My Online TED Talk Bike Coaches

My Online TED Talk Bike Coaches
This spring I got the bike out of the shed, filled the tires with air, got everything operational, but I found that I have just fallen out of the bike riding habit over the winter. Whatever my good intentions, I could not get myself to ride. The car is just too convenient. Weeks turned into months, and still I was taking the car every time.
The kicker was this election day, where I turned up at the polls three times, once for each member of our household. The voting station is a mere one kilometre drive from our house, but still I had to drive each family member there and back. Our shed is full of bicycles that have not been used for years. Clearly, something had to be done to save myself, if not my family, so when Kornelius came over last night, together we watched the TED talks of bicycle advocates, one after the next. It worked, I accompanied him on his trip home to the edge of town on my bike.
Anyways, if you need similar prompting, here is a summary of what we saw, which is only a small part of what seems to be available at ted.com.
One bike activist talks about how the bicycle cured him of Crohn's Disease, and how the twin cities where he lives exemplify how bike planning makes one of them a paradise, and the other highway hell. Another fellow, in Copenhagen, founded a group called Bicycles Without Age, which takes out the inmates of nursing homes, AKA long term care facilities, for excursions in electric assist rickshaws, powered by young volunteers. This gives the oldsters a chance to feel the wind in their hair while riding a bicycle through their old stomping grounds while sharing their experience with a young person.
In another video, a coach for professional bike racers laments his inability to bicycle because he is constantly travelling with the team, going to events like the Tour de France. He demonstrates his solution, a nifty folding bike that breaks down into a suitcase, which in turn folds out into a trailer that holds his other suitcase -- which must save him a great deal in taxi fare to and from the airport and hotels.
Another talk is a how-to on finding low budget adventure travelling on a bicycle camping tour. He used a "tall bicycle," a contraption that I would call a double decker bike. Everywhere he goes, he is asked, "How do you get down off that thing?" His wheels are so outrageous, he found, that they worked to his advantage as he voyaged his way across desert and mountains. Drivers were so surprised to see it in traffic that they gave him a wide berth, and fellow travellers were happy to supply him with whatever he wrote on a whiteboard sign, including food and lodging, so much so that he rarely had to use his tent and sleeping bag.
Other talks emphasized the many health benefits of biking. Many who take up biking literally are enabled to throw away their pills. The advantages are especially well documented for commuters, who arrive at work happier, stronger and more relaxed than those who come and go by motorized vehicles. After all that inspiration, how could I not get out on my bicycle?

Street Smarts and Stoa

Restoring Street Wisdom

By John Taylor; 2010 Nov 23, Qawl 01, 167 BE

For generations now, streets and intersections in urban areas have been the exclusive domain of thundering trucks and honking automobiles. It is the same in the country. Rural roads are deserted, machine-only zones where any wildlife that wanders onto the pavement rapidly becomes road kill. Pedestrians in the suburbs, when permitted at all, are shunted onto sidewalks that are ugly, smelly and noisy. Meanwhile, annual deaths from traffic accidents are higher than war and terrorism combined. Vehicles own our common spaces, their fumes and cacophony making the Res Publica, the public thing, a wasteland. Our entire built world accommodates this mechanical tyranny. Many new houses are garages with homes attached. Suburban sub-divisions are designed as motorized thoroughfares with housing tacked on as an afterthought.

This is not a new phenomenon. Before the machine age, horses pulled an assortment of carriages and wagons through streets, highways and byways. As commerce increased and the population of cities grew from thousands into millions, so did the numbers of horses. In major cities around the turn of the 19th Century, workhorses threatened to bury roads and streets in excrement. As a result, for many decades after cars and trucks took over, they seemed to be a cleaner alternative. Only when smog obscured the horizon and evidence of global warming mounted did the dangers of the less visible and tangible pollution of motorized vehicles become evident.

Bad as the soot and emissions are, perhaps the worst kind of pollution produced by this transportation system is mental, and especially political. The automobile is a singularly isolating technology. It enables drivers to commute the whole route from home to work without a single face-to-face encounter with another human being. Paradoxically, the more crowded traffic is the more isolated are the individuals caught in the deadlock become. Thus cut off, the basic social skills required by democracy are becoming lost arts. Even the most fundamental political quality of all is, the willingness to put the interests of the whole before those of the part, is often forgotten. The result? An atmosphere of selfishness and truculence pollutes the public discussion as badly as the physical air.

