Oahu Rail may tax Outer Islands

SUBHEAD: Hawaii may seek higher state taxes to cover Honolulu Authority Rapid Transit cost overrun. 

By Ed Wagner on 9 August 2017 in Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/08/oahu-rail-may-tax-outer-islands.html)


Image above: HART rail guideway car photo-op over Farrington Highway at Leokane Street near Waipahu Sugar Mill. From Civil Beat article below. Photo by Cory Lum.

I hope the neighbor island folks reading this message are ready to fight the Legislature to help stop the biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon our people since statehood, the Honolulu rail boondoggle.

Why should any of you help pay for this fraud? The state uses the argument that it helps other counties with [reasonable and legal] public projects so why not require other counties to help with this illegal and fraudulent one to continue the fleecing of our people and continue to cause irreparable financial harm to the people of Hawaii for another three or more generations, all to protect the profits of the wealthy, power elite?

When will the people wake the hell up and rebel against our crooked and corrupt city and state government, the most corrupt in the USA, and stop this abuse of power?

Public testimony will be accepted however, please avoid repetitive and duplicative testimony.

Testimony must be submitted via email to the Senate Committee on Transportation and Energy at: (TRETestimony@capitol.hawaii.gov)

http://www.ililani.media/2017/08/hawaii-legislature-seeks-public.html

Rail Tax Presentation - 52 pages
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914769-Rail-Tax-Presentation-DRAFT.html#document/p8

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Oahu rail seeks more funds

SUBHEAD: Lawmakers consider making Outer Islands help pay for Oahu's troubled rail project.

By Nathan Eagle on 7 August 2017 for Civil -Beat 
(http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/08/lawmakers-consider-having-neighbor-islands-help-pay-for-oahus-troubled-rail-project/)

With a special session set for the end of August, the Hawaii Legislature will lay out several funding options for the public at a briefing next week.

Hawaii lawmakers are weighing five options to provide funding to complete Honolulu’s over-budget rail line from Kapolei to Ala Moana, including a statewide increase in the general excise and hotel taxes, according to a state Senate presentation obtained by Civil Beat.

The Legislature plans to hold a special session later this month to try again to reach a deal on how to pay for the 20-mile, 21-station project, which is now estimated to cost $10 billion.

Key House and Senate committees have scheduled a joint public information briefing Monday morning at the Capitol. The new options to fund the project, along with the choices under consideration before the Legislature adjourned in May, are expected to play a central role in the negotiations.

The draft 52-page presentation, provided by a state senator Monday, lays the groundwork for a case to have Kauai, Maui and Hawaii counties help fund Honolulu’s beleaguered project. It notes that Oahu subsidizes harbors, airports and highways on the neighbor islands.

The presentation includes options to extend the 0.5 percent general excise tax surcharge for Oahu; increase the GET surcharge for Oahu; extend the GET surcharge for Oahu and increase the hotel tax for Oahu; or establish a statewide GET surcharge and hotel tax increase.

The Federal Transit Administration is kicking in $1.55 billion for the project. It could withhold some of those funds, particularly if the rail line has to stop short of its plan to go from Kapolei to Ala Moana Center. The project was expected to cost $5.2 billion just a few years ago.

House Speaker Scott Saiki has said the city’s latest figures project a nearly $1.4 billion shortfall from now to 2024.

The two chambers ended the session far apart. The Senate left with a bill to extend Oahu’s 0.5 percent general excise tax surcharge for 10 years, until 2037, to help complete the rail project.

That’s the option Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell and the tourism industry supported.

The House pushed a bill that would have allowed the GET surcharge to be levied for just one additional year, to 2028, while increasing the state’s 9.25 percent transient accommodations tax for 10 years.

“In spite of our impasse during the 2017 legislative session, the Legislature understands the importance in crafting a legislative solution that will provide the City and County of Honolulu a dedicated revenue stream,” said Senate President Ron Kouchi in a press release announcing the public briefing.

The briefing starts at 10 a.m., Monday, in the Capitol auditorium. The special session is set to run from Aug. 28 to Sept. 1.

See the draft presentation, which a state senator said was created by the Senate Ways and Means Committee at link below.

(http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914769-Rail-Tax-Presentation-DRAFT.html#document/p4)

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Testimony on Failing Rail Project

SUBHEAD: UH Law Professor says the cost of building the Honolulu Rail is getting out of hand.


Video above: Retired UH Law Professor Randy Roth sums up rail project in 3 minute video. From (https://youtu.be/ZL9pIrxaA3Q).

He also described the project as deliberate misrepresentation, deliberate fraud on this 30 minute ThinkTech Hawaii with Kelii Akina, President of Grassroot Institute. From (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw_NDLg6EbbmYlNOSy13a0NKNmM/view?usp=sharing).

Whether one is Pro-Rail or Anti-Rail, there’s something virtually everyone in the state agrees about – the cost of building the Honolulu Rail is getting out of hand.

Not only that, serious questions have been raised about how well the funds already invested in this project have been spent.

Law professor Randy Roth, who has a long history advocating for the public good, appears on E Hana Kakou with Dr. Akina to discuss why it is time to hold our government leaders responsible for the progress of the Rail.

ThinkTech Hawaii streams live on the Internet from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm every weekday afternoon, Hawaii Time, then streaming earlier shows through the night. Check us out any time for great content and great community.

Our vision is to be a leader in shaping a more vital and thriving Hawaii as the foundation for future generations.

Our mission is to be the leading digital media platform raising pubic awareness and promoting civic engagement in Hawaii.

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Rail Cost Spirals Out of Control

SUBHEAD: Watch short video and sign the petition here to require a forensic audit of the rail.

 By Staff on 22 July 2017 for Grassroots Institute of Hawaii
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw_NDLg6EbbmRE8yWU9qZFRBUWc/view)


Video above: Group seeks to audit the Honolulu rail project with "Where is our Money Going?" From (https://youtu.be/X8Fa2qr2djg).
 Longtime journalist Mark Coleman talked recently with ThinkTech Hawaii host Tim Apicella about his recent Grassroot Institute of Hawaii article titled “Honolulu rail clearly a fiasco,”and suggested that now would be a ideal time to subject the over-budget, behind-schedule project to an independent forensic audit.

