Paradigm Shift: Big Oil + Big Coal = Big Energy = Big Rail

From Crosscut.com/Seattle, an article with an activist environmentalism slant perhaps, but a good article none-the-less to help folks stay aware of energy issues facing coal in Montana/Wyoming and oil in the Bakken.

My takeaway: the activist environmentalists are struggling to come to terms with the tsunami of American fossil fuel -- coal and oil. Killing the Keystone aggravated the entire rail system in the United States. Talk about unintended consequences.

Crude oil derailments. I was correct. The mainstream media cannot come up with any deaths caused by crude oil derailments in the United States, and the only one in North America was due to an engineer failing to set the brakes once the train had completed its "trip" for the day. Rational folks have trouble instituting even more stringent rules when that's all they have:

Oil trains scare people who live anywhere near the tracks. The most recent crash — in North Dakota — brought flames and smoke, but no injuries. A July explosion in Lac-Magentic, Quebec, killed 47 people. Other crashes have led to evacuations, but not hospitalizations. The problem, oil executives say, is a lack of pipelines to ship crude. TransCanada, which would build the Keystone pipeline, said this month that it will look to rail instead.

The other takeaway: money will win out.

The last takeaway: presidents come and go, but energy needs will continue, and probably increase.