Centuries of expulsion from thoroughfares has affected our speech. The word "civilization," started off referring to the good effects of city life, declined from a proud badge of hard won progress to a dirty word. Expressions like "street wise," and "street smarts" have nothing to do with wisdom or philosophic understanding; they refer rather to someone with the cunning to survive in the hostile, crime-ridden wasteland that our city streets have become. The greatest accomplishments of the Ancient world were the result of a different kind of "street smarts."

None living today remember a time when people were not banished from streets, corners and city squares; yet we know that there were times when streets actually invited city dwellers to come there to learn, work and converse together. Vital, high-density settlements allowed citizens to live close by their workplace. Rather than wasting their lives commuting, they had energy and leisure time left over to relax together and engage in open, spirited public discourse.

Residents on well-designed streets relished spending their day in a place that offered a full spectrum of activity, from trade to recreation. Teachers gave classes outside, merchants plied their wares and tradespersons their crafts in open air markets; artists and dramatists created great art and the "peripatetic" (walking) philosophers of Athens made memorable discoveries about the human condition in the open street. The Cynics of Hellas and the Stoics and Epicureans in the streets of Alexandria became the first leaders of thought who had a mass audience. The Roman Republic built elaborate public baths, held triumphal parades and built impressive public buildings in the street. Centuries later, the broad streets of Baghdad became an intellectual melting pot of intense activity. Streets in Renaissance city states were just as frenetic, but they exuded a charged atmosphere that inspired great art, literature and the birth of both science and the modern nation state.

Even today, great cities like Paris, London and New York continue to benefit from an older style of mixed use layout. Such great metropolises retain their preeminence by attracting creative people from near and far, and providing them with optimal conditions for discovery. They tend to discourage car ownership by providing integrated, efficient public transit systems. Integrated public transit and mixed use zoning helps foster diversity and creativity in public spaces.

Stoas, Street Smarts and Social Insulation

One of the time tested secrets of old fashioned designs was the use of a sort of social insulation that allowed diverse functions to work side by side without interference in a small, dense, high population area. The original name for this insulation was "stoa," which is Greek for "porch." Long before pedestrians were overrun by vehicles, the stoa was not only a "freestanding ... covered walkway" but also served many of the functions that shopping malls do today, except that they were centrally located and very much a part of the Public Thing; that is, they were not privately owned or run. They,

"lined marketplaces and sanctuaries and formed places of business and public promenades. Rooms might back onto the colonnade, and a second story was sometimes added. The Stoa of Attalus in Athens (2nd century BC), a large, elaborate, two-story building with a row of shops at the rear, was a prime example." (http://www.answers.com/topic/stoa)

Throughout the ages the stoa remained the cornerstone of street life. Porches were not restricted to private homes. Public buildings were often surrounded by columns, creating a space where citizens could mix together on neutral ground and discuss public issues. The first stoa were little more than sheds with columns, but they evolved over the centuries and millennia. The stoa became,

"... a roofed colonnade or portico with a wall on one side, erected as a separate building near temples or gymnasia or in market-places as a sheltered place in which to walk and talk or hold meetings. The wall was often decorated with paintings or inscriptions. Thus the Stoa Poikil (painted colonnade) in the agora at Athens, built c.460 BC, was adorned with frescos by famous artists, including one by Polygnotus representing the destruction of Troy."

Stoa had a surprisingly great influence not only on art history but also on philosophy and science, especially in Athens and Alexandria. It gave its name, "stoic," to the first philosophy to gain mass popularity throughout the ancient world. The Stoic school was so named because their founder, Zeno, was in the habit of discoursing with his followers in and around the painted stoa of Athens. Eventually stoas served not only business but also acted as a sort of public interface among art, religion and politics.

"Later stoas were often immense, running to two stories, each with a colonnade of a different order and having a ridged roof supported on internal colonnades; rows of shops or offices lined the back wall, which was sometimes decorated with paintings. Such stoas surrounded the agora or marketplace of every large city and were used for public meetings."

