The heroic background music was selected because the people who built that infrastructure thought they were doing something marvellous. This was best expressed by a open letter to his grandchildren, written in 2008 by former Congressman Stewart Udall.
As a freshman congressman in 1955, I regrettably voted with my unanimous colleagues for the Interstate Highway Program. All of us acted on the shortsighted assumption that cheap oil was superabundant and would always be available. This illusion began to unravel in the 1970s, and it haunts Americans today. Oil lies at the epicenter of a critical energy crisis. Petroleum is a finite resource and is the most precious, versatile resource on the planet. Cheap oil played a crucial role in the development of American power and prosperity, and sustains the military machine that dominates the world today.
This is the great tragedy of it. Our fathers and grandfathers who reshaped the face of the earth to enable mobility to a scale never seen before did so with all the best intentions. Lacking in their vision was an adequate respect for effects. The effects of this massive infrastructure includes many unanticipated negative side effects that create problems that would have been beyond the imagination of humanity a century ago. If we are to improve the human condition, our industry, businesses and our planners and regulators need to consider the effects of what we do... effects on people and effects on planet.
