TRAINS ARE THE MOST SUSTAINABLE & GREEN FORM OF TRANSPORTATION
A national high speed rail system is the large-scale, fast way to reduce carbon from our transportation and energy sectors, and is the centerpiece of a sustainable America. With trains powered by electricity generated 100% by renewables, this can cut the nation's energy consumption and carbon output by 70% - as fast as it can be constructed! No other solution can scale up as fast.
China built more than 12,000 miles of state-of-the-art high speed rail in 9 years!
Fact: Transportation is #1 Cause of Climate Change
3) Ecommerce - rapidly growing transport problem - by trucks, airplanes
Fact: High Speed Rail Fixes All 3 Simultaneously!
As we get serious about solving climate change, we must evaluate every project, every investment, and every system as to their role in either causing or solving climate change.
Right now, America is still investing hundreds of billions of dollars every year building more roads, subsidizing cars, expanding airports, subsidizing aviation, subsidizing the oil industry, subsidizing defense to secure the flow of oil, and more that all make climate change worse. The first step is to halt our contribution funding more damage!
All our public investments now need to go 100% towards systems and technologies that solve climate change and reduce carbon. High speed rail is the largest scale technology that can transform America the fastest to ZERO-carbon transportation.
We need "all hands on deck" and everyone participating in the solutions! We have limited time to repair nature's systems before they are rendered non-functional, thereby cutting off OUR only support system. America must invest at the federal and state level in a big way to transform our transportation and energy systems to ZERO carbon as quickly as possible.
GM and Ford Knew About Climate Change 50 Years Ago, and Worked to Hide It!Story
Researchers at both automakers found strong evidence in the 1960s and '70s that human activity was warming the Earth. A primary culprit was the burning of fossil fuels, which released large quantities of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide that could trigger melting of polar ice sheets and other dire consequences. A GM scientist presented her findings to at least three high-level executives at the company, including a former chairman and CEO.
But in the following decades, both manufacturers largely failed to act on the knowledge that their products were heating the planet. Instead of shifting their business models away from fossil fuels, the companies invested heavily in gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. At the same time, the two carmakers privately donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups that cast doubt on the scientific consensus on global warming.
More than 50 years after the automakers learned about climate change, the transportation sector is the leading source of planet-warming pollution in the United States. Cars and trucks account for the bulk of those emissions.Story
Exxon Knew About Climate Change 38 Years Ago, and Also Worked to Hide It!Story
TRANSPORTATION IS THE #1 PROBLEM
We are still dumping 110 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere EVERY DAY fueling climate change, and still funding the expansion of these polluting systems!
Electric high speed rail is the most energy efficient of all trains. A national high speed rail system is the centerpiece of a sustainable America, and will significantly reduce congestion and our dependence on cars and oil, while cutting our carbon emissions by epic proportions. The entire system can be powered by clean, safe renewable energy including wind, solar, geothermal, and ocean/tidal. Clean electric trains are a major form of daily transportation in numerous countries, and are the single most powerful transportation choice that can solve serious mobility, energy, environmental, economic, health, and social problems simultaneously - on a global scale.
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Climate change is a clear and present danger to the United States, far more serious than terrorism. It's time for large-scale, comprehensive action to reduce carbon to solve climate change!
Changing transportation to low carbon is action #1.
How the oil industry has spent billions to control the climate change conversation. Story
"We have money to fight climate change. It's just that we're spending it on defense."
"Stopping one fighter plane program would save enough to build wind farms to power 320,000 homes. We need to drastically reassess our priorities." Story
We can no longer afford to do nothing - the costs are already more expensive than the solutions:
TOP 10 MOST EXPENSIVE STORMS TO HIT THE USA ($652 Billion total)
Climate change is currently costing the world economy about $1.2 Trillion a year! If left unchecked this massive cost will spiral out of control.
If we wait and do nothing to stop the massive carbon emissions, we will end up at 6 degrees warming - which will mean a planet that is no longer livable.
If we act quickly cutting our carbon output, we can avert disaster by limiting warming to less than 1 degree. This will maintain the livability of the planet, restoring planetary ecological balance. But we must act quickly, and in a big way, and we must start NOW! Every day we stall, the planet inches further into the disaster zone.
Major federal investments in clean electric rail systems will go a long way to solving this crisis. Converting the nation's transportation to ZERO CARBON is job #1.
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." -Benjamin Franklin
Our actions today dictate our future - Continued burning of fossil fuels = 6 degree warming (resulting in an unlivable planet)
"We have it in us to make a planetwide turn toward life!"