In particular, Coleman suggested that the state legislators use their upcoming special session to order such an audit, which would allow them to avoid extending or raising any state taxes until they have better information about why the city’s rail project has veered so far off track — while yet so much of it remains tobe built.

The timing is apt, he told Apicella, because the City Council just approved selling bonds to fund construction of the rail through to next year, thus taking pressure off the Legislature to consider anything before it starts its regular session in January 2018.

Coleman said transportation experts warned city officials years before the rail project was even started that it would be a “gigantic white elephant,” and by now it’s clear that just about everything that could have gone wrong with the project has — though nobody has a definite explanation as to why.

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Has HART committed federal crimes?

SUBHEAD: Is falsification of federal documents, lying to officials to get $1.55B HART a crime?

By Ed Wagner on 9 August 2017 on Google Drive -
(https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bw_NDLg6EbbmNnI2bnJlV0o3TGM?usp=sharing)

The people of Hawaii seek Congressional, DOJ, & FBI investigations into the following allegations against Mayor Caldwell, City Council, HART, Developer DR Horton, construction unions, Pacific Resources Partnership (PRP), DLNR, regarding the Honolulu rail project:

Systemic fraud, waste, and abuse of power, violations of public procurement codes, violations of the Hawaii State Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine, violations of basic ethical and moral principles, perjury, deliberate falsification of Federal documents / lying to Federal officials, deliberate misrepresentation of facts, deliberate fraud, bribery, racketeering, malfeasance, graft, conspiracy to defraud, and criminal offenses directly related to obtaining $1.55B in federal funds for the Honolulu rail project.

Those advocating for a forensic audit & investigations include former Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano, retired UH Law Professor Randy Roth, UH Civil Engineering Professor, Panos Prevedouros, President of Grassroot Institute and OHA Trustee, Dr. Keli’i Akina, former Army War College faculty instructor, retired Col Al Frenzel, retired businessmen, 2 attorneys, an accountant, and concerned citizens.

Dr. Keli’i Akina submitted testimony to the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Railroads regarding these issues.

All major newspapers and TV networks around the country have been notified about the dire situation in Hawaii.

It is argued that the City is jeopardizing its credit rating and solvency over this project and someone has to stop the bleeding, stop the irreparable hard this rail project is causing our people today, and for the next 3 generations, and folks in Washington seem to be turning a blind eye to this matter.

In lieu of reviewing rail-related documents online, I request a formal meeting with a Honolulu FBI agent to discuss this urgent matter, a meeting to include those advocating for these investigations.

Others have written to FTA, OIG, GAO, and Congress, and spoke to some officials. One high ranking official stated to one individual that perjury to obtain federal funds for rail appears to be involved.

The Honolulu rail is likely a massive government cover up similar to Watergate, but called HARTgate.

Please help us. This dire situation is reaching critical mass.

Messages sent to Washington and FBI. The city deliberately falsified federal documents, lied to federal officials, and lied to the public. I encourage everyone to submit a request to the FBI to conduct an investigation.

https://tips.fbi.gov/

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bw_NDLg6EbbmeTdFazZNQW4zYkk?usp=sharing

Please give these messages widest possible distribution.


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Honolulu rail over runs predicted

SOURCE: c4 (c4harumi@hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: Former Gov. Cayetano cites a 2010 state report predicting the project’s price tag would balloon.

By Michael Honore on 22 September 2015 for the Star Advertiser -
(http://www.pressreader.com/usa/honolulu-star-advertiser/20150922/281642483970785/TextView)


Image above: traffic moves slowly through rail construction in Waipahu along the Farrington Highway. From original article.

Last week top rail officials on Oahu said the transit project’s budget shortfall could climb to more than a billion dollars and take at least another year longer to build. Some of the project’s most ardent critics now say they worry the price tag could climb even higher.

Former Hawaiian Gov. Ben Cayetano, who ran for Honolulu mayor in 2012 on an anti-rail platform and tried to stop the project in court, pointed this week to a 2010 cost analysis commissioned by his successor, former Gov. Linda Lingle, as an example that the city had been warned its financial projections were too rosy.

The report, done by Infrastructure Management Group Inc. and CB Richard Ellis, predicted that rail could cost $1.7 billion more than expected over a 20-year period. Rail supporters, including former Mayor Peter Carlisle, criticized the report at the time as little more than an anti-rail analysis with a $350,000 price tag.

The report did, however, predict a rail construction shortfall that could be covered by extending the rail tax for between five and 19 years.

Five years later the state Legislature found itself considering a 20-year rail tax extension to deal with a construction shortfall, before deciding to authorize a five-year extension during its 2015 legislative session.

“All this information was already over to the city, to everybody else, and nobody paid attention,” Cayetano, a Democrat, said of his Republican successor Lingle’s report Monday. “If they don’t take steps to reduce the costs,” rail could become a “tremendous sinkhole” to the city and taxpayers, he said.

When local transit officials signed a deal to build rail with federal officials, it was expected to cost $5.2 billion. Now it’s projected to cost more than $6 billion to complete.

Rail officials say they can assure Honolulu residents there won’t be more dramatic price hikes —once all of the contracts to build it are signed. “The good news is you and I will have a much more boring conversation nine months from now,” Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Executive Director Dan Grabauskas said Monday. At that point all of the bids for remaining work should be opened. “We’ll have certainty next summer,” he said.

To help stave off cost increases, Cayetano suggests that HART stop building the rail line at Middle Street and then create a bus rapid-transit system from that endpoint into town, instead of building the full 20-mile, 21-station line to Ala Moana Center.

Grabauskas called that idea a “nonstarter.”

The rail agency is already building what’s been deemed by federal officials to be the minimum system possible, he said. The Federal Transit Administration might consider extending the dead line to finish the elevated transit project, but it won’t allow HART to build anything less than the minimum,according to Grabauskas. The move would put the city at risk of breaching its $1.55 billion contract, he said.

