> Right – but raising taxes on gas while businesses remained
> scattered and housing in denser areas is expensive does not solve
> the problem
<snip>
> Yup. But we don't have to wait for people and businesses to
> relocate to provide sustainability. An automated light rail system
> could work in most parts of the nation; not everywhere of course
> but most.
American businesses and working-class homes have sprawled, much as the girth of the average American body has expanded. Just as many overweight Americans are suckers for schemes that promise weight loss without diet and exercise, many American leftists are suckers for fantasy solutions to social problems that do not cost American workers anything. It's time to wake up and smell the exhaust. The way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more. No pain, no gain. The same is true for the path to environmental sustainability.
Giving a carrot -- automated light rail systems -- without a stick won't work, for that presents businesses and workers with choices without proper incentives for the desired behavioral change in this case (i.e., make them prefer light rails to cars): light rails may be convenient, but cars are far more convenient than light rails in the existing environment. You'd have to make automobiles less desirable in the eyes of businesses and workers than environmentally better (though less individually convenient) alternatives (like moving back to inner cities), and the way to do it is to make it more expensive to use them.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>