Tag Archives: Infrastructure

The Green New Deal (GND) is important as a starting point to have a long, long overdue conversation about energy. Specifically: How are we going to eventually transition away from fossil fuels?

As such, the proposal — while (very) far from perfect — should not be ignored and deserves our attention. 

It's also important because it represents the sorts of zig-zags our social and political paths are inceasingly likely to take in the coming future as we're forced to face our looming economic, ecological and energy-related predicaments.

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Remember the crisis earlier this year at the Oroville Dam? 

The overflow from California's winter of heavy rain threatened to overpower our country's tallest dam. A cascading failure of the dam's main gates, its primarily spillway AND its emergency spillway had the world watching hour by hour to see if a catastrophic breach was going to occur.

Fortunately, the rains stopped long enough for the situation to be brought under control. The dam remains in place and repair crews have been working all spring and summer.

But should we breathe easy at this point? Not at all, says dam safety expert Scott Cahill. 

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This is a running commentary on the rapidly developing Oroville dam situation. Because the story developed so rapidly, there wasn’t time to write a complete report.

I’ll have a tidy summary at some point, but first we have to scour and assemble the information.

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We are at an important juncture as a global society: either we immediately prioritize a new trajectory focused on creating a positive, functional future or — by continuing the consumptive, extractive, exploitative status quo — we will default into a nasty nightmare.

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As detailed in earlier chapters, the US' debts and unfunded liabilities far exceed its assets. But making matters worse, the country is suffering from a prolonged failure to save and invest — both at the personal and national level.

Being over-indebted and under-capitalized is a recipe for hardship as we move into the future, especially if economic growth is going to be harder to come by (which we forecast in the upcoming chapters on net energy). Each year we continue this deficit makes us less able to withstand systemic shocks (a 2008-style financial crisis, an energy shock, the outbreak of war), some number of which lie undoubtedly ahead at some point.

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Is China destined to emerge as the dominant superpower that will drive the 21st century to new heights of prosperity? Or instead, might it collapse spectacularly under the weight of its own overinvestment, dragging the global economy down with it in history's largest 'hard landing'?

Few people can see the big picture in China more clearly than Michael Pettis, Beijing-based economic theorist and Professor of Finance at Peking University. Michael sees China's future prosperity tied to its ability to successfully address:

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We are far enough and deep enough into the most heroic monetary and fiscal efforts ever undertaken to finally ask, why aren't these measures working?

Or at least we should be.  Oddly, many in DC, on Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve continue to steadfastly refuse to include anything in their approaches and frameworks other than "more of the same."

So we are treated to an endless parade of news items that seek to convince us that a bottom is in and that we've 'turned the corner' – often on the flimsy basis that in the past things have always gotten better by now.

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Given emerging data in 2012, it's becoming increasingly clear that the post-war automobile era in the United States is now in well-articulated decline. Accordingly, it makes sense to note the beginning of a long-term supertrend that is just getting started: the resurrection of America’s rail system.

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