We left Les Menuires, in the French Alps, this morning at 8 o'clock and after a three hour drive a short lunch in Lyon and a 2 hour TGV ride we were home by 3:30PM. If we had driven (as we used to) we would probably have arrived at 6 or 7 pm after navigating the end of vacation traffic jams around Paris. Not only is the TGV environmentally friendly compared to either the car or the plane it is an actual pleasure to take it. The seats are quite comfortable and within 15 mins I was sleeping my way to Paris at high speed. There are 50,000km of high speed train lines in the World mainly in China and Europe. If all the countries in the world aimed for a similar level of fast trains as China (or western Europe) we would need to build a further 250,000 km of lines which would cost around 750 billion $ per year for the next 10 years. That might seem a lot but as a an element of comparison that is half what the world spends on its military per year. Instead of aiming for all NATO countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on Defence we should be agreeing an international limit of 1% maximum on military budgets worldwide.
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