Details: > "Paying for the necessary upgrades will be pricey, but there's a lot of uncertainty here. Li and Jenn came up with a range of anywhere between $6 bi

Details: > "Paying for the necessary upgrades will be pricey, but there's a lot of uncertainty here. Li and Jenn came up with a range of anywhere between $6 billion and $20 billion. They put this in context in two ways. The total capital invested in the existing grid is estimated to be $51 billion, so the cost of updating it could be well over a third of its total value. At the same time, the costs will be spread out over decades and only total up to (at most) three times the grid's annual operation and maintenance costs. So in any one year, the costs shouldn't be crippling." There's no doubt that switching from a primarily fossil fuel-based transportation system to an electricity-based one is going to be expensive, but good transportation systems have positive knock-on effects on economic growth, and the side effects - cleaner air, independence from fossil fuel price swings, etc - are more than worth the investment. In contrast, giving $100 billion away to finance endless war in Europe and the Middle East - after dumping well over $1 trillion on Iraq and Afghanistan (pre-debt-interest) - is just a recipe for long-term economic decline. This is why China is an economic success story - they built a national high-speed rail network, the world's best, while the US was playing at imperial neocolonialism.