Ironically, just last week the Green New Dealers said the entirety of the US should move to high speed rail.
One thing climate change debates have taught me is that people generally can't think past implementations and have incredible difficulty updating their implementation-specific mindsets.
Cars and planes have been 'bad' for climate change as they were inevitably burning fossil fuels, so the natural answer was public transit and high speed rail. Today, we have EVs and within about a decade short-haul electric planes (ie, exactly the routes high speed rail aims to serve). The answer to climate change (at least as far as transportation goes) should very clearly be "EVs", with these "electric vehicles" being cars, trucks, semis, and short-haul planes. Unfortunately, you won't see this reflected in GND thinking.
>The answer to climate change (at least as far as transportation goes) should very clearly be "EVs", with these "electric vehicles" being cars, trucks, semis, and short-haul planes. Unfortunately, you won't see this reflected in GND thinking.
From the resolution [0]:
overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—
(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;
(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transportation; and
(iii) high-speed rail;
So it seems like EVs are definitely part of the thinking. Perhaps you're referring to a line in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' website's FAQ, which has since been edited? She's definitely a prominent advocate and policy force of the Green New Deal but she is not "the Green New Dealers," who consist of many people [1], with many different opinions about implementation.
I don't understand how Newsom's decision argues against nationwide high speed rail or is in any way ironic - the decision is not that it was tried and found wanting, but that it "would cost too much and take too long." The Green New Deal is specifically about applying massive funding and political will towards projects that are generally considered politically unrealistic today but are quite technically feasible, not about trying ideas that are inherently novel.
"Cost too much" for what? For what it would provide. That argues against at least this specific high speed rail.
And behind "politically unrealistic" - there is another problem waiting - "economically unrealistic". If it's a project that won't pay back the investment in it, calling it "green" doesn't make it a good idea.
All of which is true. Issue is, it's also true for EVs.
Infrastructure for EVs costs money too. As do electric airplanes. (Which I didn't know were going to be passenger planes in 10 years?) That's the thing, ANYTHING the Green New Deal spends money on, will cost money. You may say that's obvious, but my point is that I doubt whatever the GND ends up pushing will make actual economic sense. And imagine spending money on electric planes, and they don't become passenger worthy in ten years. Is that a bust? Do we just spend more GND money on electric planes and wait longer? What if we can not quite get there even in 20 or 30 years? What if the right choice was not electrically powered traditional planes, but big, slow, air ships? Do they make sense for "short haul" commutes given their lack of speed? Or what if air ships are a boondoggle as well, and that technology can't be perfected in ten years?
We have to either be willing to potentially waste federal money on Green New Deal projects that may never pan out, or, if we are disinclined to do so, we need to accept that the politician will be extremely risk averse with Green New Deal money.
And guess what that means? Yep, you guessed it, trains and lots of them.
Why?
Because as that old saying goes, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."
One thing climate change debates have taught me is that people generally can't think past implementations and have incredible difficulty updating their implementation-specific mindsets.
Hmm, interesting. I don’t mean to argue the facts, but just a quick google for the GND resolution [0] seems to contradict this claim. If anything the submitted resolution is overly idealistic, promoting an “everything-plus” strategy against climate change that won’t happen at all without a dramatic and underspecified political upheaval.
In fact high speed rail is listed as “(iii)” in a list where “(i)” is “zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing“.
Here’s my question: do you think it’s possible that what you’ve actually been taught is a cognitive bias, that might be leading you to ignore disconfirmatory evidence about how other people think in favor of simpler but less predictive models?
Cars suck though. Seriously. Roads take up a ton of space, traffic meets whatever capacity we provide it. They're pretty dangerous. I would much prefer to reimagine cities with fewer cars, and take care of long distance transportation with other (clean) means. Cars are getting greener, but they still have a ton of other negatives.
What train systems, priced for volume and built in areas that aren't restricted from growing in response to the available transit, have failed to cause economic growth where they were built?
All the examples I've ever heard have basically come down to one of those two conditions - either, if the trains weren't well built to provide for existing demand, they were crippled from causing growth where they were built due to zoning and building restrictions preventing natural build up around them, or due to a lack of immediate success (and projects like these take time to cause economic and behavioral shifts) were priced out of competitiveness with less efficient modes of transit and thus doomed from a bizarre need to "profit" from infrastructure.
