Their Past vs Our Future

With just over a week until the votes are counted we are about to learn whether California will embrace the 21st century or go down with the sinking 20th century ship.

Proposition 1A and high speed rail are a cornerstone of California's efforts to build prosperity for the 21st century. The infrastructure that built 20th century prosperity - including those paid for with bonds approved by voters in the depth of the Depression - has taken us as far as it can. California's 20th century prosperity was based on cheap oil, which is beginning to run out.

And yes, it is still running out. Neither the summer price spike nor the current price collapse change the underlying facts - we are reaching peak oil which means long-term supply shortages and price increases. The current decline in prices is due to demand destruction, which means that if people take advantage of lower prices by driving more...the price will again rise. And of course OPEC isn't going to take this lying down - the last time gas prices dropped dramatically, in 1999, was merely prelude to a steady, 8-year, 1300% increase in the price of oil.

Well before gas prices hit $4 this summer they had destroyed the American economy. The housing bubble burst in 2006 - at precisely the moment gas prices hit $3. And which areas have seen the steepest home value declines and the highest foreclosure rates? The car-dependent suburbs. Which areas have held their values and had the lowest foreclosure rates? City centers and neighborhoods with mass transit options.

This was clearly illustrated by a recent episode of NOW on PBS, Driven to Despair. The episode contrasted two young couples - one living in Hemet (east of Riverside) and one living in South Pasadena near the Gold Line. The family living in Hemet was facing serious financial distress and a lower standard of living owing to their dependence on oil. The family living in South Pasadena had more disposable income and a happier life because they were free from that dependence.

On a macro level we have already demonstrated the green dividend that results from building mass transit - a multibillion dollar economic shot in the arm. In the case of high speed rail this will be compounded by the significant economic stimulus of HSR - just as the Golden Gate Bridge and Shasta Dam were in the Depression. 160,000 construction jobs is nothing to sneeze at.

We also need to remember the environmental benefits of high speed rail. It seems global warming and carbon emissions have faded a bit from the public's consciousness which is a shame - pollution and carbon emissions cost money and the longer we delay in reducing them and building a sustainable alternative, the more expensive life will ultimately become here in California.

To ignore all of this and embrace the status quo is to look at a broken economy and shrug and hope we somehow magically recover, and that somehow the conditions that caused the economic downturn will magically disappear. They won't. If California wants to enjoy the kind of widely shared prosperity in the 21st century that we had in the 20th we need to reorient this state away from oil and sprawl and toward urban density and sustainable transportation. HSR will stimulate both.

It's no accident that those lined up to oppose Prop 1A are from that shrinking group that still benefits from the 20th century status quo. The right-wingers at the San Diego Union-Tribune don't want to see their anti-government, anti-transit dreams get shot down by voters. Dan Walters is one of the state's leading defenders of sprawl and small government, so it makes sense that he'd oppose Prop 1A as well.

Then there is the Reason Foundation, which is swimming in oil money. They have every reason to want to kill HSR, which would undermine their anti-government, pro-oil, pro-sprawl agenda. Sure, their arguments are riddled with factual errors and their flagship study lacks credibility. But it's all well and good in the service of defending the status quo, which has failed for America but succeeded for their oil company buddies.

It would seem to me that when a project's opponents are the far right and the oil companies, you're doing something right, you've got a winning idea.

But that's not why HSR and Prop 1A are a good idea. They are the gateway to a more secure, more prosperous California in the 21st century. I do not see why we would listen to those who helped create the current economic failure when they pontificate against Prop 1A.