The next great challenge, following on the heels of the related issues of Peak Oil and Climate Change, is the issue of infrastructure (rehabilitation, retrofitting, and development). This relates to what we call "the built environment," specifically. In the United States, in city after city, on highway after highway, the story is essentially the same. In short, much of the elaborate infrastructure so painstakingly built up in the 20th century has been ignored for far too long, and is now starting to fall apart in the 21st.
It’s all fine and well to have developed alternative sources of energy; but, if we don’t actually have sufficient sources of reliable infrastructure to deliver that energy, we are still in serious trouble. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; and the weak link here may actually turn out to be the energy delivery systems we will need in a “resource-constrained future.”
There’s a world of something in all of this, actually. In the wake of the recent budget debacle, things don’t just appear to be falling apart in Washington, D.C. They are now slowly falling apart everywhere—quite literally.
So, what can we do? Where should we start? Check out the above video, to get an idea.
For further information, check out the following web site: http://www.bafuture.org/. Then ask yourself, “What can we do and what should we do?”
Note: There appears to have been a slight typographical error in the above tagline. It should probably have read "Infrastructure key" (and not "Immigrants key"), as this was the topic of discussion. -- BDP
Source: http://www.bafuture.org/Report
Rebuilding America’s economic foundation is one of the most important missions we face in the 21st century. Our parents and grandparents built America into the world’s leading economic superpower. We have a responsibility to our own children and grandchildren to strengthen—not squander—that inheritance, and to pass on to them a country whose best days are still ahead. Our citizens live in a turbulent, complicated, and competitive world. The worst recession in eighty years cost us trillions in wealth and drove millions of Americans out of their jobs and homes. Even more, it called into question their belief in our system and faith in the way forward.
Our infrastructure—and the good policy making that built it—is a key reason America became an economic superpower. But many of the great decisions which put us on that trajectory are now a half-century old. In the last decade, our global economic competitors have led the way in planning and building the transportation networks of the 21st century. Countries around the world have not only started spending more than the United States does today, but they made those financial commitments—of both public and private dollars—on the basis of 21st-century strategies that will equip them to make commanding strides in economic growth over the next 20-25 years.
Unless we make significant changes in our course and direction, the foreign competition will pass us by, and a real opportunity to restore America’s economic strength will be lost. The American people deserve better.
Falling Apart and Falling Behind lays out the economic challenges posed by our ailing infrastructure, provides a comparative look at the smart investments being made by our international competitors, and suggests a series of recommendations for crafting new innovative transportation policies in the U.S. This report frames the state of our infrastructure in terms of the new economic realities of the 21st-century economy and presents the challenges we currently face.
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