626
USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change
(www.raillynews.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
626 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
59559 readers
2162 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It’ll take the US decades to get high-speed rail up and running, especially with its culture of litigation, property rights, regulatory capture and politicised overregulation of threats to incumbents, not to mention Citizens United and the ability of the aforementioned incumbents to buy laws and regulations. By then, climate change will have won.
So, should we just give up then and not bother?
Oh good! I was hoping for some defeatism in the face of a relatively positive bit of news.
Let's say, ten years in the future, a brilliant scientist invents a magic box that drastically reduces some of the biggest inflictors of CO2, and/or even repairs some of the previous damage. Such a marvelous invention would only be valuable in saving the human race if there were simultaneously other improvements on efficiency and CO2 generation to improve the overall reductions.
Movies get us used to one person/initiative saving the world. What's more practical is a whole bunch of little initiatives - even if each one doesn't do enough on its own.
You've got to love internet negativity. Nothing can ever be good.
There are plenty of issues to deal with, but this is a huge improvement over the existing status-quo. Can we be happy that the Biden Administration has done something to move things in the right direction on this issue?
I'm betting this money will just go to bribe some political donors. Take note that the amount of investment here is less than what was outlayed to increase the number of EV chargers in the US (which hasn't happened) for something that is orders of magnitude more expensive and complicated than installing battery chargers. California is working on a 171-mile stretch of HSR, and the estimated cost is projected to be around $35 billion in a state with tons of open, undeveloped land. Imagine the cost of doing this along the densely populated eastern seaboard. $8 billion in grants is a joke.