The porch on houses is the last surviving remnant of the stoa. Although the garage fronting new homes recognizes the reality before them, the mark of older houses is that they retain a veranda at their front, a quaint relic of an age before air conditioning and electronic screens drew people indoors, a time before motor vehicles spewed carbon monoxide, smog and noise throughout every street and its surroundings. The few porches that remain are mostly used for storage or decoration. Only architectural historians remember that the verandah was once a place for extended families to relax in a cool breeze, converse with passersby and, often, to entertain guests. Porches served as the main transition zone between the public and private spheres. Today only a brave few sit in their verandas, surrounded by ugliness, partly asphyxiated by fumes and smog, their shouted conversations drowned out by traffic.

Our Greatest Need

A Vascular System for the World Belt

By John Taylor; 2010 July 06, Rahmat 15, 167 BE

The first thing a world government will do after its formation is to end permanently the structural iniquities that are now crippling the potential of the majority of the human race. This is part of a management principle that we shall be calling "go for the need." It is a moral imperative, a basic for both triage and compassion, that our leadership solve the most urgent difficulties first.

It is the thesis of People Without Borders that the quickest way to solve the crying needs of the present hour is to initiate the construction of the World Belt. The World Belt is a concentrated line stretching around the world, connecting each continents and deserts with all others, carrying within it at least three essential infrastructural necessities, power, travel and housing.

Energy and the World Belt

The first necessity, electrical power, consists of an underground HVDC power line that transfers any amount of energy around the globe at the speed of light. Because HVDC power lines are superconducting, they double as a massive energy storage facility, in effect an invisible battery. The World Belt, therefore, is ideal for connecting renewables, solar and wind, which are free, but notoriously intermittent. Only half the planet is illumined at one time, and wind turbines, even in prime offshore locations, are often becalmed.

Nonetheless, their potential is all but limitless.

The world's deserts alone take in more than enough solar energy, once they have been connected to populated regions, to supply more electricity than the human race is ever likely to need. As we have seen in early chapters, the spirit of the cosmopolis is, nevertheless, to make use of locally derived facilities wherever possible. Thus, in spite of an abundance of cheap electricity available from central sources, the World Belt will do everything possible to make every locality energy independent, through conservation, distributed heating and cooling, solar cooling towers, and other easily implemented techniques, many of which are among the oldest technologies known to pre-history.

Travel and the World Belt

The second function of the World Belt is a network, built underneath every "basement," of high speed evacuated tube lines. It has been known by engineers who are also dreamers for over a century that tube transport is the fastest (going at least ten thousand kilometres an hour), safest and most efficient way to get from point A to point B. It is also the most environmentally friendly. The World Belt's capsulated tubes could replace the almost fifty thousand airliners in the air at any given time around the world, each of which is spewing massive quantities of greenhouse gasses into the most sensitive place imaginable, the upper atmosphere.

Although this transit system is technically feasible, it requires but one thing to keep it out of the realm of fantasy, the removal of national borders. As soon as people are liberated from these invisible barriers, a pipe dream will instantly become a necessity.

Tube transport not only revolutionizes express, long distance travel by using magnetically levitated capsules running in a vacuum -- but it is also is the best technology for short-run trips of less than three hundred miles, which at present are the undisputed domain of trucks and automobiles. These capsules run along dedicated tubes that are powered pneumatically, that is, pushed along by pumps that create differences of air pressure. Pneumatic capsulated tubes have been known for decades as the most efficient travel technology for distances less than three hundred miles.

Housing and the World Belt

The third major change initiated by the World Belt is on human shelter. A long hillside housing development runs near, alongside or right over the Belt's power lines and its long distance evacuated tubes. Throughout this monostructural housing setup is incorporated a sort of vascular system of pneumatic tubes, similar to the nerves and blood vessels that serve the needs of every cell in the human body. These pneumatic tubes combine with RFID sensors to establish a sort of physical internet of interconnected, redirectable capsules in the pneumatic system.

A recent news report describes how such a system is achieving newfound energy efficiencies in an otherwise fairly conventional looking housing development in Sweden,

"Residents of Hammarby Sjvstad, a district on the south side of Stockholm, Sweden, don't let their waste go to waste. Every building in the district boasts an array of pneumatic tubes, like larger versions of the ones that whooshed checks from cars to bank tellers back in the day. One tube carries combustible waste to a plant where it is burned to make heat and electricity. Another zips food waste and other biomatter away to be composted and made into fertilizer. Yet another takes recyclables to a sorting facility. Meanwhile, wastewater is taken to a treatment plant, from whence it emerges as biosolids for more compost, biogas for heat and transportation fuel, and pure water to cool a power plant, which also runs on biofuels grown with the biosolids. Looking at a chart of all this is enough to induce dizziness." (Local Power: Tapping Distributed Energy in 21st-Century Cities, By David Roberts, Scientific American, June 15, 2010 <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=distributed-energy-urban>)

Swedish authorities estimate that this system of tubes, combined with other conservation techniques, will enable the region to produce half its own energy independently while using only half the energy of the average Swede. This of course does not factor in the many other potential transport savings that the use of pneumatic tubes for letters, postal delivery and other point-to-point transit of small packages.

