"In his first State of the State address, California Governor Gavin Newsom shocked environmental justice advocates by announcing a cancellation of the 20-year-old California High Speed Rail project."
In his first State of the State address, California Governor Gavin Newsom shocked environmental justice advocates by announcing a cancellation of the 20-year-old California High Speed Rail project. Though Newsom later reiterated that he was still hoping to complete the entire project and was only intending to focus funds and planning on the first stage of construction, his comment reflected a broader ambivalence with massive infrastructural changes such as the California High Speed Rail project that would greatly mitigate carbon emissions.
California’s High Speed Rail Project is seen by many as a test of the feasibility of major infrastructural changes needed to help mitigate climate change. Climate change is internationally recognized as an immediate and pressing threat that can only be mitigated by immediate and drastic change. Governor Newsom has consistently painted himself as a proponent of these infrastructural shifts and has pledged to bring California’s total emissions to zero by 2045. This notwithstanding, California’s largest emitter remains the transportation sector.
Beyond California, the promise of high speed rail is integral to the Green New Deal, a recent national proposal filled with major infrastructural and policy changes that would fight global warming. However, across the Democratic party, many have decried the ideals of the Green New Deal as fanciful or unrealistic, including prominent California Democrats such as Senator Dianne Feinstein and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who described it as a “Green Dream.”
This major disagreement and ambivalence over immediate policy changes has led to what amounts to a standstill over meaningful legislation to mitigate global warming. After years of slow decline, U.S. emissions are rising again. It is up to leaders at both the state and federal level to actually make meaningful change, not just promise the eventual construction of a high speed train through the Central Valley. Although building a high speed rail alone will not have a significant effect it will demonstrate the feasibility of similar-sized infrastructural projects that so far have no precedent in the United States.
Many, however, support the idea of a grand revitalization of the Central Valley through rail travel. However, the ridership potential of intra-Central Valley travel is far less than a project that would connect the state’s major metropolitan centers. New Yorker contributor Nathan Heller, a Bay Area native, argues that if a high speed train really was developed from San Francisco to L.A. it would operate primarily as a business train for the wealthy, not, as some projections expect, a train with ridership comparable to BART. Heller opines that the high speed rail is,“a comfortable length for people wanting to go from downtown to downtown on a schedule, without detouring through the airport—in other words, for business people travelling between the state’s two growing centers of money and power.” His argument brings up the age- old debate that combating climate change and combating economic inequality at the same time is impossible. Historically, environmentalism has often been championed by disproportionately white and wealthy activists who have the luxury to care about nature because they don’t have to worry about their own human rights.
However, contemporary activists have noted that due to existing systems of oppression, climate change would disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color. Abstaining from infrastructure projects such as the high speed rail largely feeds into the interests of the oil lobby, which loses money from reduced air and motor vehicle usage. As a country, we are at a point where we need immediate change. Despite Republican governmental control at the federal level successful environmental projects in places like California will demonstrate to the rest of the country that quick and large scale change is fully possible.
California’s High Speed Rail Project is seen by many as a test of the feasibility of major infrastructural changes needed to help mitigate climate change. Climate change is internationally recognized as an immediate and pressing threat that can only be mitigated by immediate and drastic change. Governor Newsom has consistently painted himself as a proponent of these infrastructural shifts and has pledged to bring California’s total emissions to zero by 2045. This notwithstanding, California’s largest emitter remains the transportation sector.
Beyond California, the promise of high speed rail is integral to the Green New Deal, a recent national proposal filled with major infrastructural and policy changes that would fight global warming. However, across the Democratic party, many have decried the ideals of the Green New Deal as fanciful or unrealistic, including prominent California Democrats such as Senator Dianne Feinstein and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who described it as a “Green Dream.”
This major disagreement and ambivalence over immediate policy changes has led to what amounts to a standstill over meaningful legislation to mitigate global warming. After years of slow decline, U.S. emissions are rising again. It is up to leaders at both the state and federal level to actually make meaningful change, not just promise the eventual construction of a high speed train through the Central Valley. Although building a high speed rail alone will not have a significant effect it will demonstrate the feasibility of similar-sized infrastructural projects that so far have no precedent in the United States.
Many, however, support the idea of a grand revitalization of the Central Valley through rail travel. However, the ridership potential of intra-Central Valley travel is far less than a project that would connect the state’s major metropolitan centers. New Yorker contributor Nathan Heller, a Bay Area native, argues that if a high speed train really was developed from San Francisco to L.A. it would operate primarily as a business train for the wealthy, not, as some projections expect, a train with ridership comparable to BART. Heller opines that the high speed rail is,“a comfortable length for people wanting to go from downtown to downtown on a schedule, without detouring through the airport—in other words, for business people travelling between the state’s two growing centers of money and power.” His argument brings up the age- old debate that combating climate change and combating economic inequality at the same time is impossible. Historically, environmentalism has often been championed by disproportionately white and wealthy activists who have the luxury to care about nature because they don’t have to worry about their own human rights.
However, contemporary activists have noted that due to existing systems of oppression, climate change would disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color. Abstaining from infrastructure projects such as the high speed rail largely feeds into the interests of the oil lobby, which loses money from reduced air and motor vehicle usage. As a country, we are at a point where we need immediate change. Despite Republican governmental control at the federal level successful environmental projects in places like California will demonstrate to the rest of the country that quick and large scale change is fully possible.
