China is a poor example since to be comparable you'd need approximately 8 billion people on the American continent...
Places with really good train infrastructure tend to be places with really high population density. Even in China, there isn't great train infrastructure everywhere, just in areas with very high population density. The areas with low population density such as the mountainous regions don't tend to have lots of great train service. It's particularly good in the highest population density regions.
Similarly, Japan has great train service since there are 250 million people on a small series of islands.
Europe is another example, where a relatively large number of people live in large dense cities throughout Europe. Many Europeans come to North America and assume travel will be similar to Europe where you can visit a bunch of places in a short period of time because they're relatively close together, and then are shocked for example to learn that it takes 4 days to drive from Toronto to Winnipeg and most of the area between is just bush with little to no people living there. Winnipeg only has about a million people. Saskatoon and Regina are only 250,000 people each. Calgary is about 1.4 million and Edmonton is about 1 million, and even in BC you're only getting 3 million people province-wide in a nation 30% larger than the entire nation of France. When you take a flight over the country you see huge forests for hours at a time. The US is different of course, but lots of parts of it aren't that different. There's some highly populated areas, but there's some similarly unpopulated ones and whereas a plane simply ignores those areas, a train needs to travel through every inch.
There are regions with train service in America. In Canada, I've been on good trains in Vancouver, Toronto, and I've also taken trains in Ottawa. In all 3 cases it was the highest population density in Canada. There are also decent trains in New York and California, both regions with high population density.
Under both capitalist liberal democracy or authoritarianism, the construction of a common good requires two things: enough people to justify doing the project, and enough other stuff going on (or potentially going on in the future) to justify the project. Under both systems you burn through different forms of capital to get these projects done, and so eventually the laws of physics will pull you to the ground if you're doing wasteful things that don't help the people or the state.
In both cases, a certain solution must compete with other solutions for time and money. In the case of trains, they compete with planes for long distances and cars in shorter distances. The benefit of trains is they can carry overwhelmingly large numbers of people very efficiently and so if you have the population density you can carry lots of passengers and so justify your rail system. On the other hand, if there just aren't that many people then there just isn't anyone to use the system and so you're using all these resources for basically nobody, particularly if the potential users have other options and so take a car or a bus or a plane.
In the early industrial period, the monopoly trains had on travel allowed a lot of inefficiency. Railway companies built entire towns were built every so often to ensure there was water and coal for trains, and there were also stores in each so people could buy stuff along the way (or for those living in the towns) and in those towns the railway was virtually the entire economy but there was no other option for travel so that level of inefficiency for passenger travel was nonetheless justified. I went to one such town. All that's there today is a clearing, a railroad track, some building foundations if you look carefully, and an unkept graveyard.
Having higher population density would justify lots of investment in trains because you'd have so many people to move. The regions of China and Japan with great train service are highly populated, and to justify really good trains everywhere in Canada and the US, you'd need high population density everywhere. Towns of 5000 or 10,000 people would need 10x that number of people, and regions with nobody in them (of which there's lots) would need lots of people.
Given that the geographical reality is that North America has much more favorable geography than the bulk of China which is largely unpopulated and doesn't have many trains as a result, to have the equivalent would easily require 8 billion people to justify a really great investment in continent-wide rail. Even that may be a low estimate given just how much space we're talking about and the scale required to justify all the expense. Planes only require an airport at the source and destination and a plane. Considering that there might be only a few dozen major destinations, it is obvious why air travel has essentially taken over the long range travel market.
When it comes to climate comparisons, I think it isn't so simple as "trains use less fuel per passenger". To get from new York to California by rail you'd need to destroy huge amounts of nature, and burn through massive amounts of energy, including in the production of steel and concrete in unimaginable amounts, particularly for high speed rail systems. I suspect the calculus might not be so favorable in that light, especially if the trains are mostly empty because they don't solve a problem in many cases along American routes.
Similarly, Japan has great train service since there are 250 million people on a small series of islands.
Europe is another example, where a relatively large number of people live in large dense cities throughout Europe. Many Europeans come to North America and assume travel will be similar to Europe where you can visit a bunch of places in a short period of time because they're relatively close together, and then are shocked for example to learn that it takes 4 days to drive from Toronto to Winnipeg and most of the area between is just bush with little to no people living there. Winnipeg only has about a million people. Saskatoon and Regina are only 250,000 people each. Calgary is about 1.4 million and Edmonton is about 1 million, and even in BC you're only getting 3 million people province-wide in a nation 30% larger than the entire nation of France. When you take a flight over the country you see huge forests for hours at a time. The US is different of course, but lots of parts of it aren't that different. There's some highly populated areas, but there's some similarly unpopulated ones and whereas a plane simply ignores those areas, a train needs to travel through every inch.
There are regions with train service in America. In Canada, I've been on good trains in Vancouver, Toronto, and I've also taken trains in Ottawa. In all 3 cases it was the highest population density in Canada. There are also decent trains in New York and California, both regions with high population density.
Under both capitalist liberal democracy or authoritarianism, the construction of a common good requires two things: enough people to justify doing the project, and enough other stuff going on (or potentially going on in the future) to justify the project. Under both systems you burn through different forms of capital to get these projects done, and so eventually the laws of physics will pull you to the ground if you're doing wasteful things that don't help the people or the state.
In both cases, a certain solution must compete with other solutions for time and money. In the case of trains, they compete with planes for long distances and cars in shorter distances. The benefit of trains is they can carry overwhelmingly large numbers of people very efficiently and so if you have the population density you can carry lots of passengers and so justify your rail system. On the other hand, if there just aren't that many people then there just isn't anyone to use the system and so you're using all these resources for basically nobody, particularly if the potential users have other options and so take a car or a bus or a plane.
In the early industrial period, the monopoly trains had on travel allowed a lot of inefficiency. Railway companies built entire towns were built every so often to ensure there was water and coal for trains, and there were also stores in each so people could buy stuff along the way (or for those living in the towns) and in those towns the railway was virtually the entire economy but there was no other option for travel so that level of inefficiency for passenger travel was nonetheless justified. I went to one such town. All that's there today is a clearing, a railroad track, some building foundations if you look carefully, and an unkept graveyard.
Having higher population density would justify lots of investment in trains because you'd have so many people to move. The regions of China and Japan with great train service are highly populated, and to justify really good trains everywhere in Canada and the US, you'd need high population density everywhere. Towns of 5000 or 10,000 people would need 10x that number of people, and regions with nobody in them (of which there's lots) would need lots of people.
