re: #168 Cannadian Club Akbar

Yeah…the whole ‘ship-by-rail’ deal has been ‘green’ even before green was a vapid marketing buzzword.

Having said that, cap and trade is pretty much going to decimate the smaller reigonal and short-haul railways. I didn’t see anything pertaining to the gov’t dictating what sort of motive power the railways must use (altho’ I wouldn’t put it past them to slip something in), but this will choke off alot of traffic for the smaller shortlines/reigonals/feeder lines who rely on hauling coal, petrochemicals or ancillary items for oil and natural gas exploration (‘frac sand’, drilling rqupiment, pipes, etc)…

There’s also the tangential effect of the factories and plants that serve as the main customers for these smaller railways deciding it’s too expensive to operate under the carbon credit scheme and move offshore.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the ‘green’ locomotives various manufacturers are coming out with. Most of them rated at only 1750h.p. to 2200 h.p. when 3000h.p. is really the desirable minimum for long distance freight. Canada’s Rail Power Int’l came out with a ‘green goat’ that seemed more or less ideal for switching when it wasn’t busy bursting into flames (to be fair, some of those fires were percipitaed by lightning strikes…but not all of them). Most of the Class I railways (plus some switcing and terminal railways) have some sort of ‘Green goat’ or ‘eco-friendly’ loco on their roster- I initially attributed this to them being altruistic or at least publicity savvy. Turns out before there was ‘Cash for Klunkers’, various state and federal agencies were offering subsidies of up to 80% of the purchase price for the new ‘green’ locomotives…with the caveat that they strike a number of older (if serviceable) locomotives from their roster…