting for is control over your energy supply.
centralized high out put nuclear facilities exert far more control over the populous than all this start up fancy pants diy competition cropping up… can’t have competition now, can we?
I thought this article would be *sacrifice*: Ending consumerism, going vegetarian or (gasp) vegan, going to a 4-day work week, rationing gas, carpooling, and generally triaging CO2 expenditures to focus on essentials while eliminating nonessentials.
Nope.
Build, baby, build. Including more housing to make up for all the AirBnb’s, foreign-owned vacant investments, and 2nd, 3rd, nth homes for the wealthy. Meanwhile all those concrete foundations add up to a helluva lot of greenhouse gas.
I’m all for building out renewables. That’s warranted. We can’t transition away from fossil fuels without turbines and solar. And it’s astonishing to me that all cities aren’t *already* converting lanes of their biggest freeways to rail.
But here’s another question: If we can’t take care of the infrastructure we already have, how is building more going to help the problem?
There needs to be a fundamental shift from a “growth” economy to a “sustainable” economy. One where the jobs focus on maintaining what we’ve built, restoring the environment, and basics like food, shelter and healthcare.
All the rest can go out the window. But that would require sacrifice.
The existence of nations, flags, and the tribal mentality that goes with that paradigm is contributing to the problem of global issues not being addressed.
7 comments
will never cease to boggle my mind and absolutely infuriate me: “California has spent 15 years trying to build a 500-mile high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, now expected to cost $128 billion, quadruple the original estimate. In that same amount of time, China has built 23,500 miles of high-speed rail.”
The unfortunate reality is that we need a unifying voice governing this mess. If concessions were made to try and get green projects greenlit despite the mosquito-buzz of NIMBYs and quacks, businesses would immediately ram their own destructive builds through the same needle.
I’m also not keen on how the author lumps Martha’s vineyard yuppies in with Native Americans. The former scoffs at their precious view being tainted, the latter is holding onto scraps of stolen land that we keep trying to take for our own purposes.
The article cites several fossil fuel-backed academics who argue that individuals and local governments have too much ability to delay the gazillionaire-funded projects that are proposed for their midst. Sure, let underfunded nonprofits like Natural Resources Defense Council handle the really ugly stuff that actively pollutes. But all us little Davids should just sit down and shut up when Goliath wants to chop down a forest, send topsoil tumbling into a creek, and generally exacerbate the stupefying ugliness of modern life. /s
Mandatory Circumcision
pro nuclear propaganda disguised as a “reasonable” think piece.
“oh, look ppl don’t like wind turbines… so lets build a nuclear plant”
what the powers that be are really fighting for is control over your energy supply.
centralized high out put nuclear facilities exert far more control over the populous than all this start up fancy pants diy competition cropping up… can’t have competition now, can we?
I thought this article would be *sacrifice*: Ending consumerism, going vegetarian or (gasp) vegan, going to a 4-day work week, rationing gas, carpooling, and generally triaging CO2 expenditures to focus on essentials while eliminating nonessentials.
Nope.
Build, baby, build. Including more housing to make up for all the AirBnb’s, foreign-owned vacant investments, and 2nd, 3rd, nth homes for the wealthy. Meanwhile all those concrete foundations add up to a helluva lot of greenhouse gas.
I’m all for building out renewables. That’s warranted. We can’t transition away from fossil fuels without turbines and solar. And it’s astonishing to me that all cities aren’t *already* converting lanes of their biggest freeways to rail.
But here’s another question: If we can’t take care of the infrastructure we already have, how is building more going to help the problem?
There needs to be a fundamental shift from a “growth” economy to a “sustainable” economy. One where the jobs focus on maintaining what we’ve built, restoring the environment, and basics like food, shelter and healthcare.
All the rest can go out the window. But that would require sacrifice.
The existence of nations, flags, and the tribal mentality that goes with that paradigm is contributing to the problem of global issues not being addressed.