Cayetano, who served as Hawaii’s governor from 1994 to 2002, called it “silly” to think the FTA would demand all of that money back. The agency would not look to drive Honolulu into bankruptcy, and, “I doubt very much that the FTA is going to say you’ve got to finish the project,” he said.

On Sept. 15, Grabauskas and new HART board Chairman Don Horner delivered to Mayor Kirk Caldwell and City Council Chairman Ernie Martin — two political rivals expected to compete in next year’s mayoral election — a letter stating that rail could cost $200 million more to build on top of its existing $910 million shortfall.

Horner and Grabauskas further stated that rail would likely be completed in 2021 instead of January 2020. The main reasons they pointed to were the court and contract challenges that stalled the project’s schedule by more than a year, as well as “traffic mitigation initiatives” (by which crews aren’t closing as many lanes and working as many hours in busy thoroughfares).

Repackaging rail’s remaining work contracts to save costs was also a key reason contributing to rail’s likely missing its deadline, they added.

Rail officials insist the move was the right one to save money despite contributing to delays, but they remain unable to explain why they’ve changed the approach to design and construction three times since the project started. If the approach had remained consistent, then that repackaging would not have been a factor causing the delays.

“That predates me,” Grabauskas said Monday. Besides acknowledging its indecisiveness on design and construction, HART points almost exclusively to external factors in causing the cost increases and delays, dating back to Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner Paulette Kaleikini’s successful 2011 lawsuit to stop the project until the route’s full archaeological inventory survey was completed.

“I’m a hard person on myself. Yes, we’re accountable … but we can explain why we made the decisions that we’ve had,” Grabauskas said. “People will be the judge, ultimately.”

Cayetano disagreed.

“What delayed this thing is their incompetence and their misleading people about the costs of this,” he said Monday of rail officials.

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HART rail is eco-disaster for Oahu

SUBHEAD: HART Rail hitting karst water, sea caves polluting critical wetlands and damaging cultural sites.

By John Bond on 11 January 2015 for Kanehili Cultural Hui -
(http://honouliuli.blogspot.com/2015/01/Hart-rail-disaster-hitting-Oahu.html)


Image above: Above, "Pearl Harbor" as it was painted in 1898. Pearl Harbor is a vast estuary of ancient coral reef coastal habitats which native Hawaiians made extensive use of. From original article.

[IB Publisher's note: The article below is only a brief summary of the likely impact of currently planned mass transit development on the Ewa Plain near Pearl Harbor. For a more detailed and comprehensive article please see the original article. It is our position that the Ewa Plain (and Pearl Harbor), along with the Mana Plain on Kauai, are historically the two most critical wetlands in the Hawaiian chain. Both environments have been greatly compromised by Big Ag and the military and will be further damaged with current plans.]

West Oahu's greatest natural apocalypse is unfolding, with hundreds of 8 foot in diameter, 200 foot deep drill bores, the ancient karst water, sea caves and wetlands are being fractured and polluted, then to be followed by a major new asphalt and concrete city based around three huge HART (Honolulu Authority Rapid Transit) Rail Transit developments.

The already fragile Ewa Plain ecosystem based on natural clean water will be destroyed.


Image above: Laulaunui Island in the rich wetlands of Puuloa area and nearby Ewa Plain. From original article.

Pearl Harbor was originally an extensive shallow ancient coral reef embayment called Wai Momi meaning “Waters of Pearl” or Puuloa meaning “long hill” by Hawaiians. The large uplands of inland Oahu fed massive amounts of surface and subsurface fresh nutrient rich water into the Pearl River which spawned great quantities of pearl laden oysters and teeming sea life.

Fresh spring water is especially important in the propagation of plant and sea life and the food chains they create- from limu on up to large pelagic fish.

Surface and ground waters are very susceptible to contamination from pollutants.

Contaminants can reach ground water quickly through fractured rock formations or sinkholes in karst areas, such as that found in Ewa. Ground water is more sensitive to contamination in these areas because runoff may pass directly into the subsurface with little if any infiltration through the soil, a process that typically filters at least some pollutants.

The Ewa Karst is the largest of several karsts on Oahu, but possibly the least studied (in the Hawaiian Islands and especially the United States.) Many State and even some Federal agencies refused to recognize that Ewa has a karst subsurface water system. Most people in Hawaii have never heard of karst or that a large number of the population live on an ancient coral reef.



Image above: Piledriving operations for HART project on Ewa Plain threatens karst formations critical to environment and wetlands integrity. From original article.

The HART Rail pylons to support the system will be 8 foot in diameter and go down as far as 150-200 feet deep. The hundreds these pylons required are going destroy ancient lava tubes, karst waterways and the sacred wahi pana cave sites of native Hawaiians.

Drilling hundreds of 8 foot diameter deep bores below the surface of Pearl Harbor waters will greatly endangering an entire ecosystem. It contaminate subsurface waters and exposed them to modern street and machinery pollutants.

The eight foot in diameter Waipahu deep boring rail column sites have been a consistent problem for the Kiewit construction company because they are hitting large amounts of underground water channels.

The entire ancient history (and plantation era history) is loaded with springs popping out of the ground everywhere. For agriculture and fish ponds these were ideal conditions. Today everything is being covered in concrete and asphalt.

An entire bountiful ecosystem and cultural heritage being destroyed by land developers.

Off the Ewa shore are the numerous huge circular holes in the still living reef where vast amounts of upland fresh water has run through the ancient Karst reef and out into the sea through underground caves.

These huge fresh water outlets create excellent fishing grounds and feed nutrients into the sea that create ideal spawning conditions.

These once fantastic ecosystems fed native Hawaiians for a thousand years however the waters are increasingly being diverted, cut off and polluted by up stream development on the Ewa Plain.

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High Speed Train Disservice

SUBHEAD: High speed train connections accompany elimination of slightly slower, but much more affordable, alternatives.

