Over on ThinkProgress, Joe Romm has a great article titled, The Green New Deal Doesn’t Need to Choose Between Planes or Trains: Here’s Why. Fromm notes that one of the RWNJ attacks on the Green New Deal (led, in this regard, by Lynne “Spawn-of-Evil” Cheney) is that it will supposedly "outlaw air travel.” Now, as Fromm notes, nothing in the GND actually outlaws air travel, but it does propose a network of high speed rail lines (which Obama had also championed) as part of the plan to dramatically cut carbon emissions. I also support high speed rail and have for more than 30 years.
But Fromm’s article shows that the same breakthroughs in battery technology that have sparked the revolution in electric cars are about to spark a similar revolution in electric airplanes. We can’t use high speed rail to replace flights from here to Europe or China, so this is very welcome news. My own hope was for a biofuel replacement for jet fuel, but if battery tech really will be powerful enough to enable carbon-free electric flights around the world, then we have one more piece of the puzzle solved in the transition from a carbon economy to a green economy.
This doesn’t need to be a binary choice: planes or trains. Both will be helpful for different purposes. The Green New Deal should openly embrace both, nullify the Cheney attack (and McConnell’s own criticism of Democrats’ “weird obsession with choo-choos” as he characterized Obama’s push for high speed rail), and continue to think big. There is no one “magic bullet” answer to climate change. We need all hands on deck, try any and all breakthroughs in as many different sectors as possible.
The entire article is worth your attention—and those on twitter (I’m not) can re-tweet it to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey. This article was such a pleasant read at the end of a Friday that I felt compelled to share it with the DKos community.