This could be us but you playing
Poor South Dakota. Still has to rely on riding hogs for transportation.
I’d rather ride a hog than fly commercial
It’s the biggest flaw of this map. As a Minnesotan, I never want to set foot in the desolate wasteland known as North Dakota. I’d much rather pass through SD
tbh this isn’t nearly enough
In my fantasies, this is just the start of the federal network and doesn’t include the several intrastate networks
Please Lord, don’t let me turn into the contiguous 48 of the United States
I’m generally in favor of that except its timing is weird. Eugene to San Francisco should also be phase 1. It seems more interested in connecting a lot of places to somewhere first rather than making sure that when things connect they go where people want them to. It’s very clear phase 1 is entirely focused on making every region get a piece, which I get, but at the same time, the draw of HSR is connecting regions.
Like, yeah Seattle-Portland would be nice, it would get used, but it’s a 3 hour drive. The killer feature that gets the PNW on the high speed rail is going to California.
No coast to coast until phase 3, but phase 2 connects Denver to Albuquerque, Oklahoma City to Tulsa, and Toronto to Syracuse all disconnected to anything more significant at that time.
i look at this map every night before bed
Used EV sales are on the rise and could theoretically replace ICE cars, but that obviously isn’t very elastic and also relies (in the US) on foreign lithium.
So seconded: get fucked, car infrastructure, you absurdly wasteful source of energy dependence.
ok what are ICE cars LOL
electric cars also aren’t always the best if the electricity is generated by coal or something
Internal Combustion Engine, if memory serves.
once more: FUCK ICE!
Unless we’re talking about German ICE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity_Express
Chinga la migra!
Riiiight… let’s blame the consumer.
That’s not what I meant. I think fixing the issues our system is causing to global ecology have to come from systemic and societal changes, not from individual consumer choices.
So I guess the point of me saying electric cars aren’t the best always is to keep people from thinking “I bought an electric car, I’ve done everything I can for the environment so I can stop trying now.”
edit: spelling
You still use coal for power like it’s the 1800s? Solar panels are pretty cheap at this point.
Somehow, Trump is doing more to push renewables than any other president.
I have a phev car, and I almost never charge it - 2.5h of charging and going to parking garage to unplug was too much of a cost to be offset by “almost free” 50km of range. Guess who is charging the car now?
Internal Combustion Engine cars… ie
carbohydratehydrocarbon burners.I think you mean hydrocarbon*
yeah you want a carbohydrate-burning vehicle you get a bicycle
Fair. I am foreign, we call it benzine.
Benzene is a type of hydrocarbon, so neither is wrong.
True
So Italian cars? If only I could put pasta in my car, instead of gasoline…
Fuck yeah
electric cars also aren’t always the best if the electricity is generated by coal or something
Actually untrue. Because internal combustion engines (ICEs) are so inherently inefficient, even an EV powered 100% by electricity from a coal-fired plant (accounting for electrical transmission loss) comes out on top – and that assumption is ridiculously unrealistic.
The carbon cost of producing the EV is higher though, but yeah long term still better as long as you use it for like 5 years and don’t get a new one whenever it comes out like it’s an iPhone.
Past the first generation of Leafs when battery chemistry was kooky, it looks like EV batteries are lasting long term really well. With the moving parts reduced from something like 850 in a ICE car to something like 35 in an EV, its entirely likely EVs last way, way longer.
And when the car battery doesn’t hold enough charge for driving anymore, you can reuse it in battery banks to buffer solar and wind energy fluctuations.
After several more years, it can be recycled almost entirely to get the rare earth elements back from it.
you use it for like 5 years
You mean pay a subscription.
I think it only affects 20% of supply globally, so why can’t we adapt?
Because most system are run on a “just in time” model of logistics that means you dont store enough stock to cover emergencies, because storing extra stock costs money and may depriciate in value. So instead you get only the exact amount you need, when you need it.
Since every system is basicslly optomized to this cutthroat, zero reduancy way, we cant really just “take the hit” when 20% of oil/food/etc disapears overnight. It would be like telling people to “just eat 20% less” or " just drive 20% less." Both good advive, but we are creatures of habit that build routines around systems, so when someone fucks a system over, it causes rippling chaos. So what happens when 20% of a daily resource goes away in our global, market economy? All prices go up up! Then people have to break habits, and/or start breaking politicians. Well, we are in stage 1 and barely in the bad polling/protest stage of 2.