Given that the geographical reality is that North America has much more favorable geography than the bulk of China which is largely unpopulated and doesn't have many trains as a result, to have the equivalent would easily require 8 billion people to justify a really great investment in continent-wide rail. Even that may be a low estimate given just how much space we're talking about and the scale required to justify all the expense. Planes only require an airport at the source and destination and a plane. Considering that there might be only a few dozen major destinations, it is obvious why air travel has essentially taken over the long range travel market.
When it comes to climate comparisons, I think it isn't so simple as "trains use less fuel per passenger". To get from new York to California by rail you'd need to destroy huge amounts of nature, and burn through massive amounts of energy, including in the production of steel and concrete in unimaginable amounts, particularly for high speed rail systems. I suspect the calculus might not be so favorable in that light, especially if the trains are mostly empty because they don't solve a problem in many cases along American routes.
You're not the first person to suggest a blog, but it's more about the journey. I'm thankful to have people cool enough to have conversations about things with and who are willing to tolerate my big walls of text as I try to figure out the world with everyone.
Typically I'm a free market guy, but certain things sort of need to be set up as common goods, and if they aren't then you're just getting crony capitalism where the state steals people's money at the barrel of a gun, builds a thing using the power of government to steamroll people who own the land, then hands it to their friends. Even if someone else had billions of dollars to build something similar they can't because they can't steamroll through all the stuff you would have needed.
Even if you use renewable energy (and let's pick a version like hydroelectric energy that we know can run for centuries once built), you have to consider the total environmental cost of building and maintaining massive rail lines.
In 2009 I did a study showing that if you used 30% of all renewable and nuclear energy on earth at that time you could replace the cement industry's use of fossil fuels with electric. The thing I didn't notice at the time is that the creation of cement inherently releases CO2 even if no fossil fuels are burned. In the year since, I've come to realize that limestone is in fact the only real geological term carbon sink, and stuff like trees don't hold carbon for very long in geological timeframes.
In the same study, I showed you could replace hydrocarbons as an energy source in producing steel if you used another 30% of all renewable and nuclear energy on earth at the time. The thing I didn't realize at the time is you can't create steel without coal because steel is iron and carbon, and the carbon comes from a derivative of coal.
In both cases, fossil fuels are also required to gather the raw materials. Mining is a fossil fuel intensive operation. Some people might counter with "but look at this mine that's fully electric!", but I'm aware of such mines and usually they aren't telling you about the fossil fuels they use. One mine I'm aware of claims to be "fully electric" but burns a city worth of propane every day in the winter to heat their mine air. It also conveniently leaves out the ancillary fossil fuel use since you don't deliver 30T rock trucks (or other supplies) hundreds of kilometers into the middle of nowhere with Tesla transports.
When you're talking about tens of thousands of kilometers of rail, the amount of steel and cement required are almost beyond human comprehension.
I forgot to mention that a high-speed rail system needs to have a much different level of workmanship compared to a regular rail. For example there are rail systems up in Northern manitoba, but those trains barely move, and so if you wanted to turn those into High-Speed rail you'd have to create a powerful foundation which would likely be made out of steel and concrete along with the rails themselves.
Even if you use renewable energy (and let's pick a version like hydroelectric energy that we know can run for centuries once built), you have to consider the total environmental cost of building and maintaining massive rail lines.
In 2009 I did a study showing that if you used 30% of all renewable and nuclear energy on earth at that time you could replace the cement industry's use of fossil fuels with electric. The thing I didn't notice at the time is that the creation of cement inherently releases CO2 even if no fossil fuels are burned. In the year since, I've come to realize that limestone is in fact the only real geological term carbon sink, and stuff like trees don't hold carbon for very long in geological timeframes.
In the same study, I showed you could replace hydrocarbons as an energy source in producing steel if you used another 30% of all renewable and nuclear energy on earth at the time. The thing I didn't realize at the time is you can't create steel without coal because steel is iron and carbon, and the carbon comes from a derivative of coal.
In both cases, fossil fuels are also required to gather the raw materials. Mining is a fossil fuel intensive operation. Some people might counter with "but look at this mine that's fully electric!", but I'm aware of such mines and usually they aren't telling you about the fossil fuels they use. One mine I'm aware of claims to be "fully electric" but burns a city worth of propane every day in the winter to heat their mine air. It also conveniently leaves out the ancillary fossil fuel use since you don't deliver 30T rock trucks (or other supplies) hundreds of kilometers into the middle of nowhere with Tesla transports.
When you're talking about tens of thousands of kilometers of rail, the amount of steel and cement required are almost beyond human comprehension.
I forgot to mention that a high-speed rail system needs to have a much different level of workmanship compared to a regular rail. For example there are rail systems up in Northern manitoba, but those trains barely move, and so if you wanted to turn those into High-Speed rail you'd have to create a powerful foundation which would likely be made out of steel and concrete along with the rails themselves.
I mentioned (though and it was an edit so you may have missed it) that you can't do high speed rail on normal rail infrastructure and so you'd need a lot more material. It'd need to be stable enough to handle the loads of high speed rail as well as I'm sure a number of other factors you don't need to consider with standard rail. If it was that easy they'd just pop a new train on the old tracks more or less.
Coal almost exclusively comes from an era hundreds of millions of years ago called the carboniferous period before any organisms learned to digest cellulose. After that period, wood that would just sit there and sink into coal beds instead gets converted back into CO2 by fungi.
Calling construction an upgrade doesn't mean it doesn't use material. Especially if the upgrade requires fundamental reconstruction, so for example tearing up all the old rail lines on gravel and timbers and replacing them with a much higher quality steel on a cement foundation (which admittedly may not be required, but for things like the northern manitoba route I spoke of you'd basically need to do that to even get the trains running at normal speed, let alone high speed).
The CO2 in a tree is gathered over years and years, whereas rotting can occur in a relatively short period of time. It ends up back in the air, and plants around them which take years and years to gather carbon through photosynthesis won't collect it immediately.
Moreover, you can't say for certain whether a spot will even stay a forest on geological timeframes, and the odds are it will not. There have been 5 mass extinction events on earth, and 3 of them happened since the end of the carboniferous period. The End Permian event was caused by volcanic activity releasing large amounts of CO2 and H2S which caused acid rain and ocean acidification (killing 96% of species), the End Triassic event was caused by underwater volcanic activity which caused global warming and a change in composition in the oceans (killing 80% of species), and the End Cretaceous event was caused by a meteor impact which caused global cataclysm including global cooling (killing 76% of species). Besides that, there have been 13 other mass extinction events if you include the current Holocene mass extinction event. Antarctica was once part of a massive forest and today is an icy waste, and Australia was once almost entirely forest and today is mostly desert.