By Kris De Decker on 16 December 2013 for Low-Tech Magazine -
(http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-killing-the-european-railway-network.html)


Image above: This now retired train, the Trenhotel Joan Miró, went between Barcelona and Paris from 1991 to 2013. It was cheaper and faster than the current high speed train. Photo by Sergio Evangelio. From original article.

High speed rail is marketed as a sustainable alternative to air traffic. According to the International Union of Railways, the high speed train "plays a key role in a stage of sustainable development and combating climate change". As a regular long-distance train traveller in Europe, I have to say that the opposite is true. High speed rail is destroying the most valuable alternative to the airplane; the "low speed" rail network that has been in service for decades.

The introduction of a high speed train connection invariably accompanies the elimination of a slightly slower, but much more affordable, alternative route, forcing passengers to use the new and more expensive product, or abandon the train altogether.

As a result, business people switch from full-service planes to high speed trains, while the majority of Europeans are pushed into cars, coaches and low-cost airplanes.

A look at European railway history shows that the choice for the elite high speed train is far from necessary. Earlier efforts to organize speedy international rail services in Europe accompanied affordable prices and different ways to increase the speed and comfort of a rail trip. Quite a few of these services were even faster than today's high speed trains.

Five years ago I promised my readers I would not fly anymore. Hopping on a plane would be a hypocritical thing to do when you run a publication called Low-tech Magazine.

Since then, I have been travelling across Europe almost exlusively by train (apart from the occasional boat trip), good for some 70,000 km of long-distance travel. I went as far north as Helsinki, as far south as Málaga, and as far east as Budapest. Europe has the most amazing railway network in the world. It gets you anywhere, anytime, and it's much more fun and interesting to travel by train than by air.

However, this is not the time to get lyrical about the pleasures of long-distance train travel. Every year, it becomes harder to keep my promise, and the advance of the high speed train is to blame. As more and more reliable train routes are shut down in favour of high speed lines, international train travel becomes prohibitively expensive. Strangely enough, many of these abolished routes are almost as fast, and sometimes even faster, than the new, expensive high speed connections.

As an example, let's have a look at the route which I cover most often: from Barcelona, Spain (where I live) to the Netherlands and Belgium (where I grew up). It is now possible to travel all the way from Barcelona to Amsterdam by high speed train, a trip of 1,700 km. The final link between Barcelona and the French border was inaugurated December 15, 2013. Great news, you would think...

Not so! To find out much more and see many photos of trains as well as a detailed history of faltering rail service in Europe read original article in Low-Tech Magazine. 

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New Energy Paradign

SUBHEAD: ,We face a choice - keep what is burning up the planet, or transition to lower economic and environmental cost.

By Chris Williams on 8 February 2013 for the Socialist Worker -
(http://socialistworker.org/2013/02/08/how-can-we-stop-climate-change)


Image above: An illustration of "Before" and "After" tar sand exploration.  From (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/18/1008331/-Join-me-to-Protest-the-Keystone-XL-Pipeline#).

"For a moment he lost himself in the old, familiar dream. He imagined that he was master of the sky, that the world lay spread out beneath him, inviting him to travel where he willed. It was not the world of his own time that he saw, but the lost world of the dawn--a rich and living panorama of hills and lakes and forests. He felt bitter envy of his unknown ancestors, who had flown with such freedom over all the earth, and who had let its beauty die."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars

CAPITALISM STANDS as a death sentinel over planetary life.

Recent reports from institutions such as the World Bank detail how, as a result of human activity, we are on track for a 4º Celsius increase in average global temperatures. Should this come to pass, the Earth would be hotter than at any time in the last 30 million years; an absolutely devastating prognosis that will wipe out countless species, as ecosystems destabilize and climate becomes a vortex of ever-more erratic and wild weather events.

Despite this, however, Americans not long ago suffered through an election campaign in which climate change quite literally wasn't mentioned--at least until the final weeks, when a hurricane forced the presidential candidates to acknowledge it.

And even as the World Bank published its report--with the conclusion that avoiding a 4ºC temperature increase was "vital for the health and welfare of communities around the world"--bank officials were nevertheless still handing out loans to construct more than two dozen coal-fired power plants, to the tune of $5 billion.

Perversely, an entirely manufactured crisis, the so-called "fiscal cliff," has dominated political discourse since the election, notwithstanding the fact that humanity is hurtling toward a very real "carbon cliff." Carbon emissions are at record highs and set to rise further in a world where 1,200 new coal-burning power stations are under construction, and oil and gas extraction are ramping up around the world. 2012 was a record year of heat in the continental U.S., which set 362 new record high temperatures and not a single record low.

In direct contrast to politicians and the media, fully 80% of Americans believe that climate change will be a serious problem for the United States unless the government does something about it--with 57% saying the government should do a "great deal" or "quite a bit."

Even for the 1-in-3 Americans who say they are wary of science and distrust scientists, 61% now agree that temperatures have risen over the last 100 years. Commenting on the new poll, Stanford University social psychologist and pollster Jon Krosnick wrote,

"They don't believe what the scientists say, they believe what the thermometers say...Events are helping these people see what scientists thought they had been seeing all along."

This background of overwhelming public concern helps situate the upcoming national demonstration in Washington, D.C., on February 17, 2013, against the building of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Canada to Texas.

If built, the pipeline will carry 800,000 barrels a day of highly-polluting tar sands oil, effectively dealing a death blow to hopes of preventing rampant climate change. The demonstration has added significance as activists attempt to draw a line in the sand and pose the first big litmus test for the second term of Barack Obama.

AS CORPORATIONS hunt every square inch of land and sea for more fossil fuels to sell, disfiguring the earth as they line the pockets of their shareholders, millions of people know that the world is changing in ways that drastically limit the beauty, diversity and stability of life on earth.

They also know, or are coming to realize, that the people they elected to protect and serve them spend far more of their time appeasing the corporations responsible for the climate emergency and ecological crisis than they do addressing their concerns. Rather than limiting the power of the corporations, politicians of both major parties in the U.S. are greasing the wheels of capitalist expansion. Hence the vital need to demonstrate our anger against the destruction sanctioned by our government.

