US High Speed Rail Association opens its doors this month in Washington DC. 

A national high-speed rail network up and running by 2030. Yes we can? (image courtesy of USHSR)

President Obama strongly supports high-speed rail, environmentalists are behind it (well, at least some of them) and the Federal Railroad Administration is already reaching out to other countries that have had success with it. High-speed rail looks like it’s going to happen. The question now is what kind of system will be built – how extensive, how fast and how integrated?

Last week, a new organization was founded which aims to help answer those questions. The US High Speed Rail Association, based in Washington DC, plans to lobby for a state of the art rail system that covers the entire country and provides service on par with the most advanced systems in the world. It has already unveiled its vision for high-speed rail in America – a significantly more ambitious vision than what has been floated thus far by the Administration in Washington.

“Our main objective is to organize the industry and to build public and political support for a nationwide high-speed rail network, built within 20 years,” USHSR President and CEO Andy Kunz said. “We see this as the next industrial revolution in America and our chance to convert our country to true sustainability and prosperity.”

The organization’s first move was to unveil a map showing what a complete national system, built in 4 phases and completed by 2030, would look like (see map above; for the animated version, click here). The map bears a certain resemblance to the “Vision for High-Speed Rail in America” unveiled by the Obama Administration in April. Both are based on the same 10 regional corridors, but USHSR’s plan raises the bar significantly. Calling for 17,000 miles of track, multi-modal stations and travel speeds of 220mph, the proposal bears a resemblance to rail maps in Europe.

USHSR plans to generate support for the plan and help advance the rail industry in America by organizing a series of public events and conferences (the first one is scheduled for October 22-23 in Washington DC). A partnership with the International Union of Railways in Paris has also taken shape, and USHSR plans on hosting tours of European and Asian high-speed rail systems in the future.

Said Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, Director General of the International Union of Railways and a member of USHSR’s Advisory Board:

“The ambitious plan recently publicized by President Obama in the framework of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act announces a fascinating time for railway development in America. A competitive high performance railway system – including a large network of high speed links – will constitute one of the pillars of US policies for transportation and sustainable development.”

Originally published at TreeHugger.com on July 12 2009.

Wanna live a long, happy, sustainable life? Consider Central America.

What if, instead of comparing different countries on the basis of things like GDP, we measured the health, happiness and ecological footprint of people living in those countries? Would the map look different – or does economic well-being encompass everything else?

The map above ranks states according to the Happy Planet Index, an alternative development index just released by the London-based New Economics Foundation. The index ranks the nations of the world according to lifespan, life satisfaction and sustainability. Countries colored in green scored the best on all three indicators, while yellow and orange signify mixed results. The red countries scored the worst.

Surprisingly, almost all of the top ten countries according to the index are located in Central America and the Caribbean, with Costa Rica coming out the clear winner. With the highest reported life satisfaction in the world, Costa Ricans live longer than Americans (78.5 years), yet their ecological footprint is one quarter of the size of the gringos to the north.

The HPI report praises Costa Rica for producing 99% of its energy from renewable sources, reversing deforestation and aiming to become a carbon-neutral country by 2021. How did Costa Rica become such a sustainable and happy country? The report notes that the country had the foresight to combine its ministries of energy and environment way back in the seventies, and abolished its army even before that, in 1949.

With a third of the country set aside for preservation and an active local NGO sector, the Dominican Republic took a surprise second place. In third place: Jamaica (here even the authors of the report note their surprise). With a per capita GDP one tenth of that of the USA, the island maintains good levels of health and a very low footprint (in general, the report notes, small island nations did pretty well).

At the other end of the scale, the red countries, were most of Sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq, the UAE and yes, the USA. While the report notes that some countries (Germany, Russia, Brazil) are on a clear positive trajectory, in “prosperous” countries such as the USA, China and India, the authors note that people’s lives are less happy and less sustainable than they were twenty years ago.

Still, no country, not even Costa Rica, has yet achieved what the NEF calls “one-planet living” – consuming its fair share of natural resources. The report’s lead author, Saamah Abdallah, sums it up this way:

“The HPI suggests that the path we have been following is, without exception, unable to deliver all three goals: high life satisfaction, high life expectancy and ‘one-planet living.’ Instead we need a new development model that delivers good lives that don’t cost the Earth for all.”

Wanna see how your country did? Find it on the map here.

Originally published at TreeHugger.com.