Needless to say, the efficiencies of the World Belt will have tremendous implications not only for economic prosperity but also on how citizens govern themselves, especially if we take the "go for the need" principle seriously. For example, it will break down the barriers to pure face-to-face democracy, until now an all but impossible ideal for human governance. Although it is not generally realized, this is perhaps our greatest need of all. I want to discuss next time how the Belt might do that.

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World Belt

A world-building megabelt

This is the third draft of a proposal for an intercontinental mega-Project, part of the section on infrastructure in People Without Borders.

The World Belt

By John Taylor; 2010 May 16, Jamal 18, 167 BE

Precis: My proposal for the World Belt, a world encircling belt of buildings, transport and power lines joining the continents. This combined power line, hillside building project and rapid tube transit artery would pay for itself by energy collection. It would promote travel and mitigate the suffering of climate disruption.

Ambitious railway construction projects formed the modern nation as we know it. Historical accounts are both thrilling and popular, such as Stephen Ambrose's "Nothing Like it in the World," which tells the story of the first transcontinental railroad across North America in the 1860's. Similarly, Pierre Burton's "The Last Spike" describes the great railway whose construction in the 1880's both built and defined the new Canadian nation. Today China is engaging in perhaps the most prodigious infrastructural project in history. This expertise and experience it is presently exporting throughout Africa.

We can expect that the formation of a world government will permit even more audacious initiatives. Projects of greater magnitude are possible that would connect not just national borders but entire continents and the globe itself. Buckminster Fuller was one of the very few designers and engineers to give this eventuality much thought. In the late 1960's he worked on several proposals (which are discussed throughout this book), including the idea of a global energy grid. This idea is still being actively promoted by the Global Energy Network Initiative at, www.geni.org. I have collected some of the YouTube videos describing this project that are to be found on this site on my blog, at: badiblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/peter-meisen-and-geni.html.

As these sources explain, a global energy grid would eliminate the need for fossil fuels by sending solar generated electricity from equatorial regions towards the poles, and from the illumined day side of earth to its dark, night side. This has become an even more attractive alternative since cryogenic high voltage direct current (HVDC) power transmission technology was developed. This allows for much more economical long distance power transmission. Combined with superconducting lines, long distance power lines can be used as virtual batteries, storing as well as carrying electrical energy. At the same time, if a string of wind turbines were built along the length of the grid, the grid would generate its own power and decrease the wait period that it takes to pay for itself.

This mega-project, like most of Fuller's proposals, was suggested long before its time. By now, the technical difficulties of building such a globe encircling power grid are trivial compared with the moral, religious and political obstacles. Until a world government is formed, they are likely to remain as stubborn and immovable as ever. Or, to put the same point positively, we can look forward to tremendous leaps forward when we finally bow to the inevitable and form a democratic world government.

I would like to see this construction effort made even more monumental by combining Fuller's power grid with an evacuated tube transport artery and a long "stoa hillside" building project. This combined grid, transport and housing project I will call here the "World Belt." The combined effect of power, transport and buildings together would create what Fuller would call a synergistic effect.

Parts of the world belt would be buried underground while other sections would be held aloft. Parts of the belt would keep all three together, power lines, buildings and transport tubes, while other sections might separate them by a short distance. The link would extend across both coasts of the American continent, connect the tip of South America through Central America, the continental United States, Canada, Alaska and over (or under) the Bering Strait to Asia, China, Australia, India, Europe and Africa.

Citizens would travel around the world at speeds of tens of thousands of kilometres an hour -- without the pollution and delays of air travel -- in evacuated tubes. When they arrive at their destination travellers would have right at hand cheap power to energize their activities, and no matter where they go there would be ample shelter and living space. This sheltered space along the world belt would also be available for emergency evacuation of cities in case of disaster. Unfortunately, we have delayed building the power grid so long that climate is running out of control and the seas are threatening to rise quickly. As a result we can justify the expense of building a strip of urban construction running through each continent as a way to accommodate the estimated two billion refugees flooded out of coastal regions by rising seas. The world belt permit them to move from flooded regions with relatively little suffering or job dislocation.

