should the Sierra Club support freight railroads?
The Sierra Club was recently approached by Growth Options for the 21th Century, a group that wants to increase federal funding to expand freight railroad capacity. My general feeling is that we should be very wary. The law of unintended consequences starts coming into play pretty quickly. The railroads are multi-billion-dollar corporations with well-funded lobbyists and growing traffic volumes, including I might add, Powder River coal. According to the June 2006 issue of Railway Age, the 141,641 coal carloads are 41.1% of the 344,772 carloads transported by all major U.S. railroads in 2006 to-date. Coal volume grew by 11.1% at the same time all other categories declined in volume (except for agriculture products). By signing on without question, the Sierra Club may be signing on to help make coal-fired plants more cost-effective. The Sierra Club should not be in the business of providing a direct corporate assistance to any corporation unless the environmental movement extracts some so
