Victims of obsolete technology

It’s not surprising that our community has not learned to talk about the real danger posed by spiraling traffic of coal and oil trains along our river and through our population. We can see that Mosier, Oregon, is lucky to survive and tracks are never entirely safe from constant trains of infinite length and weight.

What we fail to comprehend is most of the filthy cargo “safely” reaches refineries or smoke-pumping furnaces, returning the worst elements of fossil fuels to exacerbate our health and environmental emergencies. We join miners and other energy workers as victims of obsolete technology.

Ultimately, public safety depends upon immediate termination of fracking and coal mining, not forgiving huge corporations for little disasters which will continue until the rail industry enters the 21st century. If big business spent as much time and money developing alternative energy systems as it does defending antiquated methods and modern profit margins, railroads could be used for bringing us together instead of accelerating the degradation of the planet.

Rusty Nelson

Rockford