Mass transit for global justice

July 6, 4:54 PMSF Energy Policy ExaminerAnn Garrison

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At the re-opening of Reactor #1 at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Browns Ferry, Alabama, then President George Bush rhapsodized about a new world of all-electric cars running on nuclear power. 

President Barack Obama, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and San Francisco Mayor and California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom also champion the electric car future, though without mentioning its connections to the "nuclear renaissance" that all three support as well. 

A new world of electric cars will, of course, hugely increase demand for electricity, and thus increase nuclear pressure, as will the demand that an electric car market will stimulate for lightweight aluminum, and thus, for aluminum smelters.

Alcoa, BHP Billiton, and the world's other aluminum producers construct their plants close to nuclear power plants or hydroelectric dams, most often in the Global South, in their search for abundant, centralized electricity, the cheapest electricity they can find.

In D.R. Congo, the heart of Africa, and the most war ravaged nation on earth, the International Monetary Fund and other faux charitable organizations have told the Congolese people that the expansion of Grand Inga Dam, at the mouth of the Congo River, will power all Congo, implying that it will power all the homes of the Congolese people, many of whom have no electricity, despite living in the most resource rich nation on earth. 

However, BHP Billiton projects that 2/3 of the Inga 3 expansion will go to power a BHP Billiton aluminum smelter, and indeed, BHP, in June, began bidding to invest in the expansion, which is to say, bidding for the power.

Mass transit is the only ecologically conscious and rational transportation response to global warming, to global inequity, and to equity here in the U.S., where African Americans ride the bus at nearly three times the rate other Americans do.  Federal stimulus funds have gone first and foremost to highways, and left them, along with the rest of us who don't drive or own cars, at the back of the bus.  It contained no funds to stop fare hikes and service cuts all over the U.S.