The world belt would in this way play the same historic role for world governance that the railway did for nations.

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On tough jobs

Rewards for tough jobs

It is a tough job, and God will reward you for it

Thanks to Jimbo for his recent contributions. In response to yesterday's essay, "Transportation, its Importance and Requirements," Jimbo sent the following long passage from Nabil's Narrative about the spiritual roots of the modern revolution in transportation. Going over it, I note that several other principles were taught here by the Bab, for example, that God gives greater rewards for work that is more arduous, i.e., sailors. A more recent example of this happened in New York just after 9-11 when the ideologues in a White House that did anything for the elites and had nothing but contempt for working class joes, suddenly had no choice but to recognize the contribution of unionized firefighters, government employees, who had put their lives on the line for the general good. Imagine how much more the ultimate Authority, God, who loves all, rich and poor, must love and reward those of us who are stuck with difficult jobs.

As for the stopover in Muscate, now called Muscat, in Oman, this would explain why it took two months for the Bab to travel to Mecca. He had to go all the way out of the Persian Gulf, into the Indian Ocean and around to the Red Sea. In stormy weather, I can imagine how tough this must have been, though it would be safer, probably, than walking across the Sahara Desert using the land route.

Jimbo: re: Improving transportation, and the Bab's prayer in an excerpt from The Dawnbreakers.


THE BÁB'S PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA AND MEDINA

The letter of Mulla Husayn decided the Bab to undertake His contemplated pilgrimage to Hijaz. Entrusting His wife to His mother, and committing them both to the care and protection of His maternal uncle, He joined the company of the pilgrims of Fars who were preparing to leave Shiraz for Mecca and Medina.[1] Quddus was His only companion, and the Ethiopian servant His personal attendant. He first proceeded to Bushihr, the seat of His uncle's business, where in former days He, in close association with him, had lived the life of a humble merchant. Having there completed the preliminary arrangements for His long and arduous voyage, He embarked on a sailing vessel, which, after two months of slow, stormy, and unsteady sailing, landed Him upon the shores of that sacred land.[2] High seas and the complete absence of comfort could neither interfere with the regularity of His devotions nor perturb the peacefulness of His meditations and prayers. Oblivious of the storm that raged about Him, and undeterred by the sickness which had seized His fellow-pilgrims, He continued to occupy His time in dictating to Quddus such prayers and epistles as He felt inspired to reveal.

[1 According to Haji Mu'inu's-Saltanih's narrative (p. 72), the Bab set out on His pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in the month of Shavval, 1260 A.H. (Oct., 1844 A.D.).]

[2 "He retained the most disagreeable impression of his voyage. 'Know that the sea voyages are hard. We do not favor them for the faithful; travel by land,' he wrote in the Kitáb-i-Baynu'l-Haramayn in addressing himself to his uncle, as we shall soon see. He elaborates upon this subject also in the Bayan. Do not consider this childish, the feelings which moved the Bab in his horror of the sea are far more noble. "Struck by the selfishness of the pilgrims which was heightened by the discomforts of a long and dangerous sea voyage, equally shocked by the unclean conditions that the pilgrims were obliged to endure on board, he wished to prevent men from yielding to their lower instincts and treating one another harshly. We know that the Bab especially commended politeness and the most refined courtesy in all social relations. 'Never sadden anyone, no matter whom, for no matter what,' he enjoined, and during this voyage he experienced the meanness of man and his brutality when in the presence of difficulties. 'The saddest thing that I saw on my pilgrimage to Mecca was the constant disputes of the pilgrims between themselves, disputes which took away the moral benefit of the pilgrimage.' (Bayan, z:16.) "In time he arrived at Mascate where he rested for several days during which he sought to convert the people of that country but without success. He spoke to one among them, a religious man probably, one of high rank, whose conversion might also have been followed by that of his fellow citizens, at least so I believe, though he gives us no details upon this subject. Evidently he did not attempt to convert the first comer who would have had no influence on the other inhabitants of the city. That he attempted a conversion and did not succeed is an indisputable fact because he himself affirms it: 'The mention of God, in truth, descended upon the earth of Mascate and made the way of God come to one of the inhabitants of the country. It may be possible that he understood our verses and became one of those who are guided. Say: This man obeyed his passions after having read our verses and in truth this man is by the rules of the Book, among the transgressors. Say: We have not seen in Mascate men of the Book willing to help him, because they are lost in ignorance. And the same was true of all these voyagers on the boat with the exception of one who 2 believed in our verses and became one of those who fear God.'" (A. L. M. Nicolas' "Siyyid Ali-Muhammad dit le Bab," pp. 207-208.)]

