An interesting read from The Economist…

“ENVIRONMENTALISTS are fiddling while Rome burns,” says Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. “They get in the way with silly stuff like asking people to walk more, drive less. That is an increment of 1-2% change. We need 1,000% change if billions of people in China and India are to enjoy a Western, energy-rich lifestyle.” Forget today’s green technologies like electric cars, wind turbines, solar cells and smart grids, in other words. None meets what Mr Khosla calls the “Chindia price”—the price at which people in China and India will buy them without a subsidy. “Everything’s a toy until it reaches that point,” he says.

I’m sure not everyone will agree with me, but in my opinion, this argument is a big part of why the end-game of so many of our local efforts shouldn’t be “saving the environment” (aka “saving human civilization”).  Instead it should be something more along the lines of “build strong communities” and all of the potential environmental affects of density, walking more, etc, can then just be viewed as gravy.

The Economist provides an interesting and different media perspective on the potential of a nationwide high-speed rail network in the U.S.

From the point-of-view of the freight rail companies, whose nationwide system The Economist calls “the world’s best”, the prospect of high-speed trains sharing the tracks they’ve held almost exclusive access to for decades, isn’t something to cheer about.

To sum up…

…the problem with America’s plans for high-speed rail is not their modesty. It is that even this limited ambition risks messing up the successful freight railways. Their owners worry that the plans will demand expensive train-control technology that freight traffic could do without. They fear a reduction in the capacity available to freight. Most of all they fret that the spending of federal money on upgrading their tracks will lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the industry watchdog, to impose tough conditions on them and, in effect, to reintroduce regulation of their operations. Attempts at re-regulation have been made in Congress in recent years, in response to rising freight rates. “The freight railroads feel they are under attack,” says Don Phillips, a rail expert in Virginia.

h/t: Thomas Wheatley