That's why the coal exists for the 60 million years after plants evolved to grow cellulose and before something else evolved the ability to digest cellulose, and essentially disappears. During the carboniferous period, anywhere there was forest (particularly swampy forests), that carbon essentially became part of the landscape and over 60 million years accumulated and was exposed to anerobic conditions thanks to the swampy conditions, and if the forest died, the carbon remained because there was nowhere for it to go and often got driven underground by geological processes over millions of years. I'd expect that millions of years of sedimental deposition by itself (even through processes like wind) would be enough to cover up the tree beds over time. The reason it stops after that is the tree beds don't stick around and become deposited carbon, they become CO2 through the metabolic processes of fungus.
By contrast, the process of life producing rock such as carbonates is a long term place for carbon to go. The white cliffs of dover for example are formed from the bodies of millions of years of aquatic life forms dying and falling to the ocean bed, and the parts that don't rot, oxidize, and aren't eaten by other creatures end up sticking around and packing down, creating entire mountains of carbon impregnated rock.
Honestly, one of the biggest shocks in my life was reading geological history and realizing that stuff we think would be important ended up being meaningless, while stuff we think of as insignificant ends up becoming incredibly important when you're talking about geological timeframes.
Moreover, you can't say for certain whether a spot will even stay a forest on geological timeframes, and the odds are it will not. There have been 5 mass extinction events on earth, and 3 of them happened since the end of the carboniferous period. The End Permian event was caused by volcanic activity releasing large amounts of CO2 and H2S which caused acid rain and ocean acidification (killing 96% of species), the End Triassic event was caused by underwater volcanic activity which caused global warming and a change in composition in the oceans (killing 80% of species), and the End Cretaceous event was caused by a meteor impact which caused global cataclysm including global cooling (killing 76% of species). Besides that, there have been 13 other mass extinction events if you include the current Holocene mass extinction event. Antarctica was once part of a massive forest and today is an icy waste, and Australia was once almost entirely forest and today is mostly desert.
That's why the coal exists for the 60 million years after plants evolved to grow cellulose and before something else evolved the ability to digest cellulose, and essentially disappears. During the carboniferous period, anywhere there was forest (particularly swampy forests), that carbon essentially became part of the landscape and over 60 million years accumulated and was exposed to anerobic conditions thanks to the swampy conditions, and if the forest died, the carbon remained because there was nowhere for it to go and often got driven underground by geological processes over millions of years. I'd expect that millions of years of sedimental deposition by itself (even through processes like wind) would be enough to cover up the tree beds over time. The reason it stops after that is the tree beds don't stick around and become deposited carbon, they become CO2 through the metabolic processes of fungus.
By contrast, the process of life producing rock such as carbonates is a long term place for carbon to go. The white cliffs of dover for example are formed from the bodies of millions of years of aquatic life forms dying and falling to the ocean bed, and the parts that don't rot, oxidize, and aren't eaten by other creatures end up sticking around and packing down, creating entire mountains of carbon impregnated rock.
Honestly, one of the biggest shocks in my life was reading geological history and realizing that stuff we think would be important ended up being meaningless, while stuff we think of as insignificant ends up becoming incredibly important when you're talking about geological timeframes.
I'd be interested in seeing how that wager works out. I might be overestimating the amount of construction required to convert an average piece of rail to high speed rail. On the other hand, I do know from some previous research into rail accidents that higher speed routes often require route redesign. For example you need to redesign corners because something you can safely take at 40mph is suicidal at 200mph. Also, as I keep on mentioning with the paths in northern Manitoba, you could end up needing to do a lot of work on a piece of land including bringing in a lot of carbon intensive material, replacing relatively carbon neutral crushed rock with a stronger foundation. I'm also not sure if a high speed train would require additional barriers to keep wildlife or people or debris away from tracks compared to standard rail.
I did a bit more research, and it looks like high speed rail lines would likely require significant ground work (digging up existing areas and replacing what was there with an engineered underlay, as well as improving drainage in marginal areas such as my often referenced manitoba track), and instead of traditional track and timber rail ties, they'd use something like a ballastless track, which is continuous cement with steel mounts for tracks, so anywhere you go you'd be doing a lot of work and using a lot of cement where you used none, and a lot more steel per meter.
As for roads, that's a good question too. Asphalt is a highly recycled material, but it isn't free either, and some new asphalt needs to be added. Also, how does a highway compare to a high speed rail in terms of what's required? Trains are heavier than anything on the road by far, but I'd guess there's a lot less traffic on any given train line than a given road.
Overall, my mind is still imagining trying to replace new york to LA, and the costs involved with those, since I don't think either of us disagree that existing rail could likely be upgraded in relatively small regions I mentioned at the beginning that already have viable rail systems that have proven themselves. My argument has been that for something like the new york to la route, an airplane may be the most environmentally conscious method because while you burn a lot of fuel you don't need to build or maintain any infrastucture between the points.
I did a bit more research, and it looks like high speed rail lines would likely require significant ground work (digging up existing areas and replacing what was there with an engineered underlay, as well as improving drainage in marginal areas such as my often referenced manitoba track), and instead of traditional track and timber rail ties, they'd use something like a ballastless track, which is continuous cement with steel mounts for tracks, so anywhere you go you'd be doing a lot of work and using a lot of cement where you used none, and a lot more steel per meter.
As for roads, that's a good question too. Asphalt is a highly recycled material, but it isn't free either, and some new asphalt needs to be added. Also, how does a highway compare to a high speed rail in terms of what's required? Trains are heavier than anything on the road by far, but I'd guess there's a lot less traffic on any given train line than a given road.
Overall, my mind is still imagining trying to replace new york to LA, and the costs involved with those, since I don't think either of us disagree that existing rail could likely be upgraded in relatively small regions I mentioned at the beginning that already have viable rail systems that have proven themselves. My argument has been that for something like the new york to la route, an airplane may be the most environmentally conscious method because while you burn a lot of fuel you don't need to build or maintain any infrastucture between the points.
Seems like this scenario is quickly losing a lot of the high speed in high speed rail, we've just got more expensive trains going slow.
There's additional risks to lines where you're constantly having to change speed. A lot of rail accidents have occurred over the years where trains were supposed to slow down for a certain corner and didn't, which can result in derailments which have both a large human cost and a large environmental cost if there's a bad accident you're going to have to replace whatever is destroyed.