I'm highly supportive of rail transit. I'm just saying it's backwards to argue that expanding freeways just because to traffic will just fill up capacity. The same will happen if you expand successful rail transit as well. Capacity being filled up is a good sign in terms of efficient infrastructure investment - it means the infrastructure investment is being put to good use, and you should probably build more.
As to your question though, VTA seems to have failed to spur economic growth, despite being priced for volume and built in areas that aren't restricted from growing in response to available transit.
I think it would be far more effective to restrict entire freeways to be HOV rather than add a lane so a few more 4+ person vehicles can carry solo drivers to work. They simply aren't being used efficiently.
I take VTA everyday to work. The stations aren't in great spots. The one I take to work isn't surrounded by high density apartments. It's mostly industrial to one side, and a pretty long walk if don't live in the closest complex to it. As well, if it didn't drop off directly at my work it could easily double my commute time. The density just doesn't support it here.
I see your point, but still EVs are not that great for environments compare to trains, forget the energy for moving. Energy to build, the tire residues that goes to our public water and ...
It is way better than what we have now, but still we could do better.
>I see your point, but still EVs are not that great for environments compare to trains, forget the energy for moving. Energy to build, the tire residues that goes to our public water and ...
Unfortunately, many seem to think that just because something is emission free, they no longer have to worry about such things as grid capacity or electricity costs.
Cars, regardless of their energy source, are still a problem. Even if we solve the climate impact of cars, we still need to solve the traffic problem. If our large urban centers want to continue their growth then desirable alternative transportation options need to be implemented, otherwise 2 hour commutes through traffic will just become the norm.
While it's likely a non-starter legislatively, I believe the answer would be to pass a carbon cap & trade or tax system that simply prices greenhouse gases. That way we get what we want (less greenhouse gases) without proscribing a specific solution, whether it's high-speed rail, electric vehicles, or people keeping their gas vehicle and carpooling to work. If we get the incentives right, people will figure out how to minimize the increased cost in the way that is least painful for them.
EVs are central to every focused conversation I've seen on the topic.
As an example, one of the highest profile recent media discussions (Tucker Carlson interviewing AOC advisor Robert Hockett) featured the merits of having government coordinated rollout of charging stations (alongside the apparently high-effort enterprise of getting Carlson to believe that having one form of transportation supercede another might be accomplished by means other than bans and forcible seizures).
I don't know what the promise of short-haul electric planes looks like; maybe that's real, maybe it's like AI predictions in the 80s. It'll be interesting to see what its profile looks like in the space defined by energy requirements per passenger/freight mile, desired vs efficient maximum speeds, overhead & logistics of loading/unloading, and maintenance costs. Though I'd be willing to bet that it's premature at best to assume that electric planes or autos will categorically dominate in every consideration.
> Ironically, just last week the Green New Dealers said the entirety of the US should move to high speed rail.
It also said we should get rid of cars, planes, "farting cows", and provide for people "unwilling to work"... while also being anti-nuclear, and pro-government involvement in Tesla. [0]
I'm surprised the DNC allowed that to stay up as long as they did!
Sad to see this being modded down HN. It's factually correct, includes a reference. If you find it embarrassing then your issue is with the document, not those discussing it's contents.
I did not downvote it (as you can see from replies I certainly don't find it embarrassing, and I am upset that AOC was forced to remove it), but
a) it's not factually correct - the document in question, while legitimate/authentic, is not the Green New Deal, it is entitled "Green New Deal FAQ"
b) it's clearly an internal document, not a public policy proposal: the very first line makes it clear this is internal strategy
c) it's from one prominent person in the Green New Deal movement and the other sponsors of the bill may well disagree with the proposals to ban airplanes and cows
d) I'm pretty sure the cow thing was a joke (of the form "of course we won't get rid of all emissions, obviously, cows are going to fart for as long as we have cows and nobody's getting rid of cows") - again, it's an internal reference sheet, the tone is obviously very different from a real, public proposal
e) it's basically political flamebait, very little there has to do with the intersection of the Green New Deal and the topic of the article (high-speed rail)
f) and as others pointed out, the actual Green New Deal is pro-electric-cars, so it's actively misleading for the tiny portion of relevance it has.
