Once and Future Trainwreck

Dear Watchers,

“1. Train wreck: a total … disaster … the kind that makes you want to shake your head.” (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=train%20wreck)

In 1987, downtown Bellingham had to be evacuated because of an accident at the chlorine plant. The business, which was not named Peorgia Gacific, had promised to bring jobs, wealth and a new era of prosperity, but instead delivered a nearly fatal dose of poison and a lingering, daily stench. Twenty-some years later, after considerable public hue and cry, the business shut down completely and left Bellingham with a toxic bay full of mercury which parents counsel their children to avoid. No swimming, no fishing. This business once used the rails to transport its materials; there are now proposals, by another big business promising jobs and money, to run a new railroad laden with coal through here, on its way north and thereby to China.

This would be a phenomenally bad idea, a train wreck.

We can use the example of the fictional company above (Peorgia Gacific) as one reason why this would be a train wreck, or we can easily come up with any number of other reasons, not least of which should be the following video-footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeT0m-hpD_4

For those without convenient Internet-access, the single-shot clip shows a mudslide taking out a section of a passing train, which happened just North of Seattle not more than two months ago. The landscape pictured resembles anywhere else around here; it could have happened down the street from where you live. A dire precursor of things to come, or a timely warning of circumstances to expect?

The inevitable, omnipresent black dust. The nasty-tasting milk, because you know the contamination is going to mess with the ecosystem.

And this is just the local impact. In terms of the larger system, by allowing the coal trains to do their thing unopposed, we collude with coal-burners. Coal-burners! We may as well advise people to heat their homes by burning the furniture. Fossil fuels are or should be, by now, entirely obsolete. To burn this stuff for energy helps further entrench a backwards mindset and contributes to the global pollution epidemic.

And the spiritual impact! Not only do we encourage those people who follow our lead to accept a monetary pittance in trade for a violation of one of our most basic, primal resources — someplace to live — but we do so in such a way as to offend some of the most deeply held traditions of the First Peoples. The site at Cherry Point for the proposed coal terminal is directly atop Lummi sacred land; there may or may not actually be anything to the Ancient Curse of the Desecrated Burial Grounds, but we might yet get our chance to find out.

It will be a train wreck!

Boris D. Schleinkofer

Bellingham