Yesterday the New York Times reported on the fact that Donald Trump has ordered the removal of most of Barack Obama’s policies intended to fight climate change. 

(Interestingly enough, the Editorial refers to Donald Trump as simply Donald Trump, but it refers to Barack Obama as President Barack Obama.)

Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:

It was dismaying also because it repudiated the rock-solid scientific consensus that without swift action the consequences of climate change — rising seas, more devastating droughts, widespread species extinction — are likely to get steadily worse. It was dismaying because it reaffirmed the administration’s support for older, dirtier energy sources when all the economic momentum and new investment lies with newer, cleaner forms of energy. It was dismaying because it flew in the face of widespread public support for environmental protection — including the pleas of the executives of hundreds of major American corporations who fear that without energy innovation their costs will rise and their competitive edge over foreign companies will be lost.

This is certainly frustrating, but as they mention in the article, it is not unexpected.

It’s fine to talk about the importance of big cities in today’s world, but there’s another side of this coin to consider. What happens to the towns and smaller cities who aren’t guiding the global economy?

Here is an interesting snippet from the NY Times that recently caught my attention:

As one of my college professors recently told me about higher education, “The sociological role we play is to suck talent out of small towns and redistribute it to big cities.” There have always been regional and class inequalities in our society, but the data tells us that we’re living through a unique period of segregation.

If you combine the above with the fact that a significant number of jobs are likely to be automated in the near term, one has to wonder what the world is going to look like assuming the status quo continues.

The New York Times recently argued that self-driving cars can’t cure traffic, but that economics can. Here is the key soundbite:

“Maybe autonomous cars will be different from other capacity expansions,” Mr. Turner said. “But of the things we have observed so far, the only thing that really drives down travel times is pricing.”

The argument here is that capacity expansions – such as additional lanes – never solve the problem of gridlock. Yes lane widening projects increase capacity, but the latent demand is so strong that the problem never gets solved. Even in places like Houston.

We talked a lot about this phenomenon on the blog a few years ago when Toronto was embroiled in debate over the Gardiner Expressway East. But it’s interesting to think about self-driving cars as simply another incremental capacity expansion.

I have no doubt that this technology will make more efficient use of our roads. Carpooling will be a lot easier – as is already the case. Cars will be able to drive closer together. We’ll be able to stop abrupt breaking and swift land changes, which actually create systemic traffic problems for everybody else.  And the list goes on.

But there will still be limits to how many people can be efficiently moved on a particular strip of road. Exactly how there are limits to how many people can be efficiently moved via a particular subway tunnel, streetcar line, and so on.

So if latent demand continues to outstrip available capacity, which has historically been the case, then we are once again back to the politically unpopular idea of pricing away congestion. As much as people criticize it as regressive, I believe that’s where we’re headed.