Sorry, my pronouns were unclear. In the first sentence, "it" refers to the document. In the second sentence, "it" referred to the comment to which you replied. Very little that's in the document is relevant to this conversation, and the comment itself was attempting to discredit a particular thesis (HSR is a good idea for the US) by discrediting other theses held or allegedly held by the same people (providing for people unwilling to work is good, bovicide is good, etc.).
(I don't think it's unusual for politicians to, in the course of their legitimate work, produce internal documents that when brought to a technical discussion forum can be used to produce political flamebait. It's certainly not unusual for technical people to do the same - a Google internal strategy memo on some recent W3C discussion, with no context, can easily turn into flamebait if posted to HN.)
Edit: to clarify my pronouns further, in my first sentence I meant "I did not downvote the comment (I don't find the document embarrassing)", and in (a) I meant that the comment is not factually correct in identifying the document with the Green New Deal. In (b), (c), and (d) I mean the document.
... Also, I think it's incorrect that the DNC produced it. AOC's staff produced it, did they not? And it starts off with a sentence about how they want to make sure other Democrats don't claim credit for it. (Remember, again, that we are talking about the document entitled "Green New Deal FAQ" that was briefly posted to AOC's website, not about the Green New Deal legislation.)
> it's incorrect that the DNC produced it. AOC's staff produced it, did they not?
You're right, AOC's staff produced the FAQ, I stand corrected. I still think - if AOC is considered the main backer of the GND - that the FAQ reflects very badly on her team's intentions.
Yes, the original document that was posted was too politically incorrect for the right-wing faction of the DNC to be comfortable with it. Providing for people even if they're unwilling to work is a defensible strategy, and is rather popular on HN under the name of "universal basic income" and among rich people under the name of "inheritance".
I mean, yes, but it's most valuable/impactful as a policy to those who are not working (for any reason). For instance, I make enough money that I probably won't even notice an additional minimum-wage-sized amount of money (especially at my tax bracket), so as a policy it won't affect my behavior one bit—unless I become either unable or unwilling to work, where the difference between zero and the minimum wage will become quite obvious.
One of the key features of a UBI is that it's not a US-style welfare/disability/food-stamp program where there are tracked eligibility requirements and you can lose your eligibility. It's universal. It doesn't attempt to distinguish who is "really" unable to work.
So in practice one of the most-affected categories under a UBI policy would be people unwilling to work. AOC's (internal, accidentally-posted) doc said this in an indelicate and politically incorrect way but it's not aiming for any policy goals that UBI advocates aren't also targeting.
> I don't think that's what UBI is supposed to be.
What do you think UBI is supposed to be? I thought it was a universal basic income, i.e., an income that is applicable to all people as opposed to an income from a job.
> Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible.
The US Declaration of Independence says all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says all people have the right to life, liberty and security of person. And so forth. None of these rights are excluded to those unwilling to work.
In order to live, you generally need to have a roof over your head and food on your plate and access to basic medical care. Providing those to all people who have the right to life seems pretty reasonable to me.
> I thought it was a universal basic income, i.e., an income that is applicable to all people as opposed to an income from a job.
That's implementation specific; several "UBI" schemes have focused on providing supplemental income, rather than paying whatever the person in particular actually needs (which will vary geographically, even neighborhood to neighborhood).
> The US Declaration of Independence says all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The full clause is "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
The rights are inherent to being human, not provided for by the government. It was never intended to state that the government had an obligation to secure those rights, only that it ought not infringe upon them.
Edit: This is not to state that I disagree with programs intended to help those who need it. Rather, I'm simply pointing out that a legal justification for doing so should (and can) be found elsewhere. The moral justification is prima facie for most.
> .... Ok... Go on then. But to start you off, I don't think that's what UBI is supposed to be. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible.
I don't understand what the alternative would be? A civilized society already provides basic sustenance, housing, and healthcare for everyone that cannot or will not work. It's not a glorious lifestyle but we don't let people die just for not participating in the workforce.
Ok... Go on then. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. I'm open minded, convince me.
We do that now. It's called "prison." The question is, could we spend a similar amount of money in other ways and get a better society in the bargain?