Given that an overwhelming majority of Americans, and even most people hostile to climate science, are in favor of action, why is it that the overwhelming majority of politicians, who presumably are subject to the same weather as the rest of us, can't seem to see the need? Why aren't our elected representatives proposing serious measures to prevent it from getting worse?

How one answers this question is not one of semantics. Rather, it is of decisive importance because it determines how one should fight and with whom one should forge alliances. Unfortunately, it is a question that Bill McKibben, cofounder of 350.org and a key organizer of the February 17 demonstration, has struggled with, but not conclusively resolved. His confusion is evidenced by the title of an article he wrote in January: "Our Protest Must Short-Circuit the Fossil Fuel Interests Blocking Barack Obama"--implying that Obama would do something if he could.

In the run-up to what is likely to be the largest U.S. demonstration to date against the fossil fuel industry and proponents of "extreme energy" technologies, we are at a potential turning point in the movement for ecological justice and environmental sanity.

The stultifying lull of the election campaign, during which many Big Green groups set aside their disappointment with Obama aside and stayed quiet about his inadequacies, is at least temporarily gone, with a large and varied coalition of groups helping to promote the February 17 demonstration.

The momentum generated from this demonstration could serve as the launching pad for a sustained campaign that begins to stitch together the myriad forces fighting locally around the country, transforming previously isolated or single-issue initiatives and groups into a broad united front for climate justice that draws in other forces, such as unions.

Nevertheless, a number of activists and organizations will go to Washington hoping to persuade someone they see as a potential ally in this fight against the fossil fuel corporations--to persuade President Obama to go beyond the stirring words in his inaugural address and act on climate change.

This is the position of Big Green groups like the Sierra Club. Even as it pledged for the first time to take part in civil disobedience, its executive director, Michael Brune, declared that the new strategy was part of "a larger plan to support the president in realizing his vision and make sure his ambition meets the scale of the challenge."

The first thing Obama and his new Secretary of State John Kerry could do is say no to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. That would be inordinately easy, as Obama has the final say and doesn't require Congress' support to shut it down. After 53 senators from both parties signed a letter urging him to green-light the pipeline, Obama is running out of ways to further delay his decision.

In spite of the rhetoric of his inaugural address, the pivotal question remains: Is Barack Obama--or any Democratic leader, for that matter--really on our side?

Is it just a question of persuading a reluctant friend, hamstrung by a right-wing, dysfunctional Congress and stymied by powerful corporate interests, to act by demonstrating outside his house to let him know we're there for him?

Or should we be surrounding his house, knowing full well that he won't give in to our demands without a social movement that acts independently of his wishes and control.

TO UNDERSTAND the reasons for Obama's "lack of desire" to address climate change--a microcosm of the larger inability of global leaders and institutions to do likewise amid two decades of increasingly futile climate negotiations--it's necessary to go beneath the surface appearance of things; to examine the structure and ideology of the system of capitalism.

When their financial system was threatened by the crisis that began in 2008, political leaders didn't sit around for 20 years arguing that they had to wait until all the facts were in and attempting to reach consensus on a solution. No, in a heartbeat, they threw trillions of dollars at the banks.

But when a far larger crisis, one that threatens the basic stability of the planetary biosphere, unfurls as a result of the same policies of reckless growth, waste and warfare, they spend their time rubbishing scientists and ignoring the unraveling weather outside their windows.

Therefore, to get to the root of the issue, it becomes necessary to analyze the intertwined workings of the whole economic system of production and exchange of goods and services--that is, capitalism. Only by doing this can we hope to formulate an effective strategy to combat climate change and thereby recognize that ecological and social justice are inseparably connected to each other, via an organized, grassroots and global challenge to the capitalist social order.

One doesn't need to be an anti-capitalist to take part in this struggle, but one does need to recognize that unless the pendulum of social power swings back toward the working people in the U.S. and around the world, and that limits and regulations are placed on the activities on corporate power, we have no hope of saving our world.

The point we must grasp is that this struggle is not really about technology, nor which renewable energy models should be deployed, nor whether this or that politician or this corporations or that CEO are more or less evil than the others. It's not about things or people at all--it's about relationships. It's about democracy, which is itself about social power and the relationships it presumes.

The power of the oceans, the power of scientific rationality, the power of the tides and hurricane-force winds are self-evidently not enough to persuade the capitalists to act. The only force strong enough to do that is the organized force of the people. We must take the place of gravity to pull the pendulum of contending class forces--wrenched rightward by 30 years of neoliberalism--back toward our side.

Ultimately, as a socialist, I would argue that we need to live in a world where there are no classes with diametrically opposed interests, in perpetual conflict over social and political power. Only in such a socially just and ecologically sustainable world will there be any long-term hope for humanity to live in peace with itself, other species and the planet upon which we all depend. The stepping-stones of that revolutionary road are the acts of struggle needed to create it.

IN CONTRAST to his inaugural speech, Obama's first press conference after re-election gave a more accurate insight into the priorities of his second term. Unlike four out of five Americans who want the government to do something to address climate change, Obama made it clear that this wouldn't be a priority for his administration:

Understandably, I think the American people right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that, you know, if the message is somehow we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don't think anybody's going to go for that. I won't go for that.

With two mentions of the need for "growth" in a single sentence, Obama faithfully echoed the declaration of the Earth Summit, Rio+20, held in June 2012, where the representatives of 190 countries, while dismally avoiding any commitment to new targets or limits on greenhouse gas emissions, did commit--16 times in all--to "sustained growth", a phrase taken to be synonymous, rather than in fundamental conflict, with another term: "sustainability".

The obligation to promote growth underlines why the root of the climate problem is systemic. If capitalism is not growing, it is in crisis. Growth must occur continuously and in all sectors. If the sector in question is highly profitable, it will grow even faster, regardless of any social considerations.

