3 ms·

> What makes you say doubling its electricity production is impossible over the next ~20? Easy: It takes us decades to build anything of any significance any m

> What makes you say doubling its electricity production is impossible over the next ~20? Easy: It takes us decades to build anything of any significance any more. A nuclear power plant could take 30 years, maybe 50 at this rate. We need over a thousand of them. In addition to this, the cost to build anything in the US is so high, I am not sure we have the financial means to build 1400 GW in energy generation capacity and the massive infrastructure upgrades this would require in order to be useful. The famed California High Speed train is the perfect (and saddest) example of just how incompetent we have become. It was promised at a price tag of about ten billion dollars. It was going to bring forth an era of amazing energy-efficient transportation up and down the State. We are at about a HUNDRED billion today. We have only built TEN miles. Which are NOT OPERATING. And, if we did have a running train on these ten miles, I believe the top speed would be limited to somewhere around 50 MILES PER HOUR. Yeah. No. I think a massive shift in leadership, national focus and philosophy has to occur before we can even dream of a future where our 300 million vehicles are electric. What's going to happen is that --and I hate to put it this way-- those in the upper-middle class and above might be able to migrate to electrics while everyone else is stuck with gasoline powered vehicles at $10 per gallon. In other words, the poor get shafted once again. Brilliant.

inglor_cz 5y ago
I only follow the California High Speed project from a distance and not in detail, but it was my understanding that the plan called for a route through a 2000 m (6000 ft) high mountain range. Most actual high speed lines in the world try to avoid such terrain as much as possible. The ones that actually need to cross comparable mountains (like the Alps) take decades to build (so called Basis Tunnels, in Switzerland and Austria) and the cost is staggering.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Where there is the will, there is a way!

inglor_cz 5y ago

I only follow the California High Speed project from a distance and not in detail, but it was my understanding that the plan called for a route through a 2000 m (6000 ft) high mountain range. Most actual high speed lines in the world try to avoid such terrain as much as possible. The ones that actually need to cross comparable mountains (like the Alps) take decades to build (so called Basis Tunnels, in Switzerland and Austria) and the cost is staggering.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Where there is the will, there is a way!