The New American Can’t-Do Spirit
Monday, 06/28/2010 - 10:56 am by Jon Rynn | 8 Comments
Defeatist political attitudes be damned. America needs bipartisan reconciliation and perseverance to escape the doldrums of recession.
Americans have always been known to have a “can-do” spirit. During the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration tried out many different programs to confront the Great Depression and to spread rural electrification and support agriculture. Nowadays, however, much of the political spectrum seems to have turned to a “can’t do” spirit. The sequence is often the following: Left-of-center ideas are proposed to solve some long-term, gigantic problem. The Right says that the government can’t implement the idea because if the market had liked the idea it would have happened, and since the market didn’t do it…it can’t be done. The center-right looks at the world as it currently is, notes the Right’s reaction to the Left, and then, with furrowed-brow and a studied look of being “realistic”, announces that the progressives proposals are…can’t do.
A prime example of this “realistic” impulse can be found on display in an article by Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, entitled “Goodbye, Bullet Trains and Wind Mills,” at Salon.com. Even though high-speed rail and wind farms are expanding at prodigious rates around the globe, in the U.S., it’s all “no we can’t”. While it would take a longer article than this to challenge all of Lind’s factual inaccuracies, let me concentrate on a few of the larger errors of his ways.
First, he invents the strawmen of “greens” who hate cars, and “urbanists” who despise suburbs, who have somehow hijacked that repository of caution and timidity, the Democratic Party. In real “reality”, most greens live in suburbs and drive cars, simply because most Americans do. In my experience, environmentalists are scared to even mention alternatives to car travel, lest potential supporters run away in panic. Anybody who dares to raise a voice for designing walkable neighborhoods does so in the most hushed tones. Besides James Howard Kunstler, I’m not sure who Lind is talking about (Disclosure: I don’t have a driver’s license and I prefer Manhattan-style neighborhoods). Meanwhile, the allegedly brainwashed Democratic Party continues to support many times more funding for highways than for transit, continuing the trend between 1978 and 1999 when half of all transportation money went to highways, and 15% to rail and transit; meanwhile, one of the few items in Obama’s 2011 budget that declines is funding for rail.
Second, Lind argues that because we don’t currently have high-speed rail and a significant percentage of our electricity generated from wind power , it won’t ever happen. What would he have said in 1900? There were 4,000 cars made that year, and 6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Now we have about 250 million cars and 4,000 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. In the 1950s and 1960s, we spent over $400 billion in current dollars to construct probably the largest “socialist” project in world history, the Interstate Highway System. The U.S. High-Speed Rail Association estimates that it would cost about $600 billion to build a 17,000 mile system in 20 years. The same sum would build a large chunk of a continent-spanning wind network that would take advantage of the fact that wind is always blowing somewhere. We spent decades and trillions of dollars building the suburbs; why can’t we do the same to build up dense, walkable cities and towns? Why is something possible in the past, but not in the future?
Third, Lind proposes an alternative - more of the same. More nuclear power plants, more highways for more trucks, more airports, more asphalt and concrete, more natural gas, and apparently, more sprawl (Lind’s colleague at New America Foundation, the oil expert Lisa Margonelli, doesn’t do much better). Since Lind dissed rail by proclaiming that it is oh-so-19th century, it might surprise readers to know that the most recent development in transportation technology has been high-speed rail. Cars and trucks predate diesel locomotives; electrified freight rail is more than 10 times more efficient than trucks. An efficient car wastes 99% of its energy, using only 1% to actually move the human occupants. And Lind doesn’t even consider looming, permanent price increases in oil as it becomes harder and harder to find more oil - even in places one mile under the Gulf of Mexico.
However, I agree with Lind in one area - we need “more government spending for years to come”, and “massive public investment in infrastructure that increases long-term U.S. economic growth “. That’s exactly what a multi-trillion dollar, multi-decade program of building high-speed rail, intra-city rail such as trolleys and subways, wind farms across the country and off-shore, and myriad other renewable energy and rail-based projects, would accomplish. These systems use all parts of the core of a modern industrial system - machine tools, semiconductors, high-skill labor, advanced materials, cutting-edge engineering, and more. I like to think that if the New Dealers were around today, they would agree that we can do it, yes we can!