I have heard Haji Abu'l-Hasan-i-Shirazi, who was travelling in the same vessel as the Bab, describe the circumstances of that memorable voyage: "During the entire period of approximately two months," he asserted, "from the day we embarked at Bushihr to the day when we landed at Jaddih, the port of Hijaz, whenever by day or night I chanced to meet either the Bab or Quddus, I invariably found them together, both absorbed in their work. The Bab seemed to be dictating, and Quddus was busily engaged in taking down whatever fell from His lips. Even at a time when panic seemed to have seized the passengers of that storm-tossed vessel, they would be seen pursuing their labours with unperturbed confidence and calm. Neither the violence of the elements nor the tumult of the people around them could either ruffle the serenity of their countenance or turn them from their purpose."

The Bab Himself, in the Persian Bayan,[1] refers to the hardships of that voyage. "For days," He wrote, "we suffered from the scarcity of water. I had to content myself with the juice of the sweet lemon." Because of this experience, He supplicated the Almighty to grant that the means of ocean travel might soon be speedily improved, that its hardships might be reduced, and its perils be entirely eliminated. Within a short space of time, since that prayer was offered, the evidences of a remarkable improvement in all forms of maritime transport have greatly multiplied, and the Persian Gulf, which in those days hardly possessed a single steam-driven vessel, now boasts a fleet of ocean liners that can, within the range of a few days and in the utmost comfort, carry the people of Fars on their annual pilgrimage to Hijaz.

[1 "It is thus that I myself saw, on the voyage to Mecca, a notable who was spending considerable sums of money but who hesitated to spend the price of a glass of water for his fellow-traveler. This happened on the boat where the water was scarce, so scarce in fact, during the voyage from Bushihr to Mascate, which lasted twelve days with no opportunity to get water, that I had to content myself with sweet lemons." ("Le Bayan Persan," vol. 2, p. 154.) "One cannot imagine on the sea anything but discomfort. One cannot have all the necessities as in land travel. The mariners are obliged to live thus but by their services they come nearer to God, and God rewards actions performed on the land and on the sea but He grants a two-fold recompense for those services accomplished by one of the servants on the sea, because their work is more arduous." (Ibid., pp. 155-156.) "I have seen (on the way to Mecca) acts of the vilest kind, in the eyes of God, which were sufficient to undo the good resulting from the pilgrimage. These were the quarrels among the pilgrims! Verily, the House of God has no need of such people!" (Ibid., p. 155.)]

The peoples of the West, among whom the first evidences of this great Industrial Revolution have appeared, are, alas, as yet wholly unaware of the Source whence this mighty stream, this great motive power, proceeds -- a force that has revolutionised every aspect of their material life. Their own history testifies to the fact that in the year which witnessed the dawn of this glorious Revelation, there suddenly appeared evidences of an industrial and economic revolution that the people themselves declare to have been unprecedented in the history of mankind. In their concern for the details of the working and adjustments of this newly conceived machinery, they have gradually lost sight of the Source and object of this tremendous power which the Almighty has committed to their charge. They seem to have sorely misused this power and misunderstood its function. Designed to confer upon the people of the West the blessings of peace and of happiness, it has been utilised by them to promote the interests of destruction and war.

(Shoghi Effendi, The Dawn-Breakers, p. 131)

 

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Check out this car free community

Nearly Car-Free

Martin Specht for The New York Times

Published: 2009 05 12

Though not quite car-free, Vauban, Germany, is a highly "car-reduced" suburb.

Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.html

Slide Show:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/05/12/science/20090512-SUBURB_index.html


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Transport Plan

Plan B for Transport

By John Taylor; 2009 April 29, Jamal 02, 166 BE

Unfortunately, the ideas for change that are being considered at the highest level are heavily influenced by the ideology of crony capitalism. Even the words we use for world issues are putrefied by ideology rather than thought. The word "Internationalism" reeked of communism, so now we are forced to say "globalization" instead. Like an automated telemarketer, it has a different ring tone but the result is the same.

A specific example is the idea of cap and trade. President Obama explained it thus at an Earth Day commemoration at a wind tower installation in Iowa last week:

"We would set a cap, a ceiling, on all the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that our economy is allowed to produce in total, combining the emissions from cars and trucks, coal-fired power plants, energy-intensive industries, all sources. And by setting an overall cap, carbon pollution becomes like a commodity. It places a value on a limited resource, and that is the ability to pollute... Over time, as the cap on greenhouse gases is lowered, the commodity becomes scarcer -- and the price goes up. And year by year, companies and consumers would have greater incentive to invest in clean energy and energy efficiency as the price of the status quo became more expensive. What this does is it makes wind power more economical, makes solar power more economical. Clean energy all becomes more economical."

I got the text of this speech from a reader who passed it on from a newsletter edition called "Obama the Explainer" at:

http://www.terrapass.com/newsletter/sample.php

Amazingly, this article praises the clarity of Obama's explanation. Personally, I think this is not only incomprehensible, I suspect it is intentionally so. It is obfuscation by those with an imagined interest in burning. How is the price on capped goods going to go down? Is this not like saying that if we jigger the works the evils jumping out of Pandora's Box will increase in value and jump back in when they are expensive enough?

Environmentalists like George Monbiot point out that cap and trade is absurd. It is exactly as if ethicists suggested that we cap and trade crime or evil, as if they said that the way to stamp out stealing is not to make it illegal but to allow some robbers to keep stealing, on condition that they limit their thefts. Trading limits on how much thieves can scoff from us all is mere insanity.

No wonder cap and trade is so hard to understand.

If something is hard to grasp there is a reason for it, as we found out to our cost with the market crash. It turned out that a complicated scheme had been trading in bad debt was groundless. No matter how you dress it up, bad debt is bad debt. Polluting the air is polluting the air. It is worth nothing. You cannot trade it, you have to write it off for what it is, an evil. How can you trade the right to destroy the planet's atmosphere? There is no way a responsible authority can allow anybody to muck up the air we all breathe, no matter how well connected they may be with those in power and no matter how plausibly mathematical their scheme may seem.

What we need are plans to solve the problem, not to perpetuate it by limiting it and having blind faith that the shining knight of the market will somehow destroy it on its own.

My daughter for her Grade Nine English class wrote the following poem, which pretty well sums up the problem.

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Poem

The earth is dull,

She is crying like me,

Our hearts are broken,

What does the future foresee?

The earth wasted away,

By pollution created.

The humans do not care

If the earth is hated.

For what kind of man

would hate his home?

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I subscribe to the email RSS of Ecomodder.com, of which I have become quite a fan. In response to a report about scrappage, the idea of having the government pay owners of old cars to buy new ones. The post reads in part,

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"Plan #2: Cash for inefficient vehicles

"The other plan will give tax credits of up to $4,500 dollars to consumers who trade in vehicles that get less than 18 mpg and purchase vehicles that get at least 25% better mileage than the segment average.

"This plan is a much better one. Instead of picking arbitrary fuel economy targets, it encourages a constant increase in fuel economy in terms of a percent above the average. This means perpetual innovation without the need to legislate every few years. Furthermore, it is the most inefficient vehicles that will benefit for higher mileage. A 25% increase in fuel economy on a full-size truck will save more than a corresponding increase on a Prius.

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Or, more simply, you could tax vehicles by weight. Make SUV's and minivans too expensive to use on a broad scale. Anyway, you can read the whole article at:

http://ecomodder.com/blog/auto-scrappage-plan-coming/

I wrote the following response to this article,

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"I am interested in your opinion of what the British environmentalist George Monbiot has to say about scrappage, at:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/10/scrap-it/

"I am enjoying your blog. It influenced me to buy a Toyota Echo lately and try my hand at ecomodding and hypermiling."

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The author, Benjamin Jones, wrote the following response to my question:

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"Hi John,

"Thanks for the comment. That is a good post by Monbiot, even if it is a bit overdone. I tend to agree with him, these things are pretty much scams, as are what they have in Japan. However, the Japanese system, rather than scrapping cars, simply prepares them for export to other countries or disassembly into parts to be used in repairs, so its not destroying working cars.

