The increasingly infamous Appalachian Development Highway program started out with the goal of supporting the potential for genuine economic development in Appalachia by improving transport links into and within the region.
And yet, with the decentralized, state-based system for planning 110mph, 125mph and 220mph High Speed Rail systems, there is the threat that the very problem that the Appalachian Development Highway system was established to address will be re-created as we modernize our regional passenger transport backbones from asphalt to steel.
An Appalachian Hub project would aim to drag these laudable goals into the 21st Century by filling the gaping hole in Eastern US planning for High Speed Rail systems. “Would”, since this is an exploration of what such a system might look like if West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee joined this planning process – not a report on ongoing, formal projects such as the Midwest Hub or Ohio Hub.
What follows is a guest post (the quotation material), with some commentary, from Stranded Wind who has a major focus on finding routes for solutions and opportunities amid the perfect storm of economic problems, peak oil (and other resource constraints), and global warming. One of the streams of discussion, with various degrees of urgency and certainty, among those considering our challenges is that today’s international system fundamentally is at odds with fostering an environment conducive for human existence and confronting our intertwined challenges requires significant rethinking and restructuring of how we live. I have not, myself, reached the point of rejecting the potential that well-managed and structured (including regulation) captalism is, a priori, impossible to have and deal with our resource challenges. On the other hand, I cannot build a conclusive case that rejects those who are calling for a fundamental rethinking and restructuring to help us ride through the perfect storm to find (create) a safer, stronger, and sustainable society.
The American Dream. This phrase calls up many things for many people, but it was defined post World War II and common imagery involves a house in the suburbs, a shiny, swoopy, chrome laden 1950s Detroit sedan, and maybe a picket fence.
An important point, to me: that “The American Dream” is not a fixed item, immutable for eternity, but something that develops and modifies and shifts over time. Today, few Americans (a pitiful few, if any) likely dream of being a plantation owner with hundreds of slaves while we might imagine that this would have been a “day dream” for a white boy two hundred years ago. Few Americans 50 years ago imagined anything like a large-screen TV in the home while that is a standard consumer item, consider a near necessity by many. Etc … Society changes. Technology changes. Economics changes. Our “dreams” change.
We built and built that little subdivision over and over until it was forty five minutes out from anything that mattered, and then the residents ran smack into $4/gallon gas. Even the International Energy Agency now admits oil production will peak at some point, disputing the historic peak event of July 2008 but confirming the concept. Something must be done and the American Dream without limitless cheap oil will certainly become the American Nightmare.
The laws of unintended consequences. Rosy dreams, embraced by nearly all, can have nightmarish consequences. The plummeting house values in areas remote from jobs and shopping amid that $4/gallon gas is just a taste of the potential “American Nightmare”.
There are many things that can be done, but helping visualizing the good life after they’re applied is something we don’t do enough of as a nation.
This is, to me, a powerful call — to highlight that the “positives” that can emerge from change.
A guest post from Warren Senders, providing a window on how one man is taking his own skills to help raise awareness about Global Warming and why 350 is the most important number in the world. If you’re in the Boston, MA, area come 24 October, perhaps this is an event that might interest you.
About “Johnny Rook”, please see this for excerpts from and links to obituaries to this thoughtful, eloquent, impassioned man.
I thought I’d tell you about a little event I’m planning up here in the People’s Republic of Cambridge.
When I first started reading JohnnyRook on Climaticide, I asked him to tell me what I should be doing. The destruction of our environment had me completely freaked out…but beyond wringing my hands, I didn’t have a clue as to what and how I could contribute. He responded by telling me: “Go to www.350.org.”
Which is how I learned about the upcoming Day of Action on Climate Change, on October 24, 2009.
Which is how I got a little mojo back. I was pacing the floor, wondering what I could do on October 24 to help create momentum for the reduction of atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm. I fretted and mumbled and despaired; nothing seemed appropriate. Then I remembered that in fact I had a hugely applicable skill set which had lain dormant for about a decade: I used to be a concert producer. How had I forgotten about that?
