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What is Planetran?
Heading Out, The Oil Drum
There was some discussion in the comments on Ianqui’s post on air travel that relate to a relatively old idea that is not really Science Fiction. However it is quite “old fashioned” in the sense that it was largely developed in the days before the Internet, and readers may not have therefore heard much about it. The concept was called Planetran and it was a high-speed underground train, capable of going from L.A. to N. Y. in 54 minutes. There is now the occasional reference back to articles such as appeared in the LA Times back in the 70’s when the idea was first getting column inches.
… [here is] a short review of an old look into the future.
(25 October 2005)
Another anti-solution. (HO posted more the next day.) In the comments section beneath the article, Mike Tor says:
Ahhh, always the technology dream. As a Physicist who has read lots of science fiction, I find this kind of ideas fascinating. But that was then, and this is now. And it just wouldn’t work.
Some people have mentioned how a bullet train could substitute air travel. Well, of course it will, but not the way one may think. The fact is, when you get to really high speeds with a bullet train (300Km/h), it consumes as much energy as air travel.
About the Planetran. It may be technologically feasible. In fact the German Transrapid or Japanese mag-lev trains allready have part of the technology needed. You only need in addition to it a nearly-vacuum tube that spans thousands of miles. Ludicrous. It will never work. Something that requires energy constantly to be maintained (vacuum pumps) on that scale won’t work post PO. And anyone who knows something about subway contruction wouldn’t even take seriously a proposition to build tens of thousands of kilometers of even more expensive tunnels.
So why don’t we stop dreaming and just accept we will have to live, eat and travel slower?. Is that such a horrible proposition?
UK: RED’s designs for a changing climate
Dawn Danby, WorldChanging
Over the course of ten weeks, the UK Design Council’s RED team lived in their temporary laboratory, “a draughty Victorian terrace in Lewisham”. They then worked to uncover the significant technical and policy barriers to retrofitting a typical house. The team have spun their findings, and impressive proposals, into Future Currents, a project addressing households’ carbon impacts through energy use.
(26 October 2005)
This short article has links to the RED publications.
Just the FAQs
On repetitive quest syndrome
Umbra Fisk, Grist Magazine
…As a group, you unique persons sometimes send me some pretty darn repetitive questions, and I can’t keep answering them — my editor won’t accept it, and the state of shopping-bag science is not rapidly shifting.
So with great joy and anticipation that we can soothe your minds — and also have a tremendous impact on environmental progress — we present “Just the Favorite Ask-Umbra Queries.” Below, you will find the questions I see most often, presented in an easy-to-find format using only the latest internet hotlink technology
(26 October 2005)
According to my sources, the three areas in which individuals can make the greatest impact on energy use are transportation (e.g., car and air travel), food (processed & remote vs unprocessed and local), and home heating and cooling. -BA
LEEDing Us Astray?
Top green-building system is in desperate need of repair
Auden Schendler and Randy Udall, Grist Magazine
Once the narrow province of hippies in beads and Birkenstocks, the green-building world has in the last five years blossomed and taken on a professional sheen. That’s thanks in large part to the U.S. Green Building Council and its flagship program for rating commercial buildings’ environmental performance — LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
“Green building” was once all in the eye of the claimant, but LEED changed that, creating a national standard for green buildings where none existed before, meeting pent-up demand for reliable information with a rigorous rating system and a checklist for going green. The USGBC has been enormously successful at publicizing the need for, and benefits of, greener buildings. Interest in green building is exploding, with some municipalities, states, and corporations adopting LEED as a standard. Thanks to the USGBC and LEED, we now have momentum, media attention, motivated clients, and a broad understanding of green building.
But LEED’s early bloom is fading. Green building has a robust future, but this certification system may not. LEED is broken
(26 October 2005)
The essay from which this piece was excerpted was originally published this spring. Also, see
an article in Grist about the impact of Schendler and Udall’s piece.
