Speaking of the Work Beginning

Another proposal involved upgrading the nation’s electrical grid, to allow power generated, for example, by wind turbines in the Midwest to be transmitted to population centers in the Northeast.

“You say, We can’t do it,” he observed. “And I’m going to say, Au contraire, mon frère, and I’ll prove my case. We used to have a country, allegedly, but you couldn’t drive across it, because all we had was a bunch of old dirt roads. Somebody, in the name of national security, said, ‘Hold on a sec. What if we get invaded on the West Coast, how can we get troops from the East Coast?’ So we created an interstate-highway system that connected the country to itself.”

He lowered his voice to a grumble: “ ‘Oh, we can’t afford to do it! This is insane!’ We couldn’t afford not to do it. Because the minute you did that the economy went through the roof. It was such a good idea that we did it again. In the name of national security, people in the Pentagon said, ‘If we have one big communications tower, and somebody knocks it out, then we’re blind, deaf, and dumb. We’ve got to figure out a way to distribute our information system.’ So they came up with the idea of the information superhighway—for you young people, that’s what we call the Internet. ‘We can’t afford to do this!’ We couldn’t afford not to do it. The minute we connected the country to itself, the economy went through the roof. All we’re saying is, let’s do it again. But this time, instead of connecting the country to itself to move bodies and vehicles or data around, let’s connect the country to itself so we can move clean-energy electrons around. Then you’ve got the strongest economy in the world.”

Speaking of the work beginning: a good article from the New Yorker tackles the Green Recovery.