So I got out the phone list and found some people to go in with me on a benefit concert on October 24.
Six Styles of Music and Dance from Around the World In Benefit Concert for Climate Change
October 24, 2009 is
International Climate Change Awareness Day.
the U.S. Supreme Court is threatening to strike down key provisions of the 2002 “McCain-Feingold” bipartisan campaign finance reform act, overruling two of its prior rulings in the process and uprooting a century-old principle – existent in American law since Teddy Roosevelt’s Administration – that corporations should be barred from making unlimited expenditures in elections.
Wait, what? What did I just say? Corporations might soon be able to make unlimited expenditures in elections? Can they do that?
The answer is yes, if the Supreme Court says they can.
Clearly this has environmental and energy implications. We have seen how West Virginia’s unlimited contributions rules have led to ‘buying’ of judicial decisions. What might the impact to the prospects for sensible energy policy if Exxon-Mobil, Peabody Energy, or the Southern Company could use their huge cash reserves to drown out the political dialogue with advertising campaigns for (or against) a specific candidate. Already, their huge campaigns (laundered through Astroturf organizations like ACCCE and the Americans For (less) Prosperity (AFP) distort the political conversation and process. Where would eliminating even what some see as a fig leaf of constraints lead us?
Not to worry, it seems, since Corporations only want to share knowledge with us, provide wisdom and understanding to enable better decision-making on the part of the voter.
Don’t worry, be happy has to be the conclusion about unleashing Corporate funds during election cycles reading Justice Anthony Kennedy’s comments (see transcript) during oral arguments yesterday:
Addressing Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Kennedy said:
Corporations have lots of knowledge about [the] environment… and you are silencing them during the election. (52:7)
Later, addressing Seth Waxman (who was arguing on behalf of John McCain and Russ Feingold (see McCain-Feingold statement yesterday), to uphold McCain-Feingold):
[T]he phenomenon of — of television ads where we get information about scientific discovery and — and environment and transportation issues from corporations who after all have patents because they know something, that — that is different [from campaign laws that have been around for 100 years, because the former is a new development]. (73:5)
How can this be read any other way that Kennedy somehow believes (okay, perhaps doesn’t believe but wants to sell the line) that corporations’ goal in elections is to somehow share their wealth of knowledge about “the environment” and “scientific discovery.”
Yes, all McDonalds wants to do is have an open and honest discussion of childhood obesity and the role that McNuggets might play in this epidemic.
Yes, all the tobacco industry wanted to do was share leading edge research on the impacts of tobacco on human health.
Yes, all the fossil fuel industry wants to do is engage in honest, fact-based, scientifically sound discussion of pollution and climate change.
Yes, Justice Kennedy, all these Corporations wish to do is provide real insights and understanding, to help us have the most enlightened political process in human history.
Yes, Justice Kennedy, if you really believe this, I have a bridge that I’m looking to sell. When should I come by?
Comments Off on Questioning Kennedy: Do Corporations just want to share information?Tags:Energy
Carbon offsets should trouble anyone concerned about climate change. Whether on a personal, business, or community/nation level, even when they work, they act almost as a form of indulgence: paying someone else resources as a means to make up for your own failures and problem creation. As we consider climate change challenges, this sort of ethical and moral challenge really should be a secondary issue. If offsets can manage to work, to help hasten reductions in global pollution levels such that we can avoid a massive crash in the global system’s ability to support modern human civilization, then this is a moral and ethical issue worthy of debate and discussion in philosophical circles rather than a functional reasoning to fail to exploit any and all effective measures to turn the tides of Global Warming’s rising seas.
The real challenge when it comes to “offsets” is a functional one:
Do international carbon offset programs work well today to help reduce carbon emissions cost effectively?
Should we have confidence that that they will do so into the future?