I've criticized people for jumping immediately to a safety argument when it comes to things like small EVs because if it's as people say and the environmental impact is an urgent existential threat to humanity then additional risks are something we need to consider and perhaps make a decision to accept (put another way, does your right to personal safety trump humanity's right to safety as a species?), but I do think the calculus changes somewhat if you're talking about overwhelming environmental consequences in the event of an accident, and it's another thing to plug into an equation considering the cost between the two.
Up here in Canada we have a little airline called Bearskin (Also known as "scareskin", but that's another story) that does a milk run of all the different communities, compared to the big airlines which tend to just hop between major centers. It does take a lot more resources to do a milk run (and presumably would also be so with a high speed rail line that does a milk run), so flights with bearskin tend to be an order of magnitude more expensive than standard flights, representing in part the fact that hitting each little community between new york and la isn't free, either economically or environmentally.
There's additional risks to lines where you're constantly having to change speed. A lot of rail accidents have occurred over the years where trains were supposed to slow down for a certain corner and didn't, which can result in derailments which have both a large human cost and a large environmental cost if there's a bad accident you're going to have to replace whatever is destroyed.
I've criticized people for jumping immediately to a safety argument when it comes to things like small EVs because if it's as people say and the environmental impact is an urgent existential threat to humanity then additional risks are something we need to consider and perhaps make a decision to accept (put another way, does your right to personal safety trump humanity's right to safety as a species?), but I do think the calculus changes somewhat if you're talking about overwhelming environmental consequences in the event of an accident, and it's another thing to plug into an equation considering the cost between the two.
Up here in Canada we have a little airline called Bearskin (Also known as "scareskin", but that's another story) that does a milk run of all the different communities, compared to the big airlines which tend to just hop between major centers. It does take a lot more resources to do a milk run (and presumably would also be so with a high speed rail line that does a milk run), so flights with bearskin tend to be an order of magnitude more expensive than standard flights, representing in part the fact that hitting each little community between new york and la isn't free, either economically or environmentally.
"Carbon-free Steel" is a contradiction in terms. It's like saying hydrogen-free water. It's part of the fundamental make-up of the thing. It was a mistake I made as well in my 2009 study.
The steel itself gets its properties from carbon in an alloy with the iron. You can use hydrogen to make sure the steel is in an oxygen poor environment, but you can't replace hydrogen with carbon in the metallurgy of the metal.
So what's really going on here is that it's a reduction in carbon in one or two parts of the process, but it isn't carbon free steel even at the point of manufacture, just steel with reduced requirements for carbon emissions. Moreover, the mining process is very likely to require fossil fuels, as well as the processes for creating reagents and things like the anode mentioned in the article. I believe earlier I talked extensively about looking at the entire supply chain, because it's important not to just look at one part of the process to make assumptions about things being carbon neutral or good for the environment.
Another thing I need to remind you of is that every step using green energy will require a significant portion of the world's renewable electricity generation at scale. This is one of the things about doing stuff at an industrial scale, that something perfectly clean in a lab has a large impact at scale. If you're using electricity to heat the ore, electricity to run electrolysis, electricity to melt the refined iron, electricity to hydrolyze water for the blast furnace, that's each a step that will use significant amounts of renewable energy that will then not be available for other uses. Given that it must be base load electricity, that could be a significant problem.
With respect to your comments that trains slowing down for sections of track or for sharp turns would be also at risk while entering or leaving a station, there's a lot of risk analysis that goes into something like that because both situations are potentially dangerous.
There's a big difference between varying speed in a straight line and varying speed because you're going to hit a turn too fast, since failing to slow down at a station could potentially just mean going past the stop, whereas hitting a corner too fast could derail the entire train.
In London in 2016, an accident occurred on a railway track that was converted into light rail. The new rail stop needed a sharp turn to be added to the route. The turn required speed changes and the driver failed to change speed and blew the turn. The train derailed, landing on its side. 7 people were killed, 19 were seriously injured, and 42 recieved minor injuries.
However, stations are potentially dangerous places as well. A 2002 crash in England, one of a surprising number of deadly crashes in that time period, caused by a faulty set of points. It killed 5, severely harmed 10, hurt 70, and demolished a large part of the train station. There are also known major accidents where trains failed to speed up correctly or slow down correctly at a station causing deadly accidents.
Trains are as a matter of statistical fact less safe than planes. It's still safer than riding in a car, but when things go wrong they can go insanely, horribly wrong -- the deadliest train accident I was able to find killed almost 2000 people (though it wasn't directly related to speeding up, slowing down, or turning but rather a natural disaster). The deadliest aircraft disaster I'm aware of was in 1977, when a pair of 747s collided on the ground. Just as with rail where station stops are particularly dangerous parts of the trip, the most hazardous time for airplanes is when they're taking off and landing, and in that case 248 passengers on one plane and 335 on the other were killed, with only 61 people managing to escape, all while the planes were on the ground.
Unlike rail, airplanes are generally safe once in the air since they're not reliant on tracks and there aren't obstacles or unexpected situations such as railway crossings for vehicles or pedestrians, particularly when they're flying at high altitude since while it's true a plane that catastrophically fails at altitude is going to kill all aboard, that's typically not the way things happen. I'm aware of one example of that happening on an Air China flight in 2002 where a plane hit its tail on the runway during a difficult landing in 1980 and instead of fully replacing the damaged portion of the tail as the Boeing manual required, the technicians welded a patch on instead. That's a relatively unique example.
The steel itself gets its properties from carbon in an alloy with the iron. You can use hydrogen to make sure the steel is in an oxygen poor environment, but you can't replace hydrogen with carbon in the metallurgy of the metal.
So what's really going on here is that it's a reduction in carbon in one or two parts of the process, but it isn't carbon free steel even at the point of manufacture, just steel with reduced requirements for carbon emissions. Moreover, the mining process is very likely to require fossil fuels, as well as the processes for creating reagents and things like the anode mentioned in the article. I believe earlier I talked extensively about looking at the entire supply chain, because it's important not to just look at one part of the process to make assumptions about things being carbon neutral or good for the environment.
Another thing I need to remind you of is that every step using green energy will require a significant portion of the world's renewable electricity generation at scale. This is one of the things about doing stuff at an industrial scale, that something perfectly clean in a lab has a large impact at scale. If you're using electricity to heat the ore, electricity to run electrolysis, electricity to melt the refined iron, electricity to hydrolyze water for the blast furnace, that's each a step that will use significant amounts of renewable energy that will then not be available for other uses. Given that it must be base load electricity, that could be a significant problem.
