California throws good money after bad spending more on cars

Jefferson Public Radio: ""Tonight, we did something to fix the roads of California," Brown said as he and triumphant lawmakers stepped outside the governor's office to speak with reporters. "This helps people, because their cars aren't going to get as broken as they are under our bad roads, a lot of them are going to get jobs, and it's part of the prosperity of California.""'

Both US political parties support spending more on autos and sprawl. The only difference is on how to pay for it. The US has led the world on sprawl, starting with the deliberate destruction of streetcars.

There is a lot of hand wringing on climate, but this commitment will be a giant step in the wrong direction.

#Autosprawl cost in California, $52B, but oil trolls don't want tax on fuel.

masstransitmag : "Brown argued that the Legislature needs to act now to pass the bill, which would raise $5 billion annually for public transit and road repairs through a 12-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase, new taxes on diesel, and new vehicle registration fees. The proposal follows years of debate over how to pay to fix the growing number of chewed-up streets and crumbling bridges.

"I know this is a political concern because people don't like gas taxes," Brown told the Senate appropriations committee. "But what do you do?""

Communications breakdown: Can we even talk about our environmental and energy problems?

Resource Insights : "I am reminded of Joseph Tainter's admonition in The Collapse of Complex Societies that societies don't collapse because of resource shortages or climate change, but because of their inability to respond effectively to such developments. The cause: an elite governing class that has become insulated from the warning signs of such a collapse.

In ancient Mayan civilization sculptors were still working on monuments to their rulers as late as 909 A.D. after a century of drought. The question is: Who in their right mind would be expending resources on such a task under such dire circumstances?

Today we build ever higher temples to finance in our major cities even as major ecological catastrophes converge on our civilization. Like the Mayan rulers, ours believe our civilization is invincible. It is this myth of invincibility that makes genuine communication about vulnerabilities almost impossible because the myth has spread to practically the entire population of the planet.