I don’t think oil is just in time, especially since most oil sailing the seas is crude and needs refining.
Car parts sure, oil, don’t think so.There are minimal buffers, regardless of the part of the cycle. Crude may need to be refined, but its just enough crude to refine just enough into gasoline just in time.
Even the “strategic reserves” that they released cant meet the demands beause those systems cant process the cached oil fast enough either. The US can only process something like 1 million barrels reserve/day, so its not comperable to a 15 million barrell/day disruption either.
Even the “safety system” cant keep up because Its just cut corners all the way down.
We can adapt and the process of doing that in capitalism involves prices rising and rising until people can’t afford things and stop buying them, thus reducing demand.
That’s super tough on people who don’t have much money and they don’t consume much anyway so when they tap out it doesn’t reduce demand much. So prices need to rise enough to hurt the middle class in developed countries, meaning the lower classes everywhere else have a really shit time.
Meanwhile there are some oil uses that are completely unable to be reduced, such as emergency services, food distribution, etc so the govt will intervene in the market to ensure that happens. This means all non-essential sectors of the economy must reduce usage by significantly more than 20%.
Meanwhile every country’s govt is doing everything it can to try to lock in 100% of their usual supply and some will succeed, leaving other countries to make much bigger cuts than 20%.
There will be lots of people making 100% cuts while a few make none. Humanity isn’t great at sharing especially at a global level.
Because capitalism is not designed around planning for events like this. Global trade is meant primarily for profits of the capitalist class. This means they remove redundancies that would provide stability to maximize profits.
This is a very simple explanation. But it’s why there is nothing in place prepared for this.
“Adapting” just be further capital consolidation as the working class suffers all of the losses and the capitalist class is protected in their bubble. They don’t plan for events like this, because they are able to whither the storm.
Their wealth is not measured in dollars. Their wealth is a reflection of how much more power they have over the working class of the world. Events like this only serve to solidify that power unless the working class of the world fights back.
Pretty depressing hearing the media about it here. Countless people were killed in missile strikes across the middle east today, now we talk about the real issue, petrol prices have gone up slightly.
It’s why you hear mostly about Iran and the strait and nothing of Lebanon until it influenced the ceasefire.
Israel has displaced around 1M people from Lebanon and are repeating the tactics of terror it enacted in Gaza. But I’d bet that the majority of people paying attention to the Iran war every day had no idea Israel was even invading Lebanon.
Unfortunately, most people of the world are trained to not care about anything until they can see a direct material impact on their lives personally. But, that means we have a real powerful method of getting people to care.
I don’t care if the masses are directed to the right conclusions because of a moral framework or if they are directed to that same conclusion because of a material impact on their lives. They just need a means of understanding where to correctly place blame when they are inevitably impacted.
That’s the difficult part. Because historically that blame is misplaced through xenophobia, racism, gender persecution, etc.
Even now, the reactionary forces in America have anchored their outrage to the correct criticisms of Israel. However, they all seem to be using Israel as a means to ignore the same crimes of the American empire. It is interesting. It seems to be a desperate move to let American politicians and the rich capitalist off the hook and place all blame solely on Israel as if American Oligarchy is not also to blame.
It’s similar to the liberal Zionist that would blame Netanyahu as the problem and attempt to wash away the sins of Israel with him being the sole problem. But, that ship has sailed. There is no way to repair the image of Israel.
My worry through this is that the right wing narratives around Israel will be much easier to spread than the more complicated but accurate left wing reality. I worry as the right wing movements (like Tucker Carlson) become more popular the left will struggle.
The left either agrees with the right that “it’s Israel controlling America” and lose the narrative by being seen as “weak” against Israel. This will come from many in the Democratic party remaining as loyal Zionist while the Republican party will quickly label their own Zionist as “RINO” but keep them around.
I think it’s very important the left (1) Purges and shames any liberal Zionist. They should be seen as Nazis. And (2) does not give the right wing the power of the narrative they want. It is not “Israel controlling America”. It is more than that. It is the crimes of the entire ruling (Epstein) class and those in Israel and those in America need to brought to answer for their crimes.
The US seems especially fucked politically. At least here in the UK we have greener options.
Definitely. But I do worry about many parts of Europe that seem to think they can watch the American empire turn to fascism and think they can simply observe it from afar. European fate is very much interwoven with the American Imperialism it relies upon for its economic power.