Jon Rynn is the author of the book “Manufacturing Green Prosperity: The power to rebuild the American middle class”, from Praeger Press, in the summer of 2010. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the City University of New York.
Amen!
And I don’t have a driver’s license either. Which is why I love DC much more than Florida.
Posted by ` | June 28th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Quick reaction from Washington state.
I live in the Western region in Microsoftlandia; the eastern region is arid, largely agricultural, and is sprouting windfarms.
Yes, there are hullaballoos about siting wind farms, but it’s been my limited, humble experience that some of those politically conservative Eastern Washington so-called ‘rednecks’ are pretty smart folks, and those that I’ve listened to seem interested in wind power.
Here’s one link for more info:
http://www.co.kittitas.wa.us/cds/windpower.asp
And here’s another quick link, should the author be interested:
http://www.ncwtechdirectory.com/listing.php?id=3912
Both Kittitas County and Grant County tend to be Republican, and largely ag. Both regions are sprouting wind-related initiatives. Further south along the Columbia River are even larger farms.
There are kerfuffles about siting the windmills, but it’s my personal sense that if given a choice between distant expensive wars, or a few power turbines along the ridges of arid lands, those folks are pretty no-nonsense supporters of publicly owned, wind-generated power.
And trust me, these folks are smart, decent, hard-working… but ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ they are not.
So I think Lind probably spends too much time in the Beltway. He really needs to get out more.
And one more link to a site for the Wild Horse Wind Farm: http://www.horizonwind.com/projects/whatwevedone/wildhorse.aspx
Basically, my sense is that these independent, hard-working folks prefer to have as much control of their own destiny as they can. Sensible, publicly owned utilities promote that sense of security and responsibility for stewardship of the land.
Posted by readerOfTeaLeaves | June 28th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Just to reiterate, because I think this topic is extremely important: I’ve been surprised at attitudes of people that are by no means ‘liberal’, but they are extremely independent and self-sufficient.
‘Wind power’ means that they can develop local initiatives and hire welders to produce wind turbines for electric power.
That means that the payroll from the welders remains in the local county, the power generated pays rural residents in a number of revenue flows, and the upshot is they have a little more money, some small-scale industry, and more control over their future.
It’s win-win-win-win-win.
I cannot fathom what Mr. Lind is thinking.
He really needs to go to Ellensburg, or Yakima and keep his mouth shut and his ears open. He might learn a few things.
Posted by readerOfTeaLeaves | June 28th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Frankly, I think that htis is a statement of the obvious. The ONLY reason that these things cannot be done is to protect the current interest of a short-sighted industral oligopoly.
Electric locomotives and electric interurban transit date back to the early 20th century. In other words, as Mr. Rynn said, it’s all ben done before. The other principal obstacle is getting people to change their habits.
Americans are notoriously obstinate when it comes to inconvienience. The slightest change of routine raises an irrational hue and cry from otherwise rational people. The literal brainwashing that has taken place over the past generation will have to be undone before the welfare of people means more than the welfare of corporations. That may be the hardes habit to break.
Posted by Nick W. | June 28th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Nick, part of the problem, I think, is that we have to explain to people that trains and walkable neighborhoods are actually more convenient (maybe the hordes of people coming through NYC helps). Americans took to suburbs and cars very quickly, I hope that a similar trend helps build up in the other direction.
readerOfTeaLeaves, thanks for the info. I think that one of the advantages about talking about actually constructing and building things in order to move to energy independence, versus talking about indirect measures like cap-and-trade, is that you pull in a broad section of the middle class. Jobs and economic development is almost always a winner; taxes of various sorts usually are not.
Posted by Jon Rynn | June 28th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Jon, I agree: it’s always better to create jobs than to create a hue about more taxes. (Particularly in Grant and Kittitas counties, if my ears do not deceive me.)
