Pavement, lotsa pavement.

Roads and payment in North America total about 100,000,000 acres. This is about 90,000 times more than greater Vancouver. Not only was a huge amount of energy used to create all this paved land but an even larger amount of energy is used move cars and trucks along this pavement.

With this money a very efficient train system could have been built using about 20% of the land and energy we use today. This train system would not only be much more efficient but it would also be much faster. In many large cites the commuting car traffic is actually slower than horses were before the car was invented.

So it is a great shame that the leadership in many countries has so little vision and so frequently make such poor long term decisions. Here in British Columbia the government has announced that it will replace a bridge with a new 10 lane bridge at a cost of almost $4 billion. Or as Everett Dirksen was supposed to have said, "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money."