Like, for example, the fossil-fuel sector. Oil production, rather than declining, as is desperately needed to stop climate change, is predicted to increase from the current 93 million barrels per day to 110 million by 2020--with some of the biggest increases worldwide occurring in the U.S. The Holy Grail of all administrations since Richard Nixon--energy independence--is being made possible by the policies of the Obama administration, as the New York Times reported in a special feature:

National oil production, which declined steadily to 4.95 million barrels a day in 2008 from 9.6 million in 1970, has risen over the last four years to nearly 5.7 million barrels a day. The Energy Department projects that daily output could reach nearly 7 million barrels by 2020. Some experts think it could eventually hit 10 million barrels--which would put the United States in the same league as Saudi Arabia.

As the climate blogger and former Clinton administration official Joseph Romm put it, Obama is "basically pushing a moderate Republican agenda. It's just that there aren't any moderate Republicans left, much as we don't have any 'below average temperature' years any more."

Again, if we examine the roots of the issue, we find that the pathetic response of an administration purporting to be concerned with environmental questions has much less to do with individual personnel than it does with the dynamics of capitalism.

In 1992, when George H.W. Bush flew to Rio for the first Earth Summit, all things seemed possible. The "evil empire"--as Ronald Reagan liked to call the tyrannical dictatorships of the USSR and Eastern Europe, which operated falsely in the name of socialism--had collapsed under the weight of its own economic, social and ecological contradictions. Politicians in the West were euphoric. They had seen off what they perceived to be an existential threat to their system.

In today's world of enforced austerity, it's difficult to recapture the sense of optimism that pervaded Western ruling class circles in the early 1990s. The atmosphere of triumphalism was so great even Republican presidents like Bush could make promises about protecting the environment. A few years later, when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was written, Western governments were still willing to pledge that they would do the heavy lifting with regard to reducing emissions, while developing countries would be free from such limits.

Hence, the seeming "lack of will" at Rio+20 last year can be much better explained by the onset of a huge structural crisis of capitalism, rather than the "lack of vision" of individual politicians.

INSTEAD OF optimism about acting on climate change, the real optimism these days among capitalists is about the profits they can make from the oil and gas bonanza.

Oil giant and planet-wrecker par excellence BP is predicting that by 2030, the entire Western Hemisphere will be energy independent, due to the expansion of new techniques for oil and gas exploration, such as fracking in shale deposits, and horizontal and deep-water drilling. Fossil fuels are expected to remain at 81 percent of the energy mix, in an energy economy that will be 39 percent larger than today.

Naturally, oil executives such as Scott D. Sheffield, chief executive of Texas-based Pioneer Natural Resources--headquartered in an area of the world that received only two inches of rain for the whole of 2011 and spent most of the year with large parts of the state on fire--are nevertheless overjoyed:

To not be concerned with where our oil is going to come from is probably the biggest home run for the country in a hundred years...It sort of reminds me of the industrial revolution in coal, which allowed us to have some of the cheapest energy in the world and drove our economy in the late 1800s and 1900s.

Depending on who you are, the outlook for natural gas is even rosier. The International Energy Agency recently released a report that asked in its title "Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?" The answer was a resounding "yes" due to the North American shale gas boom and a "strong post-crisis recovery" in demand.

The other side to this "golden age," as the report makes clear, is that future economic expansion based on natural gas "alone will not put the world on a carbon emissions path consistent with an average global temperature rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius," but on a "trajectory consistent with stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at around 650 parts per million CO2 equivalent, suggesting a long-term temperature rise of over 3.5 degrees Celsius."

But in the insane capitalist "logic" of the 21st century, short-term profit-taking must be maximized at all costs.

In a little-reported phenomenon, the energy companies have figured out that they can find oil in shale deposits previously considered marginal in the same way that they "frack" for natural gas. With the price of oil over $80 a barrel, it's profitable to seek oil in this way, regardless of the environmental cost.

Hence, not only is there a natural gas boom in the U.S., but there's also an enormous, though much less publicized, oil boom. In fact, the oil boom from previously untapped shale deposits is so large that its effects can be seen from space. The Bakken Field in North Dakota, all 15,000 square miles of it, is one of the largest contiguous oil fields in the world, with output doubling every 18 months. In Texas, production from the Eagle Field increased 30-fold between 20010 and 2012.

The reason that the remote and sparsely populated Bakken Field now rivals Chicago in light pollution, making it visible to orbiting satellites, is because the natural gas that comes up with the oil, rather than being collected and sold, is simply set on fire, in a process called "flaring". This senseless act of vandalism and waste is the result of the fact that companies are in such a rush to make money from oil that they can't be bothered to develop the infrastructure necessary to cope with associated natural gas.

As Stanford University academic Adam Brandt, who analyzes greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, explains: "Companies are in a race with their competitors to develop the resource, which means there is little incentive to delay production to reduce flaring." In Texas, the natural gas flared in 2012 could have provided electricity to 400,000 homes.

SO WHILE one set of capitalists is fracking for natural gas on the East Coast--thanks to political leaders like Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, who appears to be ready to open up the state to fracking--in other parts of the country, a different set of capitalists is setting fire to the exact same gas because it's a nuisance that slows down production of the different fossil fuel they're after.

Nothing could exemplify the utter waste and anarchic insanity of capitalism than this fact. One of the government regulatory bodies supposedly in charge of overseeing the oil corporations, North Dakota's Industrial Commission, gave their logic for refusing to take action against this senselessness: "If we restricted oil production to reduce flaring, we would reduce the cash flow from oil wells fivefold...As well as cutting waste, we are mandated to increase production, which we would not be doing."

As for the third and dirtiest arm of the triumvirate of fossil fuels, the world is predicted to be burning 1.2 billion tons more coal per year in 2017. Coal has actually declined in use in the U.S. due to companies switching electricity production to cheaper natural gas, which has reduced U.S. carbon emissions.

One might think this is a good thing. However, capitalism is a global system, so any coal not sold here, finds a market overseas. The Chinese population is literally choking to death on grotesque amounts of air pollution in cities such as Beijing. And who's to blame? The U.S. government says China is building too many coal plants--but increasing amounts of the coal destroying people's lungs and the planet's air in Asia is coming from mines in the U.S. According to a report in ClimateWire:

Although Chinese coal is largely sourced from domestic mines, EIA figures show that U.S. coal shipments to China have dramatically risen in recent years, punctuated by a 107 percent jump from 2011 to 2012. Chinese imports of U.S. coal surged from 4 million tons in 2011 to 8.3 million tons last year.