"Good luck with the Toyota Echo!"

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As for my Toyota Echo, it is black in color and I am finding that it is very hard to keep cool. No wonder California is thinking of banning black cars. They are heat magnets in summer. Even if the air conditioning worked, which it does not, it would take too much energy to cool off. Maybe I could paint the roof silver or get the windows tinted, or something. The constant cries from the kids in the rear seats to open our windows is getting on my nerves. To my amazement, I found after I bought it that there is no way you can open the rear windows. I definitely should have bought a four door.

Anyway, back to the environment. I was interested to read about a new plan to save the world in this month's Scientific American. I looked up the book, "Plan B 2.0," that is listed in the article. The site has a PowerPoint presentation explaining the plan. Here is the text of the part dealing with automobiles:

"Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) running primarily on emissions-free electricity generated by the wind and the sun would allow for low-carbon short-distance car trips. Combining a shift to PHEVs with widespread wind farm construction would allow drivers to recharge batteries at a cost equivalent of less than $1 per gallon of gasoline."

This is slightly inaccurate. There is only a need for hybrids for long distance driving, which is less than five percent of driving for city motorists (country dwellers like me do more highway driving, but we are a minority). Local trips are best done with electric cars, or, better still, electric buses and bicycles.

My plan is to universalize the locality by introducing world standards, a smart sort of "Plan B."

For example, right now London, England is planning to host the next Olympics. As part of the preparation the city wants to reintroduce the double-decker buses that were part of their traditional look until they were cancelled. Some of the old double-decker buses were shipped here to Canada and are being used in Toronto and Niagara Falls for tours. I know that because I chatted with a driver of one a couple of years ago in Niagara Falls.

So anyway, the city of London is holding open bidding among several manufacturers for designs of a new version of that old two level, red bus that says "London" like nothing else. Some science magazines are featuring the proposals, some of which are quite ingenious. When I read about that I had a Eureka moment.

It is true that an open competition for a large contract like this cuts down on corruption. But it is inadequate because it is still largely closed, restricted to one location, London. The winner of the contract has one customer, the city of London, and that is it. They may be able to export a few of the red buses, but London will still be their main customer.

Why does it have to be that way? Why do we think so small? Here is how it should be:

All transportation should be under the wing of a democratic world government. Let them sponsor a huge, open design competition for the whole world, for every city on the planet.

Make the contest for both single and double-decker buses, and stipulate that every part made for it is open, non-proprietary and compatible with every other local bus in the world. Make the standard such that it is easy to adapt a single bus into a double-decker when the route is in high demand, or even to split passenger compartments into smaller modular components to fit onto smaller buses or trucks, for suburban routes with smaller demand. Make the design compatible with containerization standards so that buses can be shipped everywhere.

Since it is clear that we have to electrify now and eliminate all burning to stop global warming, make the motors for these buses electric, or at worst some kind of hybrid for intercity buses. Where the electricity comes from does not matter, what matters is the standard. Smaller versions of these buses might use batteries, larger designs might be trolleys with direct contacts to the grid, either by overhead wires or through the road underneath.

The point is that this would be an absolutely open competition for a standard design. Being very large, large companies would not need to bid, they could just make the best compatible design and be assured of a place in the huge world market.

There would be thousands of customers in many cities around the world available to buy into a given design. Meanwhile, standard parts allows smaller companies to compete fairly. They are free to adapt their design to specialist markets, and to make parts for any given bus made by any company. Because local workers are closed to where the tire touches the road, so to speak, they are the best informed, the most efficient and need the least transport, work, money and smarts to do the job.

But this also allows for advantages for larger corporations to use their economies of scale to access the big market of cities everywhere both freely and fairly. Tata Automotive in India is already working this way to a limited extent; its main design for a car can be assembled and adapted by local workshops, within proprietary limits. A Tata car can be gas burning, electric or hybrid, according to how local shops assemble it.

So it soon has to be with every bus, train or car in the world. It would be standard, yet infinitely customizable. With such a world industrial model all mistakes and lessons learned would be passed on to the world level for revision by a single standards body composed of trustees of the highest expertise and integrity. Larger decisions would be democratically arrived at by large bodies of experts. Our lives depend on this, so we can afford to do nothing less.

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