111–120 of 223 posts
I may not understand the scope of this project, but when I read the $2 billion, my thought was "wow that's cheap!" Consider the Big Dig or the current Seattle tunnel, at $14B+ and $3B+ respectively.
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yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip This. Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Telecommuting is a thing. Home-solar is a thing. Electric cars are a thing. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally,…
This reminds me of the whole "take shorter showers" thing. The amount of water consumed taking showers is minuscule compared to how much water is used for industrial agriculture. It's not going to make a difference to take a 5 minute shower vs. 10 minutes. So it overall feels very defeating as an individual to try to make a change.
Interestingly, the official website doesn't mention climate change at all, as far as I can see [1]. Instead, it claims that the purpose of the tunnels is to protect the areas surrounding some smaller rivers upstream of Tokyo, which are on flood plains and regularly used to get flooded (no climate change required, just regular rain season/typhoon does this). Now due to urban sprawl more people want to live there, exac…
It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…
It's very likely that local band-aids are the most effective way to deal with this. Your train example is a pretty good one, but you've mixed up the metaphor. Here, "stepping out of the way" = mass migrations out of coastal cities. "A mechanized winch that temporarily lifts us over the train" = flood control projects like in Tokyo, Houston, Venice, or the Netherlands. "Calling the train company and asking them to sto…
"Centralisation breeds anomalies: beach resorts often buy their seafood in Mexico City’s wholesale market, hundreds of miles from the coast."
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21665027-its-combinat...
I have a question for the global climate change skeptics out there.
Are there any major countries in the world besides the US and maybe Russia where the central government agrees with you on what is happening and what to do about it? (If there are give us some links)
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To be fair, nobody would have undertaken the Big Dig if the true cost were known up-front. And a debt that's 200% GDP is a unique circumstance.
The Big Dig may have been closer to the budget, except it kept getting changed. An example would be that they initially planned on shutting down certain routes until a politician decided to announce that traffic flow would not be disrupted. That's great if you're paid to model the traffic but probably not so great if you now have to pay the added expenses.
I know, it's not realistic... but it would be nice to see. I have this picture in my head of the entire government running like it did in The Pentagon Wars (that's billion, with a "b"...) and nobody can stop it.
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I don't know how they handle infrastructure, but whatever they do seems like something the rest of the world could learn from. A little while ago it made international news when they fixed a sink hole in a few days: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/15/asia/fukuoka-sinkhole-fill...
It should be noted that that sinkhole re-occurred shortly afterwards. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38129691
From what I understand, Japan thinks the climate is getting warmer due to human action, and serious steps need to be taken to deal with it. I have a question for the global climate change skeptics out there. Are there any major countries in the world besides the US and maybe Russia where the central government agrees with you on what is happening and what to do about it? (If there are give us some links)
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Why? When you can use disaster capitalism and profit on the "volatility" provided by such events?
I've heard it said that in the UK a fatal car crash increases GDP by about £1 million.