With respect to your comments that trains slowing down for sections of track or for sharp turns would be also at risk while entering or leaving a station, there's a lot of risk analysis that goes into something like that because both situations are potentially dangerous.
There's a big difference between varying speed in a straight line and varying speed because you're going to hit a turn too fast, since failing to slow down at a station could potentially just mean going past the stop, whereas hitting a corner too fast could derail the entire train.
In London in 2016, an accident occurred on a railway track that was converted into light rail. The new rail stop needed a sharp turn to be added to the route. The turn required speed changes and the driver failed to change speed and blew the turn. The train derailed, landing on its side. 7 people were killed, 19 were seriously injured, and 42 recieved minor injuries.
However, stations are potentially dangerous places as well. A 2002 crash in England, one of a surprising number of deadly crashes in that time period, caused by a faulty set of points. It killed 5, severely harmed 10, hurt 70, and demolished a large part of the train station. There are also known major accidents where trains failed to speed up correctly or slow down correctly at a station causing deadly accidents.
Trains are as a matter of statistical fact less safe than planes. It's still safer than riding in a car, but when things go wrong they can go insanely, horribly wrong -- the deadliest train accident I was able to find killed almost 2000 people (though it wasn't directly related to speeding up, slowing down, or turning but rather a natural disaster). The deadliest aircraft disaster I'm aware of was in 1977, when a pair of 747s collided on the ground. Just as with rail where station stops are particularly dangerous parts of the trip, the most hazardous time for airplanes is when they're taking off and landing, and in that case 248 passengers on one plane and 335 on the other were killed, with only 61 people managing to escape, all while the planes were on the ground.
Unlike rail, airplanes are generally safe once in the air since they're not reliant on tracks and there aren't obstacles or unexpected situations such as railway crossings for vehicles or pedestrians, particularly when they're flying at high altitude since while it's true a plane that catastrophically fails at altitude is going to kill all aboard, that's typically not the way things happen. I'm aware of one example of that happening on an Air China flight in 2002 where a plane hit its tail on the runway during a difficult landing in 1980 and instead of fully replacing the damaged portion of the tail as the Boeing manual required, the technicians welded a patch on instead. That's a relatively unique example.
I'd throw your logic right back at you.
Are you sure all the reasons I've given why trains aren't particularly popular in the sparse population of continental North America outside of specific high population density areas aren't the reasons why there are already trains in a limited number of places but other places that had trains for a long time saw passenger service end? Why are you so fixated on this one solution?
Have you ever heard the phrase “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world”? You might think it was someone inspirational who said it -- maybe Steve Jobs or Mahatma Gandhi? It was said by the recently convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes about the multi-billion fraudulent company Theranos she created and led.
As a technologist, I often end up having to be the person reminding everyone else about the reasons why promoted technologies aren't going to be the panacea the salesmen claim. Despite being a highly technical person who embraces technologies, I'm also a boots on the ground guy who has to make promises using technology and keep them professionally, so I'm used to having to be skeptical of technological claims because a lot of the time they aren't telling you the whole story.
As someone who works industrial maintenance, once the project team has their cake and their party and pat each other on the back for their successful project completed on time and under budget before moving onto the next, I remain to see what happens next, and I'm often personally accountable for trying to pick up the pieces when reality hits.
I often have to experience the reality of failed projects. Entire huge constructions that take tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and took huge amounts of resources to build sitting and rotting because they were sold on broken promises. It would shock you the waste that can just happen and after a lot of 16 hour days and perhaps even more material being used sometimes for months or years on end it's abandoned.
Besides that, as a scientist, I have to rely on the scientific method. You aren't trying to prove your point correct, you're trying to prove yourself wrong, and if you can't then maybe you're right. If there's a bunch of reasons it might go wrong that nobody is talking about, that doesn't mean it is going to go wrong, but it's a reason to be skeptical.
I'm open to being wrong, and I would like to be, but experience tells me to be careful because ignoring important details has often led to massive waste and at times it has led to massive human suffering.
You asked in another post, here's a link to a US government website showing fatality statistics for different forms of transportation and showing the extraordinary safety of the airline industry: https://www.bts.gov/content/transportation-fatalities-mode
Anyway, it's been a fun conversation.
Are you sure all the reasons I've given why trains aren't particularly popular in the sparse population of continental North America outside of specific high population density areas aren't the reasons why there are already trains in a limited number of places but other places that had trains for a long time saw passenger service end? Why are you so fixated on this one solution?
Have you ever heard the phrase “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world”? You might think it was someone inspirational who said it -- maybe Steve Jobs or Mahatma Gandhi? It was said by the recently convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes about the multi-billion fraudulent company Theranos she created and led.
As a technologist, I often end up having to be the person reminding everyone else about the reasons why promoted technologies aren't going to be the panacea the salesmen claim. Despite being a highly technical person who embraces technologies, I'm also a boots on the ground guy who has to make promises using technology and keep them professionally, so I'm used to having to be skeptical of technological claims because a lot of the time they aren't telling you the whole story.
As someone who works industrial maintenance, once the project team has their cake and their party and pat each other on the back for their successful project completed on time and under budget before moving onto the next, I remain to see what happens next, and I'm often personally accountable for trying to pick up the pieces when reality hits.
I often have to experience the reality of failed projects. Entire huge constructions that take tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and took huge amounts of resources to build sitting and rotting because they were sold on broken promises. It would shock you the waste that can just happen and after a lot of 16 hour days and perhaps even more material being used sometimes for months or years on end it's abandoned.
Besides that, as a scientist, I have to rely on the scientific method. You aren't trying to prove your point correct, you're trying to prove yourself wrong, and if you can't then maybe you're right. If there's a bunch of reasons it might go wrong that nobody is talking about, that doesn't mean it is going to go wrong, but it's a reason to be skeptical.
I'm open to being wrong, and I would like to be, but experience tells me to be careful because ignoring important details has often led to massive waste and at times it has led to massive human suffering.
You asked in another post, here's a link to a US government website showing fatality statistics for different forms of transportation and showing the extraordinary safety of the airline industry: https://www.bts.gov/content/transportation-fatalities-mode
Anyway, it's been a fun conversation.
I'll also add that my point of view is more nuanced than "Trains bad" -- Of the proven technologies I'd like to see have more widespread adoption, we know trolleys both tracked and trackless are proven and were in service in the worst conditions for 50 years before being converted to fossil fuel buses which are now being converted to what I consider objectively worse but more expensive battery electric buses, I think that's something we need to revisit in most cities. Similar to my support for hydroelectric and geothermal but my skepticism of widespread adoption of wind or solar -- One of them has a century of proven reliability under bad conditions, the other is always waiting for another breakthrough that's been 5 years off for 25 years.
