VISION: Can a New High-Speed Rail System Save the American Dream?

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A national high-speed rail network isn't going to solve all of that. But it will do much to alleviate the fossil foolishness of a nation that just recently, cosmologically speaking, rapaciously fed an addiction to oil that has little historical precedent. More importantly, it will change what ex-Bush administration press secretary Ari Fleischer called "an American way of life" built of Hummers, perpetual wars and lock-step conformity. High-speed rail will go a long way to altering the American psyche, and reorienting it toward a solution-based future that doesn't look like it crawled out of disaster cinema.

"It's quite obvious that over half of the U.S. military overseas is guarding oil pipelines, refineries and shipping lanes, all to guarantee a flow of fuel to American SUVs," Kunz explained. "How much longer can we sustain that? It's draining our wealth, we're killing people right and left. We've got two contradictory, unsustainable systems: sprawl and war. So it's not a matter of whether people want to change or not. They're going to change. The only choice is whether they do it voluntarily, or kicking and screaming."