Watch "Disruption" - one of the best climate change films ever...
GET THE FACTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE, AND CLIMATE DENIAL...
"Climate change is real. Industry must now lead." -Jeff Immelt - CEO, General Electric
"We recognize that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors affecting climate change." -Rex Tillerson - Secretary of State; Former CEO, Exxon
"Our biggest problem is waking up to the truth of our situation, and responding in a thoughtful, wise, effective, sustained way. That's what we've got to do. And we're not doing that." -Jerry Brown - Governor of California
"We believe climate change is an urgent issue that demands global action. We remain committed to doing our part." -Satya Nadella - CEO, Microsoft
"Climate change is real."-Elon Musk - CEO, Tesla and SpaceX
"Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it's too late."-Mark Zuckerberg - CEO, Facebook
"Climate change is a global problem with serious implications, environmental, social, economic, political, and for the distribution of goods; it represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day."
"The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all."
"Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations."
"Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us."
"Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth."
"We have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor."
"The earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor. The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years."
"If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us."
"Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most."
"Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded."
"Obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions. We require a new and universal solidarity."
"There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced." More
"The Defense Department already is observing the impacts of climate change in shocks and stressors to vulnerable nations and communities, including in the United States, the Arctic, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America."
"We have money to fight climate change. It's just that we're spending it on defense."
"Stopping one fighter plane program would save enough to build wind farms to power 320,000 homes. We need to drastically reassess our priorities." Story
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." -GOP President Eisenhower
Climate change is the greatest national security threat, recently pointed out by Senator Bernie Sanders. "CIA analysts and our nation’s military strategists are rightfully naming climate change as a contributor to refugee flows, the spread of disease, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water. Our nation’s defense officials know global warming's destructive forces could undermine fragile governments in unstable regions of the world where extremist ideologies can take root." -Kenneth Pennington, The Guardian
Global security is already showing widespread troubles from climate change. In 2014 alone, 17.5 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters, far exceeding any other global or national security threat. Yet, we're spending 28 times as much on military security than climate security. Institute of Policy Studies | Guardian
"DoD recognizes the reality of climate change and the significant risk it poses to U.S. interests globally. The National Security Strategy, issued in February 2015, is clear that climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water. These impacts are already occurring, and the scope, scale, and intensity of these impacts are projected to increase over time." -U.S. Department of Defense Report on Security Implications of Climate Change
TRAINS ARE THE MOST SUSTAINABLE & GREEN FORM OF TRANSPORTATION
Electric high speed rail is the most energy efficient of all trains. A national high speed rail system is the centerpiece of a sustainable America, and will significantly reduce congestion and our dependence on cars and oil, while cutting our carbon emissions by epic proportions. The entire system can be powered by clean, safe renewable energy including wind, solar, geothermal, and ocean/tidal. Clean electric trains are a major form of daily transportation in numerous countries, and are the single most powerful transportation choice that can solve serious mobility, energy, environmental, economic, health, and social problems simultaneously - on a global scale.
A 2006 study by the Center for Clean Air Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology concluded that building a high-speed rail system across the US could result in 29 million fewer car trips and 500,000 fewer plane flights each year, saving 6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions - the equivalent of removing a million cars from the road annually.
The #1 solution is readily available, and can be built quickly...
The #1 solution delivers high capacity, long-term sustainable mobility...
Sustainable and Green
Not Sustainable or Green
"Tokyo's electric trains get 6,600 miles to the gallon." -USA Today, March 4, 2008
"Grid-connected traction offers the only realistic option for significantly reducing oil use in transportation over the next 10 years." -Anthony Perl
Sustainable and Green
Not Sustainable or Green
A National HSR system is the centerpiece of a sustainable America
Renewable Energy
Green, Electric Transportation
Walkable Urbanism
Sustainable transportation for America: 3-tiered electric rail network
Europe Opens Solar Train
China Opens Solar Train
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"Building a new system of high speed rail in America will be faster, cheaper, and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already over-burdened aviation system - and everybody stands to benefit." President Obama, April 16, 2009
Incredible energy efficiency of high speed trains. (Chart source: www.uic.org)
External costs lowest with rail. (Chart source: www.uic.org)
Calling out the media: We are "tired of seeing the media orchestrate splashy Jello-wrestling matches, under the guise of providing "balance," by weighing the US National Academies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and "well over 95 percent of scientists who actually work on climate change" against a "denialist"" -Closing the Window on Climate Change
"The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them." -Albert Einstein
jobs | economic recovery | mobility | safety | energy security | climate solution
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US HSR. Making it happen.
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