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Environmentalists came away from President Obama's first State of the Union address on Wednesday with mixed feelings. Yes, the President focused on the importance of investment in clean energy and energy efficiency as the best way to sustainably grow America's moribund economy, and he mentioned clean coal, biofuels and nuclear power (though not renewable energy), and he talked up the need to pass a "comprehensive energy and climate bill." But notably, he said nothing about putting a price on carbon - which is considered by most greens to be the key move to reduce global carbon emissions...
That's a nice sentiment, but America's antiquated rail system will have to advance a long way just to make it to the present, let alone the future. U.S. intercity railroads are a laughingstock compared with those in most other developed nations - and, increasingly, even those in developing nations like China, which is investing more than $300 billion to build more than 16,000 miles of high-speed track...
...Philadelphia to Boston takes some five hours, and that's on an Amtrak Acela train, the closest thing the U.S. has to high-speed rail. "Every other major industrialized nation has recognized that high-speed rail is key to economic growth and mobility," says Petra Todorovich, director of the America 2050 program at the Regional Planning Association. "It's time for America to realize that as well." (See the most important cars of all time...
Nevertheless, high-speed rail is an idea whose time has come - at least for environmentalists. According to Environment America, high-speed rail uses a third less energy per mile than auto or air travel, and a nationwide system could reduce oil use by 125 million bbl. a year. In addition, high-speed rail represents the kind of long-term infrastructure investment that will pay back for decades, just as the interstate highway system of the 1950s has. "This is a down payment on a truly national program," said Biden, who has logged more than 7,900 round trips...
Fastman, an IT manager at a robotics research and development firm, argued that no human has contracted avian flu in North America, and their chickens have not come in contact with other birds that can spread...