US Transportation and Energy Infrastructure
Not a day had passed before the pointing-of-fingers commenced here in Minneapolis and around the country. The admirable Catharine Tierney and I made a wager that there would be an exponential increase in the number of Democrats on the radio and in the news discussing "Infrastructure", and toyed with the idea of compiling random selections from campaign speeches and press events in the last year.
Glad though I may be that our representatives are now awake to the state of crumbling infrastructure in our country, I would like to suggest that this is not the fault of Tim Pawlenty or the Republicans in general, and yes they are still welcome to come to Saint Paul for their convention next summer. They will not shirk from this event.
I am not a Republican, and I have never voted for our current Republican, but I know a thing or two about the party. It was the Republican party that built the critical industrial infrastructure to connect the southern states with the rest of the Union in the late 19th century. Republican government oversaw the creation of the transcontinental railroad. There is a long and proud tradition--nearly forgotten in the last 40 years--of vision and economic prudence that yet undergirds the traditions of that party. Just as I won't ever give up on the Democrats as long as some portion of them are loyal to the vision and prudence of FDR, I won't write off the GOP while the promise of Lincoln's vision still informs some kernel of their party. I see tremendous opportunity for a distinctly non-partisan and American cooperation in this event.
I recently heard an expression that "Politicians are people who concern themselves with the next election, while Statesmen are people who concern themselves with the next generation." That rung true. As a member of that next generation, let me look at the Big Picture with an eye for forgiveness and mutual respect.
Rail Infrastructure
First and foremost, rail infrastructure is the life of an industrial and technological economy. We can no longer operate under the impressions that industry in the United States is a "sunset industry". The next 40 years will see a rise in oil and fuel costs that are catastrophic to the current globalist industrial system. It is a simple fact of physics that energy spent in moving matter from one place to another cannot be spent on altering the forms of that matter. You can get electricity and industry from oil and gas, or you can get transport. You cannot get both. Energy you spend running to work in the morning must be replaced or you won't get any productivity out of your body. So, energy spent on transit is not available for industry.In the last 40 years, the United States has eviscerated its rail transport infrastructure and moved freight transport onto its highways and freeways. A drive from Minneapolis to Chicago is instructive in this fact. Nothing illustrates this better than being parked on a freeway between three semi-trailers, while off to one side or another there is a stretch of empty rail, or the scar where until late a rail line had passed. The contents of these freight trucks should be moved between large cities over rail.
The effect that this transition has had on our freeways is clear, but what of our bridges? Could the designers of these bridges have guessed that we would destroy the millions of miles of rail that we have since 1967? Did they design their bridges to become stronger over time as the combined tonnage that a million miles of rail would otherwise carry was placed upon these structures each day? Could they have guessed that we would destroy local industry and import our goods from China, thus further straining these crucial arteries of transport?
I seriously doubt it.
Wide Gauge Rail for Industrial Freight
We have an opportunity at this point in our history to create a modern wonder of the world. A wide-gauge railroad that stretches from California to Chicago to New Jersey, capable of carrying the weight of the entire US Pacific Naval Armada from coast to coast. Trains large enough for freight trucks to drive up to and park on sideways. Trains large enough for efficient piggyback of other rail and land-freight cargo. Trains capable of carrying 1000 times the tonnage of the elder rail. A steel river for commerce and industry, with traditional rail lines branching off from it. It is absolutely vital that we improve the conditions for industrial freight transit in our country in the next decade.High Speed Rail for Human Transit
We have opportunities at this point in our history to create ultra-fast rail transport for human transit between our nation's largest cities. Centered in Chicago, a high-speed rail network could help create the conditions for an explosion of innovation and technological leadership in the nation's heartland and take pressure off of congested air lanes. We must reduce our reliance on aerial transit if possible--the cost and inefficiency of it only emphasize the danger.Energy Infrastructure
Clearly we need to power these additional pieces of infrastructure. The nation is currently experiencing a 2% annual growth in the demand for electricity, just as the environmental lobby is twisting the tourniquet around the throat of the nation's energy grid. Clean coal technologies and nuclear power generation technologies can be made immeasurably safer and cleaner than they were in decades past. Our nation desperately needs to add critical and reliable generation and transmission infrastructure. For the skeptical environmental warrior, I'll spell out the alternatives here:- Solar - unreliable. Minnesota receives only 8 full hours of sunlight per day in late December, and much of that time is overcast. We live in a very dark state for about 6 months of the year. Additionally, precipitation can render the solar infrastructure unusable. Solar technology will probably best be used on residential rooftops to offset summertime cooling requirements, but will never address the needs of Metal-Matic (the factory you see in the photos just west of the collapsed I-35 bridge).
- Wind - unreliable. 100% of my personal electricity at home is wind generated, so don't mark me down as a hater of wind. But it is unreliable. You cannot build this infrastructure everywhere in the nation and get the same results. It might be a great way for farmers and ranchers to supplement their income, but will never be able to address the needs of a steel factory or automobile factory.
