But using it to make a subtle jab agains CAHSR isn't really fair -- they're two very different projects (for one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR") in two very different regions.
Yes, it's harder to get big projects through the red tape in California than it is in West / Panhandle Texas or Central Florida. Go take a drive through those regions and you'll quickly see some reasons why, besides just NIMBYism, Californians are a bit more protective of their landscapes. If a massive wind project were proposed across large swaths of the Texas Hillcountry, you'd see a lot more push-back.
Well, CA HSR doesn't exist. It's missing the R part of the HSR. So that must be the one it's a stretch to call "HSR".
How fast is California's HSR?
That's both sarcasm and an actual question. It doesn't go anywhere now but I keep hearing it's speed get downgraded as they encounter the real world. Plus, the goal of LA-SF is practically abandoned and now it takes you from a place you don't want to be to a place you don't want to go.
You really can't compare the two because one exists only as a goal and the other is an accomplishment.
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/infrastructure-project...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-11/florida-s... | https://archive.today/LEyBC
"It doesn't deliver enough net benefit" is a bit of a silly thing to say: when speaking of net benefit, anything is better than nothing.
Rather, become one of the people who's improving things – or, if somehow your only skill is attacking, attack the people who are making things worse.
By the by, "net zero" is not enough. The vast majority of offsetting schemes are little more than accountability laundering and on-paper games, not translating to any concrete offsetting in the real world. We need gross zero.
That's a good framework to think about things. Going all-in on renewables implies keeping fossil fuels around, because storage tech is several breakthrough behind. Renewable proponents like to point out that every kWh not produced with CO2 emission is still a win.
Yet deploying renewables means they flood the market with cheap electricity when the weather is good, hurting the profit, thus viability, of (i.e. precluding) stable low-carbon sources (in other words I'm butt hurt about nuclear).
> The vast majority of offsetting schemes are little more than accountability laundering and on-paper games, not translating to any concrete offsetting in the real world.
A case I heard is that they count the carbon captured by planting trees, yet ignore it when the carbon is released back to the atmosphere in a wildfire.