It's analogous to how our private healthcare system costs us more money for worse results than other countries' "socialized" systems do. It's usually a bad idea to let politics and ideology take precedence over objective metrics.
(I agree with you mostly, but technically a) several prisoners are willing to work and just constrained, and may well have been imprisoned directly from an honest job, and b) prisoners in the US are often compelled to work as slaves. So prisoners are not a great example of people unwilling to work, though they are a great example of it being financially workable for the government to provide meals and housing for a set of people who are not in fact on the public labor market.)
In what.... No. Prisons are not filled with people who were unwilling to work. Nor are prisoners prohibited from working.
Why would you make that case that people in prison were put there because they were unwilling to work? Do you think prisons are filled with unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread to feed their families? I suggest you try spending a weekend in lock up sometime, you'll get that idea fixed right away.
> Why would you make that case that people in prison were put there because they were unwilling to work? Do you think prisons are filled with unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread to feed their families?
You're contradicting yourself. Valjean was quite willing to work, it just wasn't enough to feed himself and his family. (And in fact he worked quite hard, both in prison and in the rest of his life.) If you think that prisoners are willing to work, then they are unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread.
On the other hand, if they are people who wish to work on the black market, or wish to work in ways that society deems impermissible (fraud, theft, etc.), or wish to engage in conduct on the job that society deems impermissible (perhaps conduct like theft that lets them avoid working), then they aren't unfortunate souls precisely because they aren't willing to work, at least as "work" is defined. If they are justly in prison, it is precisely because they brought it on themselves, and even so, society feeds and clothes and houses and heals them (though not very well, mind you), and this is generally believed to be a worthwhile thing for society to spend money on.
If this is worthwhile for people convicted of a crime, why is it not worthwhile for people not even convicted of a crime, who are merely unwilling to work?
(Unless your position is that society should be supportive of people who are willing to work in any possible definition of work, whether they choose to be a programmer, a hitman, or a drug lord, and instead of housing and feeding hitmen and drug lords in prison, it should let them earn their keep?)
Parties have an internal spectrum and much of the Democratic party occupies the same space as what Europe calls "center right", like Merkel's Christian Democrats.
> providing for people unwilling to work is defensible
Whereas:
1) There is no perfect test between "unwilling" and "unable"
2) People who are unable to work and are not provided for experience a range of adverse outcomes
2a) this includes the negative extenralities of homelessness that everyone always complains about in SF
2b) this may include death
3) Coercion into work with the threat of starvation is corrosive to human dignity
=> we should stop trying to draw a harsh demarcation between the deserving and undeserving, and ensure everyone is provided for.
You moved the goal post to unable. The discussion is on unwilling - stick to it. Able bodied people that just don’t want to. You defend that.
And yes, if you are unwilling to work; you are unwilling to live. That’s your choice friend, not mine, it’s against your biological directive, but it’s not my business.
Are you making a false argument about trust funders? The argument is clearly about providing economic security to those unwilling to work. People with trust funds don't need economic security, they have it. You know this though.
I'm not sure what you mean by "false argument." I'm definitely making an argument you don't like, but those are different things.
How is it justifiable for trust fund kids to have economic security while being unwilling to work while also being unjustifiable for non-trust-fund-kids to have economic security while being unwilling to work? What is the difference?
You are claiming that it is a moral principle, perhaps even wired into our biology, that those unwilling to work are unwilling to live. Yet this is clearly not true in the case of those with trust funds. What is your defense of this fairly glaring exception? (One perfectly coherent answer is that this exception should be closed and inheritances to adult children should be disallowed; if you're an adult unwilling to work, having had parents who were willing to work does not save you. There are other defenses, too. I'm curious what yours is.)
Sure, but "If Person A wishes to survive, they must work" and "If Person A wishes to survive, either they or an ancestor must work" are very different things. If we feel like "he who does not work, does not eat" is a principle (and it's a very common one!), the ancestral exception doesn't make sense. I understand the ancestral exception exists, I'm just trying to push back on it being defensible. (Mostly because I think that it's equally defensible to have a blanket exception for "or lives in a society that can afford to feed and house them".)
I'm not the one claiming that people who don't work shouldn't have a wage, so I'm not sure why my views are relevant here. (I have complex views on this that start from a totally different set of assumptions. But you can round it to "No, I do" for now.)