- Hydrogen - not a power supply. Hydrogen power is not actually a source of power. It is merely a means of storing power. In other words, takes electricity to charge a hydrogen fuel cell. That electricity has to come from somewhere.
- Hydroelectric - under attack by the environmental lobby. Although this is a fairly clean and reliable source of electrical generation, it alters riverways and has recently been in the spotlight by environmentalists. Oregon actually celebrated just this month the destruction of a major hydroelectric dam.
- Geothermal - simply not feasible in most areas of the world.
- Biofuel - impacts the nation's food supply, and is the slow equivalent of strip mining our farm lands. If you think that discussions about "peak oil" are frightening, just wait 100 years until they're having discussions about "peak soil", after the nutrients of our heartland soil have all been flushed into the Gulf of Mexico or burned in our engines. Nutrient capture from the ocean floors will have to become an option at that point and then you are back to the problem of transport. Simply put, for the true carbon-warrior, biofuel comes at too high a price. It takes more energy to make the fuel than you get out of it in your engine, and you burn it at the additional expense of being able to eat the corn. Advancements in transforming the non-edible portions of the corn plant might help with this, but those could also be used as fertilizer. Once again you are locked into simple physics. You can alter the form of things or alter their locations, but not both with the same amount of energy.
The bottom line is that environmentalism must realign its priorities from clean and green to clean progress or cede its self-professed "progressive" credentials. For my money (and the votes of myself and anyone I can get within earshot for more than an hour), our Republican leaders and national business leaders who are advocating a strong return to nuclear power and advancements in coal technology are the nation's most noteworthy progressives at this juncture. I look to Jim Puplava, not Ralph Nader when I think of progress.
But let me up the ante.
Future Technologies Superproject
We have the opportunity to create nuclear power plants that emit ZERO radioactive waste and are absolutely clean and safe. Fission is dying, and it must. At best it is a transition technology between the age of solar-fossil power supplies and the promise of nuclear fusion. The United States congress should allocate funding for a national superproject aimed at fully developing and researching next-generation power technologies in our nation's Universities. I'm not suggesting another Department in the federal government or even more funding for existing departments. In fact I explicitly think that would stifle and squander these efforts. I am suggesting that as a nation we increase the raw funding for High Schools and Universities across the nation and both expanded funding for federal grants, and a special tax-exempt status for all U.S. companies devoted to researching and developing non-traditional power generation and transmission technologies. I'm talking about fully exploring and developing the possibilities of Boron-Hydrogen fusion, zero-point energy, deuterium-tritium fusion, sonofusion, room temperature superconductors, and other experimental technologies. Until we expose these ideas to real scientific inquiry we will never know if they hold promise. Nobody who ignores these technologies can claim to have fully explored the options.
Recipe for an American Renaissance
On MPR the other night, I heard this recipe for an American Renaissance:
- Eat in diners!
- Ride Trains!
- Put a porch on your house!
- Shop on Main Street!
- Live in a walkable community!
What is expressed here is nothing more than what I've discussed above.
Eat food that was grown locally. Diversity in the nation's food supply is served by more efficient means of local transport and less emphasis on biofuel-driven monoculture in our crops. Take a drive through Door County Wisconsin and compare it to Polk County Wisconsin. You'll find cherry and apple orchards and amazing diversity in the former, and almost nothing but corn in the latter. Eating in diners is healthier than eating in fast food restaurants, and it's better for our farmers if those diners can buy food from local farms. Here are some diners in Minneapolis that I like to eat at:
- Al's Breakfast
- Cafe 421
- The Purple Onion
- Annie's Parlor
- The Hard Times Cafe
- The Bad Waitress
- Vescio's
Ride trains. Better still, ship your freight on trains, connect cities and small towns with passenger and freight trains, and get off of the highways. Save your car for vacations. Live in a walkable community so you can stop at the grocery store on the walk home from work. Build residential neighborhoods with more little markets and specialty shops, or get your city council to approve special zoning and build some nice shops in your residential neighborhood!
Put a porch on your house if you're lucky enough to own one, so you can sit outside in the summer time when it gets too warm inside. You'll find yourself and the people you live with talking more often. I used to love to sit on the porch over at Charlie Demerjian's and talk with my roommates there. I think that implementing green rooftops on apartment buildings in inner cities (like the one I live in now) would vastly improve summertime heat conditions and reduce the need for air conditioning for those who cannot yet afford to purchase a house of their own. If we had better rail transport in Minneapolis I suspect we wouldn't need the alley behind my apartment building for automobile parking, but could have more neighborhood gardens and community areas.
And while we're doing all of these things, let's keep an eye on the future and invest in additional research for non-traditional power-generation technologies. Even if only to separate the wheat from the chaff before turning development over to private industry, it would be a remarkable accomplishment if we could render not only oil and coal but also fissile nuclear power obsolete in the next decade.
This is not a Democratic or a Republican opportunity, but an American one. We're too near the solutions to our infrastructure problems to ignore them. The sun is setting on our existing infrastructure, and our country simply cannot survive without it. Let that sun not also set on us.