Governor’s race litmus test #43: High-speed rail
It was written a few days ago, but nevertheless: from the Bay Area Bureau* comes an article about the connection between high-speed rail positions and the governor’s race.
…which is apparently a litmus test for how the governor’s race will go. Which again makes climate a litmus test for how the governor’s race will go.
Choice excerpt:
Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate and former eBay CEO, said through a spokeswoman on Friday she “believes the state cannot afford the costs associated with high-speed rail due to our current fiscal crisis.”
She lives in the wealthy town of Atherton, which is ground zero for the anti-bullet train movement because of concerns about the tracks that would run through the tony community.
Nowhere in the article is mention of climate change, or climate policy. But advocates for integrated planning for carbon and GHG reduction argue high speed rail is a big way to mitigate global warming.
The Center for Neighborhood Technology has a pretty good backgrounder on high speed rail as a climate issue – you can even download a report that does a corridor-by-corridor analysis of greenhouse gas emissions savings as a result of high-speed rail.
*Note that the BAB is fictional. Love the reference to Atherton, though, where, yes, Frank Stoltze, I DID go to high school.
