Alaska Interstate Infrastructure
November 15, 2020
by William P. Meyers

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Alaska New Deal

The earth is overpopulated, but getting people to adopt a one child policy and get the population to a sustainable level does not seem to be happening. Neither does getting global energy use per person down seem attainable. Any small reductions in the U.S. or other advanced countries seem to be being swamped by the demand for more energy consuming devices like cars, refrigerators, heaters, air-conditioners, washers and dryers, and dishwashers by the populations that do not have them yet.

So it is going to get hot as hell. Most of the American Sunbelt is going to turn to desert in the next two to five decades. The energy needed to air-condition under continually worsening conditions will amplify the greenhouse effect.

But there is nothing politicians and industrialists can agree upon so much as infrastructure. So I have a project for everyone. A really big project. It will take astonishing amounts of concrete and steel (both contribute to carbon dioxide emissions), and labor as well. So both unions and capitalists can get behind it.

We need to build an interstate, four-lane, high-speed highway plus a high-speed rail line from Washington State up to Alaska. It could run through the west coast of Canada (north of Vancouver) to Juneau, then to Alaska proper, then two major branches to Fairbanks and Anchorage. That complete, we could run a branch down the Aleutian peninsula, another to the Bering Strait and a land bridge to Eurasia, and another to the polar region.

Millions, then tens of million of Americans could be relocated to cities built along the road. For a few decades we could take in all the immigrants we want, and Americans could keep having 2 or more children.

I'm calling it the Alaska New Deal.

What I particularly like about this idea is that, once there is money to be made, the industrialists will need to admit Global Warming is real.

For a few trillion dollars, I suspect they will believe and say just about anything.

[disclosure: I am already buying up land around Juneau]

Write your favorite politicians today! Make it happen.

[Satire. Or is it?]