Geez I wrote too much on this one....
Wind is one that can be useful, but is variable and so isn't going to be great for baseload, just supplementation. For that reason, saying a certain % power is generated by wind or solar is a bit misleading because it implies if you increased your install base by the inverse % then you'd be able to produce all your power that way, when in reality you'd just be producing excess power on the good days and you'd be burning gas on the bad days. By contrast, hydroelectric consistently runs some jurisdictions 100% 24/7/365 -- Manitoba, Quebec, and Norway being examples.
As I've mentioned in other cases, jurisdictions with high levels of hydroelectric tend to have low electricity cost, and this has a double effect on reducing carbon emissions -- the low carbon emissions of electricity generation means electricity is better, and the inexpensive electricity will offset use of fossil fuels for home heating or industry. With already mature technologies such as electric rail, streetcars, and trackless street cars, inexpensive electricity can also break into transportation sectors.
for that same reason, it's important to choose green strategies that will reduce electricity costs. If you end up in an Australia situation where electricity costs go from some of the least expensive on earth to some of the most expensive on earth, then it might feel really good, but people will switch to fossil fuels because they can't afford not to.
In Ontario Canada, the IESO (one of Ontario's power industry regulators) has some really good data on hourly electricity generation: https://ieso.ca/power-data
The second tab is the one with the power mix.
Today the majority of baseload in the province was mostly nuclear, a good chunk was hydroelectric, there was a pittance of biomass, and a decent chunk was wind which lasted all day, but if you go back to June 3-9, you'll see that the nuclear and hydroelectric continued to provide consistent baseload generation every day, but on June 3rd the wind was as little as 5% of the consistent level we saw today. On those days, the difference was made up by running the gas power plants. The solar power is interesting in just how little there is (it appears that there is a lot more installed capacity connected to local grids rather than transmission grids), but also the characteristic of the generation.
The characteristics of each form of electricity generation are fairly interesting seen through the lens of the data.
Some people point to potential battery systems to mitigate the problems with solar in particular, but also wind to an extent, but just look at Ontario -- I can't help but think that the amount of batteries required to store 20GW of electricity overnight (so it's not entirely correct since solar is sinusoidal not off/on) but let's say 240GWH of storage) and then enough wind/solar to produce enough electricity during production periods to charge those batteries would be absolutely absurd, and have a cataclysmic environmental impact compared to finding some more big rivers for some run of river dams or places a traditional hydro dam could be built.
That being said, chemical batteries are probably just not the right choice, but pumped water storage might be... The largest pumped water storage system in the world is the Bath County pumped storage station, and at 24GWH of storage and a maximum generating capacity of 3GW, then 10x of these roughly 3.85 Billion dollar facilities could store power overnight for just the province of Ontario, and the physical footprint of that facility is surprisingly small for the amount of power it can store. (By contrast, the largest battery electric storage facility in the world is orders of magnitude smaller)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station
A big difference between chemical and pumped water storage systems is that water is essentially eternal, whereas chemical batteries die in a decade or two and so even if you make the investment you'll need to redo everything shortly afterwards, and depending on the battery technology it may or may not be recyclable -- lead acid batteries are highly recyclable, but lithium batteries are significantly less so.
For longer term issues like no wind, you might need much more storage -- rather than storing enough energy for the day, you might need enough for a week or a month, which would take an overwhelming investment and turn it into something virtually impossible for the economy to support (I suppose maybe they could store a lot more instantaneous energy by just building bigger reservoirs mind you so you wouldn't need to increase the costs by 14 or 60)
And then there's the fact that you'd need to build enough intermittent energy generation to charge the batteries or fill the reservoirs in addition to running things at the time, so at that point you'd need potentially need not 100% but 200% or more of the total amount of energy generation.
So all of that suggests it makes sense to try to build sources of energy that can handle baseload sources and consistently provide electricity every day. The 40 billion dollars to build the pumped storage system alone could potentially produce enough hydroelectricity to power the entire province and much of the nearby US states.
Wind is one that can be useful, but is variable and so isn't going to be great for baseload, just supplementation. For that reason, saying a certain % power is generated by wind or solar is a bit misleading because it implies if you increased your install base by the inverse % then you'd be able to produce all your power that way, when in reality you'd just be producing excess power on the good days and you'd be burning gas on the bad days. By contrast, hydroelectric consistently runs some jurisdictions 100% 24/7/365 -- Manitoba, Quebec, and Norway being examples.
As I've mentioned in other cases, jurisdictions with high levels of hydroelectric tend to have low electricity cost, and this has a double effect on reducing carbon emissions -- the low carbon emissions of electricity generation means electricity is better, and the inexpensive electricity will offset use of fossil fuels for home heating or industry. With already mature technologies such as electric rail, streetcars, and trackless street cars, inexpensive electricity can also break into transportation sectors.
for that same reason, it's important to choose green strategies that will reduce electricity costs. If you end up in an Australia situation where electricity costs go from some of the least expensive on earth to some of the most expensive on earth, then it might feel really good, but people will switch to fossil fuels because they can't afford not to.
In Ontario Canada, the IESO (one of Ontario's power industry regulators) has some really good data on hourly electricity generation: https://ieso.ca/power-data
The second tab is the one with the power mix.
Today the majority of baseload in the province was mostly nuclear, a good chunk was hydroelectric, there was a pittance of biomass, and a decent chunk was wind which lasted all day, but if you go back to June 3-9, you'll see that the nuclear and hydroelectric continued to provide consistent baseload generation every day, but on June 3rd the wind was as little as 5% of the consistent level we saw today. On those days, the difference was made up by running the gas power plants. The solar power is interesting in just how little there is (it appears that there is a lot more installed capacity connected to local grids rather than transmission grids), but also the characteristic of the generation.
The characteristics of each form of electricity generation are fairly interesting seen through the lens of the data.
Some people point to potential battery systems to mitigate the problems with solar in particular, but also wind to an extent, but just look at Ontario -- I can't help but think that the amount of batteries required to store 20GW of electricity overnight (so it's not entirely correct since solar is sinusoidal not off/on) but let's say 240GWH of storage) and then enough wind/solar to produce enough electricity during production periods to charge those batteries would be absolutely absurd, and have a cataclysmic environmental impact compared to finding some more big rivers for some run of river dams or places a traditional hydro dam could be built.
