Sixty seven years ago, on this day, June 29, 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 315ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the US economy after WW2 was based on the growth in car ownership, as per the quote in Noam Chomsky’s “World Orders, Old and New” with Eisenhower saying it “put a nice stable floor under the economy.” The Great Acceleration in every sense…
What I think we can learn from this
The Federal Government instituted the highway systems to improve transport pretending that it was in some way a defence gesture because you’re not allowed to do industrial policy ETC in the US nakedly – you have to dress it up usually as defence.
What happened next
The great car economy took off. There will be no survivors
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.