The World Belt

By John Taylor; 2009 July 27, Kalimat 14, 166 BE

Note: This is a revision of an essay that came out on the Badi' Blog three years ago, on July 10, 2006 to be precise. Some details have changed but this is still basically how I envision Kant's Universal Civic Society (UCS) coming about.

Putting On the World Belt

A World Building Mega-Project

Precis: Just as railway construction projects built the modern nation, a “world belt” mega-project may build the universal civic society. A world belt would not only be a railway but also a power line and a hillside building project extending through and between every joined continent on the planet.

Transport and Power Lines in the UCS

I just finished (in 2006) listening to a thrilling history book-on-tape called "Nothing Like it in the World," by Stephen Ambrose, the story of how the first transcontinental railroad across North America was built in the 1860's. I would like to see such a monumental construction effort repeated in my lifetime, only instead of just a rail line -- our present rail system is badly in need of an upgrade anyway -- this time we could combine it with an even more ambitious mega-project, the construction of the first transcontinental hillside housing development.

Here is how it might work. We would bury all roads and train tracks underground in a single line across the American continent. Another line would extend north and south from the tip of South America through Central America, the continental United States, Canada, Alaska and over (or under) the Bering Strait to Asia. The goal of this project, made possible by a world federation, would be to establish a planet-encircling high-speed link from the Americas to the tip of Africa, India and England.

Trains would be built on two levels, one above the other. The bottom level would be the express link, featuring a high speed rail line like the French TGV (Train A Grand Vitesse) or perhaps the more radical magnetically levitated German, Japanese or Chinese trains. Right over this is a second, slower train carrying freight and passengers for local stops. Since they are enclosed, these rail lines would not encounter the air resistance of surface travel.

Over the double-decker train tracks, on the surface level, is a long building development, where many people live and work in a high-density urban setting. I have been describing this mobile, containerized construction system in several earlier essays. Because it depends upon a universal set of standards and building codes, it could only be built under the standardizing authority of a world government.

The surface level, being already built over buried trains and power lines, does not need to devote space to roads. This extremely long, snake-like building looks not unlike a skyscraper built on its side. On its shady side are buildings designed to accommodate smaller modular buildings, such as homes, farms, stores, shops, workshops and factories. Having many sub-units fitting into a single, large superstructure allows local planners to optimize dynamically every factor in urban design simply by moving modular units around within the World Belt.

The initial goal of this strip of urban construction running through each of the continents of the world is to take in the estimated one or two billion refugees that rising sea levels will soon create. It would allow them to move from flooded regions and find a better, more mobile life than ever before. With a modular residence, they could move around to wherever they are needed without the suffering, deprivation and dislocation of a refugee village. It would permit not only individuals but families, businesses and even neighbourhoods to relocate easily. Thus if a convenience store did not become viable in one neighbourhood in the World Belt, it could be rolled onto one of the trains underneath and moved quickly and cheaply to another location, which could be virtually anywhere on earth. Families can move their modular homes around without bothering to transport every item they own piece by piece every time.

On the sunny southern face (or in the Southern Hemisphere, the northern side) of the Belt are built-in various solar-energy catching devices, such as greenhouses, glassed-in passive solar structures, solar panels, solar towers and outside gardens. Years ago, it was calculated that if roads in America were covered with solar panels, even our current, 5% efficient solar technology would take in enough energy to fill all of our projected energy demands. Such solar collectors, along with interspersed wind turbines, would turn this World Belt into a huge power generating facility. This would further offset operating costs and help underwrite the admittedly staggeringly high initial investment of building this World Belt.

The expense of this project would be offset by the concurrent construction of power lines built nearby but at a safe distance from the transport line. This is no ordinary set of overhead wires. It is a buried, superconducting high voltage direct current (HVDC) power line. A relatively new invention, the cryogenic HVDC power line not only carries an electric current from one place to another almost without loss, but it also functions as a battery, storing electricity from intermittent power sources, such as solar and wind generating facilities, until demand on the grid can make use of it. Engineering groups, inspired by Buckminster Fuller and other far seeing prognosticators, have been advocating such an intercontinental power link for decades. Unfortunately, as with most of our needs for environmental protection, there is simply no single, world embracing institution with the audacity to implement it.

==========

Judging by Ambrose's story of the first American intercontinental train builders, financing a seeming ambitious enterprise like this could be surprisingly easy, especially if we learn from the mistakes they made back in the 1860's. The two big companies that built the American transcontinental line were the Union Pacific, which started in California and went Eastwards, and the Central Pacific, which started east and built westward. Both built a new railway through virgin land at huge expense. However, they rapidly made back their investment with extremely lucrative subsequent railway business.

Not surprisingly, corruption was rife. The bigwigs bilked little investors and taxpayers alike, using the free land granted to them to amass huge fortunes for themselves at public expense. Workers slaved for tiny wages; the names and numbers of railway builders wounded and killed were not even written down. The Union Pacific was riddled by the worst scandals of the 19th Century. The only reason the Central Pacific got away Scot-free was that somebody came up with the clever expedient of "disappearing" all their books and records in a fire. Ambrose, typical American, repeats again and again his belief that there was no other way of doing this, as if America existed in a vacuum. This completely ignores the Canadian intercontinental railroad, built immediately afterwards, not to mention other rail projects around the world. The Canadian railway enterprise was equally challenging and to some extent learned from and improved upon the egregiously corrupt American example.

That is not to say that there was not method in the madness of how financing worked in 19th Century America. The transcontinental railway was built with a clever strategy of taking all possible shortcuts to rapidly cash in on future potential. Everything was built as cheaply as possible, as opposed to doing it right the first time. These administrators knew that improvements could be done easier and cheaper once the train itself made transport from distant areas possible, and when the money came flowing in.

For example, they built long stretches of track on sand using shoddy wooden ties that they knew would last only a year or so. This was wise, since later on, the trains themselves could carry gravel for proper bedding from anywhere in the country. At the time of construction stones and wood were sold at grossly inflated prices, if they could be bought at all. Once the railway had been laid, permanent ties could be had from anywhere in the country at a much lower price. Thanks to government support, money was cheap at the start as well. Government loans were doled out based on the amount of track laid. The railway companies' credit was good, since everyone knew that soon their railway business would be very lucrative.

==========

By combining transit and power lines with a line of modular housing and other buildings, the facilities available in a UCS World Belt would make life more liveable in every way than anything we currently have. At the same time, like the early railways it could be built cheaply at first. Rail and power links may be laid first and the housing project laid in last, after money, power and transport from around the world make this urban building project cheap and easy.

The long-term goal of the housing project is to attract large numbers of people to move there, and not only refugees. By providing the luxuries of full service facilities, residences would be more pleasant to live and neighbourhoods more vibrant and dynamic than all but the most luxurious mansion today. The wealth of human contact would make even a mansion appear isolated and deprived by comparison.

In order to save the environment, the migration to hillside projects along the world belt can be hurried along by gradually reducing the artificial subsidies that sustain our present inefficient housing, transport and electric power grids. As soon as property and energy taxes reflect the real costs of an isolated existence in dangerous, inefficient, non-sustainable freehold buildings, widespread adoption of mound architecture will take place without a hint of coercion.

Overall, a world belt would be like railways in past centuries, which were nation-building enterprises, only instead of one nation, it would unite an entire planet. The potential benefits are beyond estimate.

::