I'm trying to ask why someone who believes that people who don't work shouldn't have a wage - i.e., not me - should believe in the ancestral exception.
OK, but why do they believe it's a good thing for society for parents to provide for their children, even after their children reach adulthood, and even when those children will distort the markets of the places they live with affluence?
I think with most answers to that question, I can construct an argument that it's a good thing for society for government to provide for those unwilling to work. But if the answer is "It just is," I don't have a hope of an argument. I cannot convince someone of why things are good and bad if they have a random list of specific situations that are just axiomatically good and just axiomatically bad. I am hoping that 'SlowRobotAhead has some other answer, so I'm not sure what your goal is in repeating things I already know (and that you say you know I already know) at me.
If you, personally, are a person who believes that it's a good thing for society for parents to provide for their children, but not for government to provide for those unwilling to work, can you explain why you believe the former?
You're just restating the premise. That's not an argument. Why do you define whatever-it-is-you're-calling-stealing as stealing, and why is benefiting from your parents' earnings moral?
Are we really having a discussion on whether taxation is theft using the most boring possible arguments for it? If you really believe that, live up to your principles, stop using the taxpayer-funded internet, and get off this site. We share no morality in common and I have no hope of convincing you of anything.
Meanwhile, 'SlowRobotAhead has claimed to be open-minded, and I was having a discussion with them before you jumped in saying this was the last comment from you in the thread - another lie, but that doesn't surprise me from someone with your moral code.
> "Overhauling transportation systems" to reduce emissions — including expanding electric car manufacturing, building "charging stations everywhere," and expanding high-speed rail to "a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary";
Ultimately, I'm not sure any large infrastructure projects are possible in the current US political climate. The US interstate system is a marvel that I suspect would be entirely blocked by NIMBYism if implemented today. Airport expansions, wind farms, new housing, etc. are all opposed by scaremongering social media campaigns.
I think you're mismatching problems and solutions.
EVs are a solution for climate change.
Modern railroads are a solution for commutes taking hours in Silicon Valley (and other places in CA). Electrifying all the single occupancy sedans in 101/680/880 won't do anything to the commute time.
This 77 billion boondoggle would have done very little to improve commute times either. It is a mismatch as well. It isn't local transit, and would be serving a few stations at most in the bay area. It doesn't provide any new routes or alternatives other than moving farther out from the city.
The main transport issue the US faces is sprawl. NO one vehicle, certainty not EVs, can solve that -- it is a system level issue. However i do believe that the last mile problem can be solved ... making the solution of the overall problem soluble by (public) transit (on steroids).
The last mile issue could be solved with AV's (autonomous vehicles). Eg Ubers Jump could be outfitted to be an AV and transport Americans to a (usably frequent!) transit point. AVs could be made to work much easier (ie a shorter timeline) in the low density scenarios sprawl has produced, and which now make Public Transport infeasible.
There are vast stretches of the US rail system that are not electrified. But I imagine the bulk of this part of the network is disproportionately used by cargo.
H) overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—
(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;
(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and
(iii) high-speed rail;
Note the emphasis on technological feasibility and the use of “including” which typically means not limited to. Conservatives have been working overtime to twist this into an absolutist message.
Dont tell the bikers, the anti-car crowd who want to rip up all the roads and parking lots. One day soon cars will not be the great pollution evil they once were. If you believe the ai hype, soon bicycles will be killing far more people than cars. Then we shall confine them too to closed tracks. The last person to ride a bike on a public sidewalk is probably alive today.
I am snowed in today. I want an EV but havent seen one that can handle a mountain highway in winter, something with the range and predictability to survive a canadian winter. Has anyone ever put chains on a tesla?
One thing climate change debates have taught me is that people generally can't think past implementations and have incredible difficulty updating their implementation-specific mindsets.
Cars and planes have been 'bad' for climate change as they were inevitably burning fossil fuels, so the natural answer was public transit and high speed rail. Today, we have EVs and within about a decade short-haul electric planes (ie, exactly the routes high speed rail aims to serve). The answer to climate change (at least as far as transportation goes) should very clearly be "EVs", with these "electric vehicles" being cars, trucks, semis, and short-haul planes. Unfortunately, you won't see this reflected in GND thinking.