The Atlanta metropolitan area is getting a commuter rail line. To explain the significance of this news, let me share a personal anecdote. I attended a shamefully underpopulated climate change law conference at Suffolk Law School last year. Throughout a day of a dozen speakers, the audience must have seen 40 maps on the projector illustrating different trends in green technology, emissions, alternative energy plant development and more. However, the South was such a dead-zone of environmental activity on map after map that one of the speakers eventually made a joke about it.

Who will save the South? Many environmentalists fall victim to either elitism or fear that keeps them locked in liberal areas where their ideas are well received. Now it looks like the South will save itself, in part with an initial step from Governor Perdue of Georgia, who just approved a pilot rail line.

Perdue’s 180 in transit policy has sparked curiosity about timing. However, his tenure has spanned some of the most significant changes in weather patterns that the state and region have ever seen. Indeed, it was Gov. Perdue who declared a state of emergency during 2007’s drought, which completely drained Lake Lanier, a primary water supply. 2008 has not been much kinder, and Georgia has already declared an extreme drought. Perhaps now that climate-change has threatened Georgia, there has been more traction and pressure for change.

The timing of Perdue's announcement could also have something to do with unpleasant traffic. If a drought so severe it left images of beached docks and boats in everyone’s minds wasn’t enough, a long drive home that costs more than the week’s groceries is a good incentive for rail. Georgia’s Department of Transportation also toured other transit systems in the nation, discovering that “We are 100 years behind," as Bill Kulke put it to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Whatever the reason, the Atlanta area will be getting a pilot commuter rail that, by market forces alone, is likely to bloom into a well-used rail network.

In many ways, it won’t be helpful for anyone but people of the South to remedy Southern environmental issues. The South has such a strong, unique, and in many ways very beautiful culture that outsiders are unlikely to effect in trying to force change. Rather, it is better, and seems to have been successful in this event, to encourage stakeholders from all parts of the country to see what other people are doing all over the place in order to inspire local change.