Al Gore agrees with me (or do I agree with him? same thing?) that:
large and rapid investments in a jobs-intensive infrastructure initiative is the best way to revive our economy in a quick and sustainable way. Many also agree that our economy will fall behind if we continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign oil every year. Moreover, national security experts in both parties agree that we face a dangerous strategic vulnerability if the world suddenly loses access to Middle Eastern oil.
It’s time for a new way. Obama ran on a change platform, let’s see if he’s able to lead America into the 21st century, as Bush and his policies have been stuck in the 20th.
I thought this is interesting.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/07/fourth_republic/
This article is about how the US has had three “republics”, essentially three periods of time that a single dogma and set of issues dominated US politics and social trends. Each was more or less ~70 years. Salon argues that we just entered into the fourth republic and the characteristics that dominates the first 36 years of each republic is “nation-building” ie massive investments in our infrastructure and a long-term view of betterment of the country.
I just wanted to throw that out there.
It’s dificult to come up with labor intensive – massive projects that result in immediate benefit to our society – so here’s a few I think might fit the bill.
1. Re-Forestation of our state, starting with the building of greenhouses to generate the billions of trees needed to make this possible. Scrubbing the atmosphere of SO2 into Oxygen is the benefit.
2. Cleaning the debris and nets from the floor of the Puget Sound with armies of volunteer “bounty hunters” who are rewarded for their ecological ‘catch of the day’ at your favorite local wharfside collection center. Make the reward high enough to generate lots of interest(who cares if anyone cheats, a net is a net, and dredged up washing machines without crustations are disqualified!)
3. Work parties to clean-up streams and wetlands of old dumps that pollute and poison our fish habitat.
4. WSDOT supervised day parties to restore roadside areas deemed to complicated to be addressed by litter crews, or micro projects requiring a backhoe to restore or reroute a culvert that enables fish migration further upstream.
5. Buffering ditches to slow runoff. This retains water for recharge of local aquifers, along with preventing swollen rivers and flood damage during large rain events.
WHAT ARE YOUR IDEAS?
OOps. should have been CO2 instead of SO2.
I dunno. Is it obvious that trawling the bottom of the Sound – even if you are removing debris – is good for the environment?
It could be more disruptive than the debris.
This sort of idea always reminds me of the national forest service using plans to put out forest fires. Which sounded like a good idea until we all realized that the small, chronics forest fires kept the forest from ever getting a huge fire that noone could put out. And that’s where we are now.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
#2 is kind of already done. I know people that grab camping gear once a year and make a beach trek around a portion of the Olympic peninsula picking up garbage. They leave bags at collection points, where others pick them up for disposal.
Not that they couldn’t use help.