“For the past few years it has been hard to ignore America’s crumbling infrastructure,...America’s tradition of bold national projects has dwindled. The nation’s infrastructure is crumbling, it is time to revive it.” In: “The Cracks are Showing”, The Economist, June 26, 2008.
I've had the good fortune to have traveled around the world some and the curiosity to jot down my observations while on my way. I've enjoyed foreign roadways and infrastructure both from behind the wheel and as a passenger while traveling over large swaths of our own USA, and through Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. So when I read that the USA ranks twenty third (23) behind Barbados (!) in infrastructure, I was not all that surprised. (See: Time, “Are Americas Best Days Behind It?”, Fareed Zakaria, March 3, 2011).
Most Americans sadly, do not travel enough to have a meaningful yardstick upon which to gauge the infrastructure of their own country. As a result, they can easily be swayed into thinking that highway potholes, crumbling bridges, dangling overhead electrical wires, intermittent train service, slow and spotty Internet service, an insufficient and outdated electrical grid, dangerous dams, poor quality drinking water, and so on, are just part of the natural scheme of things. They are NOT. Most modern industrialized nations far outstrip the USA, (the wealthiest, most militarized and most technically advanced nation in the world) in these critical matters, and our shortcomings are apparent even to a casual observer.
In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers, (ASCE) published its annual report on the status of US infrastructure. It appears in the form of a school "report card”. In that year, 2009, the US again received a grade of “D", and a warning that it would take an investment of $2 trillion dollars to bring our infrastructure up to snuff. The 2012 report had a similar findings. But over those years, instead of infrastructure our leaders in Washington were busy sticking their noses into the business of other nations far away, spending our wealth on weapons, dropping bombs in those places and pursuing "nation building" abroad. As a result, the ASCE warnings went unheeded and US infrastructure projects remained unfunded.
In the 2009 survey ASCE analysts noted that many elements of US infrastructure were "below standard”. The category of "Aviation" was assessed as “D", "Drinking water" as “D-”, "Bridges" was graded a "D-", (noting also that one in four US bridges are "structurally deficient or obsolete"). For the category of "Highways", the engineers assessed many highways as obsolete and calculated that resulting traffic congestion on these roads "wastes 4 billion hours of American’s work-day each year". Regarding "Hazardous wastes", they note that Hasmat sites are too often leaking into groundwater water systems or unconfined. Our "Rail service" was assessed as out-dated, slow and inefficient or (as passenger service) nonexistent, and so on and on.
Underscoring these pronouncement of professional engineers is the now apparent and undeniable fact of climate change and the resultant vulnerability of our nation’s crumbling infrastructure to more frequent violent and damaging storms, (such as Sandy and Katrina), floods, super tornadoes, droughts, prairie and forest fires and other phenomena that are characteristic of a dynamic earth attempting to shed excess heat in a changing climate regime. Just a few days ago Hurricane Sandy, a huge Stage I hurricane, hit the northeast (October 29, 2012) with winds of 80-90 mph pushing up a thirteen-foot high storm-surge in front of it. The complex tropical storm mixed in with a cold mid-latitude cyclone over Pennsylvania to wreak havoc on unprepared shoreline communities in New Jersey and on NY City where, roads were inundated, bridges closed, the outdated exposed-wire electrical grid was snapped, tangled and grounded by high winds, electrical fires ignited in drowned substations, gas fires flared up, subways were swamped, schools closed, and vital connecting tunnels such as the Holland and Battery were flooded and closed down, bringing the nation’s financial and cultural center to a soaked,soggy, windy closure. Nearly one-hundred citizens perished. Billions of dollars of revenue were lost as a result of absenteeism, closures, and uncompleted jobs, and billions more in losses resulting from damaged buildings, infrastructure, roads and property.
Sandy was touted as a once in a “100 year storm”. But wait a minute, was not Katrina with its 175 mph winds and giant storm-surge also touted as a “once in a century” storm? that event was only seven years ago, in August 2005! So thus we have experienced two (2) “once in a century” storms in only seven years! Perhaps this concatenation of super storms will prize open the so-far close minds of climate-change deniers who should now, after Sandy, be forced to acquiesce to the climate scientists warnings that we should expect more such “once in a hundred year” storms as earth heats up due to increasing amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases.
That prospect and our long ignored infrastructure problem should drive us all to turn our attention back to our own nation again, back to "nation building"--but joining in that activity here at home. For too long, we have been mentally and financially engaged abroad, in costly and wasteful military adventurism...nay, some would call it imperialist fantasies or attempts at military world-domination. As a result of this neglect and a misguided national foreign policy we have failed to be good husbandry-men and women of our own land. We have foolishly squandered trillions of our wealth on unnecessary wars, and on war materiel. We tragically lost thousands of our soldier's young lives. In pursuit of a foolish foreign policy our Congress has "fire-hosed" tax dollars into exotic weapons, new ships, useless weapons systems, city-sized military compounds abroad, as well as spy and other unmanned drones. And either by design (on the part of the Republicans) or by neglect we have left our native homeland infrastructure to decay and become obsolete and vulnerable to changing climate and more vicious and powerful storms.
At this point in this essay, I must mention that the budget plan of Presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney to INCREASE military spending to 4% of GDP is the absolutely wrong course to take. But his claim to want to DECREASE taxes for the super wealthy AND to further bloat Defense spending is unconscionable.
Perhaps, sadly, Hurricanes Sandy (and Katrina), a dangerous "lady of the night", might have been just the unhappy, costly and tragic visitor this nation needed to turn our leader's minds away from the boozy delirium, and senseless flirtation of unnecessary, counterproductive military adventurism and unnecessary war spending toward more practical and sensible pursuits. Perhaps its tragic impact and the realization of our vulnerable national state can save future lives if as a consequence of this disaster our nation's leaders turn back to basic, down-to-earth, sensible tending of our own national garden.
As the conservative, business-friendly international magazine, "The Economist" has noted..."it's time to tend to America's crumbling infrastructure". The well-being of our homeland, its roads, bridges, waterways electrical grid, etc., supports our nation's businesses, and the health and well-being of our citizenry. These elements make this nation great, and nourishes it real strength. Without these underlying elements, we CAN NOT have a strong nation or military. The fact is we can no longer afford to continue to toss more than 3% of our GDP in the form of military spending into rat holes around the world and ignore our own infrastructure here at home. America turn your eyes homeward!
My Dad’s favorite saying was: “First things first”! Our homeland must be first! He was right.
Get the picture?
rjk
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