That being said, chemical batteries are probably just not the right choice, but pumped water storage might be... The largest pumped water storage system in the world is the Bath County pumped storage station, and at 24GWH of storage and a maximum generating capacity of 3GW, then 10x of these roughly 3.85 Billion dollar facilities could store power overnight for just the province of Ontario, and the physical footprint of that facility is surprisingly small for the amount of power it can store. (By contrast, the largest battery electric storage facility in the world is orders of magnitude smaller)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station
A big difference between chemical and pumped water storage systems is that water is essentially eternal, whereas chemical batteries die in a decade or two and so even if you make the investment you'll need to redo everything shortly afterwards, and depending on the battery technology it may or may not be recyclable -- lead acid batteries are highly recyclable, but lithium batteries are significantly less so.
For longer term issues like no wind, you might need much more storage -- rather than storing enough energy for the day, you might need enough for a week or a month, which would take an overwhelming investment and turn it into something virtually impossible for the economy to support (I suppose maybe they could store a lot more instantaneous energy by just building bigger reservoirs mind you so you wouldn't need to increase the costs by 14 or 60)
And then there's the fact that you'd need to build enough intermittent energy generation to charge the batteries or fill the reservoirs in addition to running things at the time, so at that point you'd need potentially need not 100% but 200% or more of the total amount of energy generation.
So all of that suggests it makes sense to try to build sources of energy that can handle baseload sources and consistently provide electricity every day. The 40 billion dollars to build the pumped storage system alone could potentially produce enough hydroelectricity to power the entire province and much of the nearby US states.
I don't think we need to use nuclear in Ontario, tbh. We're reliant on it because of NIMBY policies which set it up years ago not to use any of the extensive geography in Ontario to build renewables.
Manitoba, Quebec, British Columbia, and Newfoundland all have nearly 100% renewable electricity generation, but it was almost all infrastructure built before the current age of "no".
That's what's so insane about the whole thing, just imagine -- entire provinces larger than most countries in Europe have been 100% renewable longer than you or I have been alive. All day, everyday, the lights, the heat, the cooling, much of the industry. It's canada, it's a place so huge that you can't even wrap your head around it, there's so much geography that of course we could build more hydro dams, but we just don't.
I've got the same problem with nuclear that I do with steel -- the amount of resources that go into extracting and refining this stuff is on a scale that most human beings can't imagine. You can have a giant tank of propane that would be for a distribution facility in many places, and burn through it in a single day just to keep mine air heaters running, and even in places that brag about how they don't use any fossil fuels in their mining, they're lying and they still use fossil fuels on their mine air heaters. And then there's travel -- most mines today are flying fly out to reduce the environmental footprint, and that means that almost every single day there are hundreds of people flying long plane rides for remote locations. You think your morning commute burns a lot of fuel? It's got nothing on a mine in nunuvut. And that's just two examples, it's just one thing after another after another, the environmental footprint of mining is just so astronomical.
But the thing is, this is the environmental industrial complex. A known good solution to a problem that can be more or less immediately implemented and then the problem is solved isn't helpful for anyone in this equation other than the Earth and the consumer. A few people make a little bit of money maintaining a hydroelectric dam, but a lot of people make a lot of money if you're raping the Earth to dig up uranium and coal and steel! Man, there's money to be made by everyone then! Especially if you need to invent something that's perpetually 5 to 10 years off! Oh the amount of money in perpetually having something that's just 5 to 10 years off? I mean you can leech off of that grift for centuries.
Of course not everywhere is as blessed as canada, but some places are. Canada is, for example(go figure!). But again -- especially when the technology to fix things has been known for over a century, and we could actually implement the fixes immediately and start getting environmental and social benefits immediately. But we don't, because for politicians what good at that solvable problem? For crony capitalists, what good is a few low margin megaprojects when there's fortunes to be made? Nobody stands to get rich and powerful that way.
Manitoba, Quebec, British Columbia, and Newfoundland all have nearly 100% renewable electricity generation, but it was almost all infrastructure built before the current age of "no".
That's what's so insane about the whole thing, just imagine -- entire provinces larger than most countries in Europe have been 100% renewable longer than you or I have been alive. All day, everyday, the lights, the heat, the cooling, much of the industry. It's canada, it's a place so huge that you can't even wrap your head around it, there's so much geography that of course we could build more hydro dams, but we just don't.
I've got the same problem with nuclear that I do with steel -- the amount of resources that go into extracting and refining this stuff is on a scale that most human beings can't imagine. You can have a giant tank of propane that would be for a distribution facility in many places, and burn through it in a single day just to keep mine air heaters running, and even in places that brag about how they don't use any fossil fuels in their mining, they're lying and they still use fossil fuels on their mine air heaters. And then there's travel -- most mines today are flying fly out to reduce the environmental footprint, and that means that almost every single day there are hundreds of people flying long plane rides for remote locations. You think your morning commute burns a lot of fuel? It's got nothing on a mine in nunuvut. And that's just two examples, it's just one thing after another after another, the environmental footprint of mining is just so astronomical.
But the thing is, this is the environmental industrial complex. A known good solution to a problem that can be more or less immediately implemented and then the problem is solved isn't helpful for anyone in this equation other than the Earth and the consumer. A few people make a little bit of money maintaining a hydroelectric dam, but a lot of people make a lot of money if you're raping the Earth to dig up uranium and coal and steel! Man, there's money to be made by everyone then! Especially if you need to invent something that's perpetually 5 to 10 years off! Oh the amount of money in perpetually having something that's just 5 to 10 years off? I mean you can leech off of that grift for centuries.
Of course not everywhere is as blessed as canada, but some places are. Canada is, for example(go figure!). But again -- especially when the technology to fix things has been known for over a century, and we could actually implement the fixes immediately and start getting environmental and social benefits immediately. But we don't, because for politicians what good at that solvable problem? For crony capitalists, what good is a few low margin megaprojects when there's fortunes to be made? Nobody stands to get rich and powerful that way.
I think a thing to keep in mind is that in canada, a lot of places have already been at 100% renewables for longer than you've been alive. Manitoba, quebec, newfoundland, and for the most part British Columbia are all near 100% renewables. This isn't a pie in the sky dream, it's something very doable because it's already been done. All we have to do is do the thing that we've already done a bit more.
Even in ontario, I live in a region whose electricity is 90% hydroelectric.
