Green Trains?

4 Mar 2009

I remember hearing The Long Emergency author James Howard Kunstler talk at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association Forum in 2006 about how important it was to start a programme of mass collective investment in green alternatives … to put into action the idea that we could do something about climate change, and that it was important and achievable: a model of nation-wide mobilization like what led to winning world war II, putting a man on the moon, or ending the Great Depression. He suggested that focusing in on the country’s rail systems would be the perfect way to do that – greening the transportation industry, reclaiming existing resources, and putting our money where our mouths were.

Three years later, it’s incredibly satisfying to see the sudden change in the political talk about climate change that’s been generated in the short time Obama’s been in office, and it makes me hopeful to see great initiatives like this one – $8 billion in investment for a high-speed train network. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a broader trend.