This brings us to the international dimension--and the economic and military competition between countries that makes it impossible for effective international agreements on climate change and emissions reduction to be negotiated.

If Barack Obama really wanted to do something about reducing energy consumption in America--and killing a lot fewer people around the world--he could start with a massive reduction in military spending. The U.S. military is the single biggest user of energy in the United States, with the Department of Defense responsible for 80 percent of government energy requirements. Just the cost of the war in Iraq would have paid, from now until 2030, for all the investment in renewable energies necessary to stay below two degrees Celsius of warming.

These examples illustrate two things. First, we are in a do-or-die battle with the economic system, because capitalism is in fundamental conflict with the biosphere. And second, only a committed alliance of social and ecological justice activists that is clear about the nature of the enemy and prepared to confront the political and economic architects of the crisis stands a hope of winning.

This is why fighting the XL pipeline is about much more than stopping a single pipeline or the first test of Obama's second term. It's about building a movement for social and ecological justice and making it clear that we are going to organize to prevent any more infrastructure being built that will drive us over the ecological cliff.

As energy analyst Chris Nelder has put it, we face a choice between keeping the old fossil-fuel based infrastructure that is burning up the planet, and adding to it at an annual cost of $1.6 trillion just to keep it running--or transitioning, at much lower economic, let alone environmental, cost, to a new energy paradigm. His figures and argument are worthy of a lengthy quote:

Instead of incremental spending on an effectively dead transportation regime, we should be thinking about one that can survive the challenges ahead, and deliver more economic benefits than costs. We should be setting an ambitious target, like replacing all commercial passenger air flights with high speed rail for trips under 1,000 miles, replacing 90 percent of our city street traffic with light rail, and moving all long-haul freight traffic to rail. Even if the cost of all that rail infrastructure were in the range of $3 trillion, it would be a fantastic investment.

Against $6 trillion (minimum) in sunk costs and $1.6 trillion per year in maintenance, the $1.2 trillion per year estimate I offered in my article on infrastructure, plus building the high speed rail network at a generous estimate of $1 trillion, looks very reasonable.

Put another way: Would you rather spend another $32 trillion over the next 20 years just to maintain our outmoded, unscalable, aged, unhealthy system, plus another $2.8 trillion in lost productivity due to delays and gridlock, only to wind up out of gas? Or would you rather spend $25 trillion to repair our existing infrastructure, transition transportation to rail, transition the power grid to renewables, upgrade the entire grid, and solve the carbon problem, to have free fuel forever.

Of course, whether we travel that road or not--and whether we leave behind a world to our descendants as beautiful as the one we were born into--will depend on our own independent, organized self-activity to wrench control away from a ruling elite that is quite happy to continue making money from a system that must be overturned.

• Chris Williams is the author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis, that looks at the battles ahead for those who will protest for the planet next week.
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Getting back on the train

SUBHEAD: Various trends are already coming together that will support the resurrection of rail and possibly strengthen it as we move out towards 2025.

By Gregor McDonald on 31 October 2012 for Peak Prosperity -
(http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/79935/getting-on-train#new)


Image above:Detail of illustration of rail travel by Ward Hooper. In original article, and from (http://www.wardhooper.com/?p=1647).

Given emerging data in 2012, it's becoming increasingly clear that the post-war automobile era in the United States is now in well-articulated decline. Accordingly, it makes sense to note the beginning of a long-term supertrend that is just getting started: the resurrection of America’s rail system.

At Seattle’s historic King Street Station (a classic example of early 20th Century railroad architecture), a nasty looking dropped-tile ceiling – which hung above travellers for decades – was removed late last year to reveal ornate plasterwork as the building undergoes extensive renovation. These cosmetic (and structural) alterations are part of a wide-ranging upgrade to the entire Cascades passenger rail service that runs from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Eugene, Oregon.

In Tacoma, for example, a new station will either be built or renovated, and part of the Cascades line will be re-routed from its current shoreline path more directly through that city. Elsewhere, bridges are being rebuilt, track is being upgraded, and other infrastructure improvements are underway as part of the $500 million program to resurrect more efficient, faster inter-city rail in the 466-mile Amtrak route through this part of the Pacific Northwest.

These changes will not bring European-style high-speed rail to the United States. Indeed, in many similar projects across the country, top speeds of 125 mph will characterize new system capability, rather than the average speed actually maintained from city to city. However, the incremental improvements now underway will become the platform for the next phase of investment, as Americans are increasingly persuaded to limit their car ownership and make rail transport part of their lives once again.

What America Lost
Up until World War II, rail transport of all kinds – intercity, light rail, and commuter rail – dominated transportation in America. Los Angeles had the largest light-rail system in the entire world, connecting the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, and San Bernardino County to central L.A. and the northern reaches of Orange County. As the old saying goes, however, the car killed America. And the following 40 years from 1945-1985 saw a relentless decline of all forms of rail in the United States.

To get a sense of what the country lost as it eagerly built out a vast highway infrastructure and foolishly stopped investing in rail, let's look at two historical maps showing a veritable collapse of passenger route miles over just a ten year period. The first map shows that in 1962 intercity passenger rail network still covered 88,710 route miles.

Just ten years later, however, with intrusive highways bisecting American cities and ruining the integrity of their downtowns, the number of passenger route miles had collapsed by over 75%(!), to just 19,366 miles.

Laughing at Amtrak
Most people born after World War II have regarded Amtrak as a kind of joke, with its routine dysfunction and massive annual operating losses. The economics of national rail transport, however, deem that your railway system will only be as efficient as the proper mix of investment and operational fitness allows. If you starve your railways of upgrades, make them share tracks with freight rail, and divert national infrastructure spending to other modes of transport, the results will be quite predictable.

