http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/16/obama.speech/index.html

Energy and the economy need to be our first priorities. I’m wondering why Obama chose to talk about the nuclear topic. Any ideas?

You could also argue that the energy issues are due to having abandoned serious environment efforts since the Carter administration. If we had kept improving automobile fuel standards, American cars would be as efficient as European or Japanese and the total fleet would be getting 30+ mpg today. If we had kept insulating houses as part of utilities rate bases, we’d be using much less electricity and not need new plants. And without the pollution and CO2 buildup that more fuel use produces.

Much of the energy issue issues in American owe their present states to the overreaching environmentalism of the past 20 years. Like no new nuclear plants. Like no oil drilling, even reasonable oil drilling. Like no more 404 permits in Appalachia that would lead to needed flat-land should be allowed even if the mining sites are properly re-claimed in an environmentally sound way. Like not allowing coal-to-oil even where the clean coal technologies eliminate the excess CO2 (Obama supports this by the way, he’s a major proponent). Like no high-speed railways being allowed. Etc, etc.

We need balanced and sensible policies as well as the market conditions that now exist that take alternative energy strategies from a social do-gooder cause to a market opportunity. The energy issue is now on a fast-track to change.

No, we shouldn’t accept mediocrity in our infrastructure. But we do need more common-sense policy-making.

The first is maintenance of the existing built infrastructure — and I think it’s generally acknowledged that our roads, bridges, railroads, water and sewer systems are deteriorating for lack of investment. The electrical grid is overloaded and on the brink, as shown by California in 2000-01 and the Northeast in 2003. It’s this lack of attention to maintenance that I think Stephen is alluding to, rather than comparing the actual physical assets.

The second crisis is in building and adopting new infrastructure. The US has fallen from #1 in high speed internet connection speed to 15th of major countries. The average US download speed is 1.9 mbps, compared to 61 mbps in Japan, 54 in South Korea, 17 in France and 7 in Canada.

Where they overlap is places like high speed rail which is held back by the 1950’s track system, subject to breakdown, in most of the country.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/2007/bridge_collapse/

As I’ve said before, the energy “crisis” is an enormous opportunity. I dived-in myself completely 4 months ago and am loving it!!

But this article is most repulsive because the author draws general comparisons without citing any facts to support his premise.

Can we cite an actual study pointing to the infrastructure? Preferably one that would compare the two countries???