I’d also point to other, less obviously related, factors.
Educational research has long tried to identify ‘what kinds of smarts’ people have.
Some have linguistic smarts, others have mechanical or spatial smarts. And so on…
The people with spatial and ‘hands-on’ smarts don’t tend to have a lot of patience with endless, uber-abstracted bloviating about ‘cap and trade’. The endless abstractions seem to put money in other people’s wallets, and leave them jobless. They’re probably right to view ‘policy discussions’ and complex legislation with a mix of resentment, distrust, and contempt.
To make a simple analogy: you can either bore me with the endless, tiny details of why a football field is measured out the way it is, how the refs operate, every single rule and every single player in the college and pro leagues going back for 50 years — or you can toss a ball around and play.
My sense is that DC operates under the ‘let’s talk about it endlessly’ mantra, and are paid well for the social networking.
The ‘rednecks’ take one look and think, “Those people are useless and couldn’t catch a ball if you threw it two feet.”
I caricature to make my point; but not by much. There’s a lot of sense in the ‘redneck’ view of things, IMVHO.
In the matters under discussion, action has a better shot at eloquence.
Posted by readerOfTeaLeaves | June 28th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Jon,
Having read (and reviewed) your excellent book, I think there is much to commend it, but I think you are mischaracterising Michael Lind’s position. I don’t think it’s an “either/or”. Anybody driving along our highways today can see that the pothole ridden third world quality of our roads could and should be repaired. To acknowledge this basic fact, as Mike does, does not make one a “center right” apologist. In fact, Mike is very much in the tradition of New Deal liberalism, unlike most of the hacks who sadly dominate policy in the Democrats these days. And Michael does raise some legitimate concerns in regard to wind power. It’s not a magic bullet. Wind unfortunately is intermittent. collectively remind us that a transition to wind and solar power would take decades, that it would be astronomically expensive, that it would make the U.S. reliant on China for turbines, and that it would lead to “energy sprawl” (to use the felicitous phrase of Robert Bryce, who has done much work in this area). Robert Bryce also has illustrated that Bryce shows that just one modern coal mine in Kentucky, the 35th largest in America, produces nearly as much energy as all wind and solar in the U.S. And the natural gas production from just one state, Oklahoma, produces well over nine times as much energy as all U.S. wind and solar. I mention this not to denigrate the idea of alternative energies (especially as I do much in the field myself), but more to caution that there are no magic bullets and in the meantime we can and should accommodate ourselves to the reality of a hydrocarbon economy as part of a broader program of public works. Lind is undoubtedly correct to stress this.
Michael (and Bryce) have also promoted the idea of huge government investment in nuclear technology, which creates many of the “industrial ecosystem” benefits that you espouse so well in your book. So, in short, whilst much of the thrust of the article is excellent, I think you’ve picked the wrong target as your opponent.
Posted by Marshall Auerback | June 29th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Marshall, always a pleasure to read your arguments.
I apologize if Michael Lind is not what I characterized as a “center-right” thinker, although his article, perhaps not seen in the context of his other work, seemed to be a good foil for the idea. And as I said in the piece, I agree with him on the critical issue of reviving manufacturing.
But as I also said in the piece, just because technologies like wind and solar are not an important part of the electrical system, does not mean that they can’t be in the future. It might be good to have some back-and-forth on these issues — for instance, on the issue of nuclear power. And I promise not to pigeonhole anyone in the course of the debate!
You’re right that creating a huge wind infrastructure, in the current state of the US manufacturing sector, would make us dependent, not only on the Japanese, but also the Europeans and Indians. So any transformation to renewable energy will have to involve the construction of a manufacturing system as well. It’s not just that we would otherwise be relying on the kindness of strangers, but that eventually we might not be able to pay for the technology, and of course we would not have the jobs as well.
Anyway, let’s keep the discussion going.
Posted by Jon Rynn | June 30th, 2010 at 11:32 am