One of the great misunderstandings of public rail transport is the mistaken belief that it should run at an operating profit. Not so. The purpose of commuter rail, light-rail, or intercity rail is to harvest economy-wide efficiencies and to ensure that wasteful expenditures spent collectively on transportation can be directed elsewhere.

These "savings" were not an issue and were harder to determine during the cheap oil era, when much of the national highway system was built during the era of $14/bbl oil. Now, however, the impact on household budgets and monthly cash flow from much higher oil prices is pushing U.S. transportation demand rather dramatically away from roads and highways – and instead to rail.

In Los Angeles, for example, where the aggressive Measure R has been restoring L.A.'s lost light-rail system, annual ridership has made extraordinary gains. A recent piece from LA Observed reports that;

"[a]verage weekday ridership on Metro's rail lines in September soared to 357,096, up nearly 12 percent over the same time last year and 16 percent over 2010."

Similar restorations of commuter rail in cities like Boston and improvements in either infrastructure or rolling stock in the NY Metro region have emerged in the past decade. Indeed, some U.S. regions took the signal of oil's price revolution early and began work on local rail systems long before federal spending began to shift, ever so slightly, to rail transport.

Meanwhile, on the national level, Amtrak just announced that ridership hit an all-time high and has climbed nearly 50% in the past decade. From its October 2012 press release:

Amtrak carried more than 31.2 million passengers in Fiscal Year 2012 ending September 30, marking the highest annual ridership total since America's Railroad started operations in 1971 and the ninth ridership record during the last ten years.

A year-over-year comparison of FY 2012 to FY 2011 shows ridership grew 3.5 percent to a new record of 31,240,565 passengers and ticket revenue jumped 6.8 percent to a best ever $2.02 billion.

In addition, Amtrak system-wide on-time performance increased to 83 percent, up from 78.1 percent and its highest level in 12 years.

During FY 2012, ridership on the Northeast Corridor is up 4.8 percent to a record 11.4 million, state-supported and other short distance routes is up 2.1 percent to a record 15.1 million and long-distance services is up 4.7 percent to their best showing in 19 years at 4.7 million.

Also, FY 2012 produced other ridership achievements including new records for 25 of 44 Amtrak services, and 12 consecutive monthly records with July being the single best month in the history of Amtrak.  Since FY 2000, Amtrak ridership is up 49 percent.

Rationalizing the Rail System
Many will decry the fact that Amtrak and the United States as a whole are still not in a position to offer European- or Asian-style high-speed-rail, where sustained traveling speeds routinely average above 150 mph. However, five to six decades of neglect necessitate that the U.S. undertake its resurrection of rail in phases. Two of the many projects around the country (The Vermonter & The Cascade Line) demonstrate exactly the type of initial heavy-lifting that must be done, in which fundamental changes are made in route selection and in the separation of tracks between freight and passenger rail.

The Vermonter: New York City to Burlington
Three states, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, are currently in partnership with Amtrak to upgrade tracks, bridges, and stations along the route between Burlington and New York City. The state of Vermont has just completed its part by upgrading track with new, very long, continuously-welded rail, which will increase speeds.

Work in Connecticut and Massachusetts is now underway, but one of the more significant transformations occurs in the switching of 60 miles of track from Palmer and Amherst back to the other side of the Connecticut River. This is actually a restoration of the original route between Vermont and New York, and means that trains from Springfield, MA will now travel north to Holyoke, Northampton, and then Greenfield before joining up again with the current route through Brattleboro in southern Vermont. Below is one of the new train stations, located in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

In bringing The Vermonter back to the west side of the Connecticut River, Amtrak is rationalizing the route in several ways, but most importantly it is reducing the passenger train's exposure to freight traffic. Shared tracks, in which passenger service and freight traffic run on the same routes, is actually an enormous problem in the United States and accounts for a tremendous amount of the dysfunction that many users of Amtrak services experience.

The biggest change in the Vermont-New York City trip, therefore, will come via on-time reliability as the transfer away from Palmer, MA will greatly reduce overlap with freight rail. Completion of this project is currently set for 2014.

The Cascades Line
The twin ports of Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon – straddling each side of the Columbia River – have seen very strong growth the past few years as increasing volumes of lumber, potash, and wheat are shipped to Asia. Accordingly, on the north side of the river at the Port of Vancouver (Washington), a large freight rail project has been underway to help increase loadings.

But one of the little-noticed initiatives is the construction of new track to alleviate congestion for passenger trains as they head out of Portland toward Seattle. Finally, these trains will be able to steer clear of freight traffic at the Vancouver, Washington side of the river.

As usual, these are not the types of splashy, high-profile infrastructure improvements that garner headlines. But the Portland to Seattle route typically has had very poor on-time reliability, which invariably reduces ridership. As mentioned in the start of this essay, Cascades Line improvements are quite wide-ranging, with the Federal Government having awarded over $800 million to multiple projects. The upgrades will continue for several years, with noticeable differences in on-time reliability already in force.

Reliability and Ridership
Amtrak's 50% increase in ridership the past decade certainly began as a result of rising oil prices, and not because of any notable service improvements. However in the latter part of the decade and especially in the past 3-4 years, Amtrak (and other rail networks) have started to deliver substantial improvements to riders as the upgrade cycle gains momentum.

Deep skepticism has greeted just about every major rail project in the country over the past twenty years. But a virtuous circle, in which riders are persuaded to reduce car-miles driven, has started to unfold as heavier demand comes online for rail services. This has been especially true in cities such as Los Angeles which started its light-rail project twenty years ago, greeted initially greeted by a fearful public. Now however, L.A. is laying track down along many of the same routes from its pre-war light-rail system. It is finally becoming possible to live in Los Angeles without a car.

Continuing the Virtuous Circle
Various trends are already coming together that will support the resurrection of rail and possibly strengthen it as we move out towards 2025. In Part II, Reducing Your Exposure to Oil, we explore ways to take part in the U.S. rail renaissance. I also offer a personal example of how much savings my own household has captured by moving to a city that is served by extensive rail transport.

Finally, I give a brief update on energy transition, as the developed world continues to move away from high-priced oil and pursues economic development along the contours of the powergrid.


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