Tag: Steel Interstate

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

The big news from July was: Senate’s energy bill: What a disappointment (LA Times Editorial):

Amid tough fights over healthcare and financial reform, Obama’s push for cleaner energy ran out of gas long ago. It looked like a losing battle anyway; with Senate Republicans universally opposing a cap-and-trade program or other efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, and some Democrats in heavy manufacturing states also opposed, it may have been impossible to round up the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster on a Senate energy bill as strong as the one passed by the House last year. But that doesn’t excuse Obama or Reid for surrendering so easily, or so completely.

So we need to do something. And the strategy to stitch together a complex, multiple part, massive sprawling suburb of an Energy Bill that would be all things to all people has failed in precisely the way its opponents intended it to fail: this is a big reason why Big Oil was so heavily invested in the fight against health care reform, to make sure that it took so much time that the Energy Bill would run into election year politics and their direct lobbying efforts and come unglued.

Treason? Well, given that we are far more exposed to a disruption of our energy imports than to any threat to be found in Afghanistan, and are far more exposed to catastrophic climate change than to any threat being secured by our bases in Japan, Germany or any of the balance from the 687,347 acres of overseas military bases … sure.

But what to do about it?

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Here we are:

• a long, long way from full employment and full capacity utilization, when only the ignorant and ideologically insane would imagine any general objections to increased government spending on useful long term
• and with a gusher in the Gulf reminding us that the Oil Companies are lying liars and listening to their assurances and advice leads to disasters at best and calamities at worst

… and yet there is a genuine question whether or not the Federal government will take the bit between its teeth and push ahead toward funding a 21st century oil-free transportation system.

While it is a fun thing to imagine different institutions to see through the development of different alignments, lurking in the background is the worry: what if our body politic is just broken, and this time we cannot do what needs to be done?

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Well how the frack d’ya like me now?

I’m not going to say “toldya so”, since many who will be reading this diary said much the same during the “Drill, Baby, Drill” absurdity in 2008 … but the undersea oil volcano underlines, boldfaces and highlights in red the basic facts of the situation that we face:

• Our country produces about twice as much crude oil per person as the world average
• Our country consumes about five times as much crude oil per person as the world average
• And we have been producing oil a long time, have passed our peak of domestic oil production, and aint ever getting back to it.

And, anyway, we already tried Drill, Baby, Drill. Its played itself out already.

Obviously, the direction to go to insulate ourselves from oil price shocks and the recessions they cause is to cut our consumption. Which means, in part, Train, Baby, Train.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

In his inimitable “twisting mainstream economics in as progressive direction as he can accomplish” style, Paul Krugman has made a splash among those following the challenge of our headlong and reckless pursuit of Climate Chaos with a column on the cost of policies to put the brakes on that reckless gamble.

Hat tip to A Siegal, who nailed a critical failing of Krugman’s analysis:

Krugman falls into the trap of discussing the costs of dealing with climate change … a robust cost/benefits analysis would … result in a very serious statement as to the “huge risks and costs of inaction vs the very serious benefits of action”.

In particular, it is a common failing of mainstream economics to assume an economy that naturally tends to full employment, so that policies that boost employment are a cost, when in the real world they are a benefit.

Of course, the oil-industry funded belief tanks will be promoting the idea that Krugman is overstating the case for taking action against climate chaos … when the reality is that he overstates the cost to the public of taking action and so understates the case for taking action.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I noted near the beginning of the Appalachian Hub series about the special advantages offered by rail electrification for this project.

Now that I have sketched out a process by which a national Steel Interstate network of corridors can, in fact, be built in this coming decade, this is probably a good time to come back and take a look at the challenges that are faced when putting the Steel Interstates through hilly and mountainous terrain.

Of course, if rail electrification was a particular benefit in mountainous terrain, one would expect to see it in places like, say, Switzerland.

Picture of a Swiss electric freight west of the Albula tunnel

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Flying home from the Economist’s national conference Atlanta (see note1) my brilliant entertainment plan to pass the day lost flying home from Atlanta fell apart.

I could not attend even the 8am session on Tuesday, because the flight left at 11:15, and I was warned about TSA security theater delays. So I got on the MARTA train around 8:30, to stand in line to check-in, to stand in line to get through screening, to get to the gate and wait, to get on the plane which waited in line for a runway. It was, however, only half an hour in the air, so that fact that with a 125mph train to Charlotte I could have gone to the morning conference session and arrived in Charlotte sooner is neither here nor there.

Then I had a 3hr+ layover in Charlotte until the plane back home to NE Ohio. But I had my Netflix and some FullMetal Alchemist DVD’s, so no problem. Except my portable DVD player decided to stop working (see note2), so there were no DVD’s. Which meant I was forced to fall back on a “pbook” (paper book) I had brought with me – Waiting on a Train, which meant that I finally finished it (and still had several hours to wait after I had done so).

And in particular read the fascinating discussion of the touchy relationship between freight and passenger trains. Regular readers will know that this is a critical point: indeed, the entire Steel-Interstate strategy to getting Higher Speed Rail for Appalachia rests on passenger trains running on infrastructure provided in support of 100mph electric freight trains.

crossposted from Agent Orange

The Steel Interstate concept (tagpage) is one that I have been discussing, off and on, in my Sunday Train series. The basic idea is to electrify the Department of Defense STrategic RAil Corridor NETwork, STRACNET (right), and establish 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths, to allow an estimated (Millenium Institute pdf) half of long haul trucking to shift to electric freight rail at a saving of about 10% of our current oil imports.

This diary is about how to overcome the only thing standing in its way: Public Finance. And that is to impose a $1/barrel tax on imported petroleum and petroleum products, and allocate 1% of any Carbon Fee to financing construction.