A pause for a brief definitional item: Carbon Offsets, as referred to here, are really an international issue. In other words, moving resources across international boundaries to support emissions reductions in one country to ‘offset’ emissions in another. Currently, the European Union’s cap and trade scheme allows significant credits (in essence, 50% of a nation’s targeted reductions) for international offsets. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) bill, that passed the House earlier this year, has significant provisions for international offsets. (Enough, in fact, that they could, in theory, displace any direct US carbon emissions for decades into the future.)
The world is at 390 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 and 430+ CO2 equivalent. The IPCC has concluded, in what might actually be an optimistic assessment, that we can limit temperature growth to 2 degrees if we cap CO2 levels at 450 ppm. That is, limiting to 450 ppm would give us a 50% chance, in that optimistic assessments, of limiting ourselves to simply having a serious (rather than utterly fatal) crash (see graphic above).
In fact, that IPCC assessment is (again) almost certainly optimistic.
There is a growing consensus (group of understanding) that our target should not be 450 parts per million (ppm), but 350 ppm. In other words, we don’t need to just slow emissions growth and flatten overall carbon levels, but actually have as our target and objective figuring out how to move from a carbon emitting to a carbon neutral to a carbon negative future. And, we need to be doing so on all cylinders, with all approaches (energy efficiency, clean energy, changed social practices/norms, improved agricultural practices, etc …) available to us (and to the U.S.).
Right now, we are continuing to accelerate the car into the wall. Every moment that passes increases the inevitable damage and increases the risk of unsustainable damage to the planetary systems’ ability to support advance human civilization.
A guest post from Deborah Phelan, providing a window on issues of Eco Justice in Uganda — a picture that most in the developing world never see and an issue that they rarely, if ever, consider.
“You know, right now we are standing on top of ten feet of plastic.” Overheard in Kampala, Uganda at a Rotary International Meeting. Fall 2007.
Market Day, Kampala Uganda
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King.
We have, at this time, a tragic embrace of ignorance among too many in the United States. An embrace encouraged, fostered, cheered-on by too many entrenched interests. From the anti-science syndrome rejection of Scientific Theories of Evolution and Global Warming, ignorant rejecting of child-hood inoculations, to questioning of Obama’s birth in the United States to screaming about so-called “death panels”, we have a mass epidemic of cradle-to-grave craziness that is undermining the very functioning of our Democracy.
The latest screaming flap over Barack Obama’s address to America’s school students shows the escalation.
Study hard, think critically!
If they learn …, they will learn to question the propaganda and then where will we be?
Electrification of rail might be one of the most important single Silver BBs
right before us for tackling economic, energy, and environmental challenges.
On this, a guest post from the
impassioned and thoughtful rail/transport thinker BruceMcF …
Having lost sight of our goals we redoubled our efforts – Mark Twain
The Steel Interstate concept is both powerful and simple. Electrify main rail corridors and provide the capacity to support 100mph Rapid Freight Rail. The points are direct:
Under 10% the energy of diesel truck freight
100mph Rapid Freight Rail is faster door to door freight than long-haul trucking
Rail capacity is decreasing cost, with additional capacity cheaper than existing capacity
This day carries special significance in Appalachia, particularly for our coal miners. We look at it with special attention today as, Don Blankenship, Ted Nugent, Sean Hannity and several far-right extremists are holding a protest (partially funded by Verizon Wireless) – opposite the actual UMWA labor rally – meant to whip up the fervor against those of us working to address climate change and mountaintop removal. They are holding the “rally” because, in Don Blankenship’s words:
If big biz and gov’t are working against American workers, who will support them?
The increasingly infamous Appalachian Development Highway program started out with the goal of supporting the potential for genuine economic development in Appalachia by improving transport links into and within the region.
The world is at 390 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 and 430+ CO2 equivalent. The IPCC has concluded, in what might actually be an optimistic assessment, that we can limit temperature growth to 2 degrees if we cap CO2 levels at 450 ppm. That is, limiting to 450 ppm would give us a 50% chance, in that optimistic assessments, of limiting ourselves to simply having a serious (rather than utterly fatal) crash (see graphic above).