Sean
Joined: Oct 8, 2008
Posts: 6
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Gender & Age: Male & 25
Country: Canada
Province/State: British Columbia
City: Vancouver
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Creating jobs, improving infrastructure reducing emissions: Why N.A. needs to invest in high speed trains
January 6, 2009 - 02:51 PM
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It seems that North Americans are throwing away our tax dollars to bail-out a poorly managed industry. The automotive industry has been outdated for decades.
Right now, in Ontario along, there have been fears that up-to 500,000 jobs could be lost of the industry is not bailed out. That is a pretty strong argument for politicians.
But what about the alternative. We should have used that bail-out money to generate investments into an industry that would create jobs, cash-flow, innovation and reduce CO2 emissions from transportation.
Building high-speed trains and the infrastructure necessary for them would do all of that. I'm not an economist, so I don't know all the details, but it seems pretty good to me. Bombardier exports modern state-of-the-art electric trains, and they are a Canadian company. Why not encourage the Big 3 N.A. automakers to diversify, as they should have decades ago. If cars won't make them money and put their workers on social insurance, in the absence of massive government bail outs, then they should start making something else. They have a huge amount of capital, it might be helpful in building trains.
My last point is self-evident in this day and age. The more we drive conventional cars the more dangerously close the world will get to run-away unstoppable climate change due to global warming. Roughly 30% of every nations CO2 emissions come from the transportation sector of their economies. Reduce the number of cars on the road, the number of plains in the air and emissions will likely decrease.
Let me know what you think.
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