Which brings us to another thing that really the politicians who are pretending they really care about this aren't going to touch with 100 ft pole -- why exactly are we taking people from the lowest carbon use jurisdictions on the planet and shipping them to the highest carbon use jurisdiction on the planet? You take people who are living in areas where you don't need electricity to survive, and you move to a place where if you don't have energy for travel and energy for getting your home then you die. The least sustainable places in Canada would be the places with all of the migrants, Toronto and vancouver. Why did we bring all these people in? It's not good for the planet. Here we see proof of my ongoing point laid bare: if you ask these politicians why we need to be importing people like this, they'll give you all kinds of stories about how good it is for the economy.
Even in ontario, I live in a region whose electricity is 90% hydroelectric.
Which brings us to another thing that really the politicians who are pretending they really care about this aren't going to touch with 100 ft pole -- why exactly are we taking people from the lowest carbon use jurisdictions on the planet and shipping them to the highest carbon use jurisdiction on the planet? You take people who are living in areas where you don't need electricity to survive, and you move to a place where if you don't have energy for travel and energy for getting your home then you die. The least sustainable places in Canada would be the places with all of the migrants, Toronto and vancouver. Why did we bring all these people in? It's not good for the planet. Here we see proof of my ongoing point laid bare: if you ask these politicians why we need to be importing people like this, they'll give you all kinds of stories about how good it is for the economy.
Fair enough in that regard. Cheap energy does help reduce Fossil fuels in other use, however. Quebec and Norway are using renewables for 70% of heating, and industry wants to use electric when it can because electricity is cleaner, safer, and generally easier. Controlling electric vs. gas is so easy and cheap it'd blow your mind the difference.
Yes, it is important to note that practical considerations of the amount of energy people use is not related to judgements of a person's value as a human being, particularly based on genetics or cultures. An Englishman living in India using little energy is no different than a Punjabi living in India for this calculation, same as an Englishman or Punjabi in Alaska burning oil all winter to not die.
I think both can be problems, to be honest. It's important not to spend too much time focusing on what others think or who thinks a certain thing, because you might end up inadvertently steering away from good ideas or towards bad ideas because someone in particular has the same ideas.
Carrying capacity is a fundamental part of environmentalism. In biology, there's for example so much vegetation, and say it can support 100 deer, and that would be equilibrium. The amount of vegetation available to support the deer would be a function of the quality of the soil, the amount of sunlight, and the specific adaptions of the local vegetation against the deer. If you got 101 deer, there would be no immediate effects, but the vegetation would be eaten a bit too quickly for the vegetation to recover and if nothing changes the population will eventually drop because there won't be enough food.
If we're going to live in harmony with nature, we need to think the same with humans. There are locations where you don't need a lot of energy just to survive (this is particularly important with respect to local temperatures -- temperate climates where you rarely need to heat or cool your home are ideal), and it's relatively easy to farm locally, so you can live off the land with what's there and have lots of people and it's relatively OK. On the other hand, there's locations where every person needs a lot of extra energy to survive because it's too hot and needs cooling or it's too cold and it needs heating, and you can live on renewables in those regions, but if you overpopulate then you end up requiring the fossil fuel subsidy (or the nuclear power subsidy) to make up the difference between the energy you can produce and the energy to need to not have everyone die.
There is a fixed limit on the renewables that could be practically generated in a particular region, so it does matter the energy balance compared to the population.
Population size matters a lot. Ontario has roughly 10x the population of Manitoba. If instead it had 2x the population of Manitoba (it has about twice the geographical area of Manitoba, so that isn't unreasonable), then the hydroelectric generation alone would fully power the province with room to spare with no need for nuclear or oil and gas.
It's interesting given the totality of the discussion then, the dichotomy (Anakin noooooo) that high population density is really necessary for Chinese-style high speed rail to be effective, but the same high population density in many regions in North America (particularly up north) would require fossil fuel subsidies in the same way that China despite its trains uses 50% of all the coal burned on earth every year (which would bring up the next thing the elites wouldn't like, that the developing world is the developed world's environmental painting of Dorian Gray -- we pretend we're so good because we don't burn coal because we get China to burn it for us).
Carrying capacity is a fundamental part of environmentalism. In biology, there's for example so much vegetation, and say it can support 100 deer, and that would be equilibrium. The amount of vegetation available to support the deer would be a function of the quality of the soil, the amount of sunlight, and the specific adaptions of the local vegetation against the deer. If you got 101 deer, there would be no immediate effects, but the vegetation would be eaten a bit too quickly for the vegetation to recover and if nothing changes the population will eventually drop because there won't be enough food.
If we're going to live in harmony with nature, we need to think the same with humans. There are locations where you don't need a lot of energy just to survive (this is particularly important with respect to local temperatures -- temperate climates where you rarely need to heat or cool your home are ideal), and it's relatively easy to farm locally, so you can live off the land with what's there and have lots of people and it's relatively OK. On the other hand, there's locations where every person needs a lot of extra energy to survive because it's too hot and needs cooling or it's too cold and it needs heating, and you can live on renewables in those regions, but if you overpopulate then you end up requiring the fossil fuel subsidy (or the nuclear power subsidy) to make up the difference between the energy you can produce and the energy to need to not have everyone die.
There is a fixed limit on the renewables that could be practically generated in a particular region, so it does matter the energy balance compared to the population.
Population size matters a lot. Ontario has roughly 10x the population of Manitoba. If instead it had 2x the population of Manitoba (it has about twice the geographical area of Manitoba, so that isn't unreasonable), then the hydroelectric generation alone would fully power the province with room to spare with no need for nuclear or oil and gas.
It's interesting given the totality of the discussion then, the dichotomy (Anakin noooooo) that high population density is really necessary for Chinese-style high speed rail to be effective, but the same high population density in many regions in North America (particularly up north) would require fossil fuel subsidies in the same way that China despite its trains uses 50% of all the coal burned on earth every year (which would bring up the next thing the elites wouldn't like, that the developing world is the developed world's environmental painting of Dorian Gray -- we pretend we're so good because we don't burn coal because we get China to burn it for us).
If we set the painting of Dorian Gray on fire, there's a lot of consequences. First and foremost, it becomes a lot more obvious that we can't just consume our way out of this -- if you actually need to burn the carbon to create the things that are supposed to reduce carbon, and you can't just let someone else do it and pretend everything you're doing is carbon neutral, then the calculus of certain decisions become much more complicated in terms of actual resources use you can see, and not in the quasi-academic way we're discussing here.
It also I think will help the somewhat racist view that western civilization has that somehow everyone else can make stuff and our job is to be designers and managers, like that's sustainable.
It also I think will help the somewhat racist view that western civilization has that somehow everyone else can make stuff and our job is to be designers and managers, like that's sustainable.
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