(Electrification of our nation's railroads is winning idea. Do we have the will and money to make it happen? - promoted by Magnifico)
Welcome to the next in my (sporadic) Long Emergency series of essays.
This one is a real cheap rip-off essay, in which I simply rip out the short policy proposal wrapped up in a Daily Kos candidate diary, and present it without the candidate diary parts.
Here is a version of the national Wind Resource map:
It should, I hope, be clear that much of the best resource is in areas that do not have the highest electricity consumption. And at the same time, that is a lot of the terrain that the transcontinental freight rail must traverse to get where its going. And, at the same time, we desperately need to get the main freight rail trunk lines electrified, by hook or by crook. Ergo, I got a grossly oversimplified policy proposal to present.
The Federal Government invests in publicly owned infrastructure to electrify the main railroad
In return, the owners of the right of way cede use of the right of way above the part that they need to public use, together with access to the ground level right of way for support structures
That right of way is used to establish long distance High Voltage DC trunk lines to bring sustainable energy from the places that have it to places the need it
In areas where there is a commercial wind resource, the usage rights above those trunk lines are available to be leased out for wind farm operators, with the lease payments rolled back into the funding for the program
Some answers to some challenges to the proposal, after the fold.
This is a Transport Cycling Open Thread: if you didn't get a bike for Christmas, and don't cycle in the winter, share what your first cycle trip of the new year is likely to be.
The elegant solution might involve that tricky, tiny atom, hydrogen. Let's put aside the political aspects your quite correctly identify, just for a moment. It might work someday.
In the meantime I'm all in favor of some inelegant kludge. If solar photovoltaics come down in price there will be a point where you won't care if they're only 20-30% efficient. There's so much solar energy hitting the earth that they'll simply be everywhere.
Re: LQD : Metaphysics I believe that the problem is Metaphysical. The assumptions that underpin conventional Economics bear no relation to reality as we know it.
They are distorted in a way designed to suit the beneficiaries of the value flows that result from the surreal financial structures that comprise our current Economy.
Re: LQD : Metaphysics I think one of their point is that not only money is important, and that economics, as a social science, needs to look beyond money, as it is not the only means of social exchange - that is basically the basic axiom of current economics, that are way to much based on econometrics.
The vote, the christmas gift, the exchange of drink rounds, are also important means of economical interaction, but are denied by the modern economics influenced thinking.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
