I was distressed by a recent editorial about the Inland Port (“We need specifics, not slick promises, from Inland Port Authority”).
Not by your concern for the critically important habitat it threatens, nor by your concern for our already unacceptable air quality. I strongly share your sympathy for the many people downwind from the port, and for the migratory birds who need the fragile, threatened wetlands to survive. I’m with you on every one of these important points.
My distress, instead, comes from the way you narrowed focus to your main request, for more transparency, more facts. Certainly we need transparency and facts — I agree there too! But narrowing your focus to the lack of solid information, information that we need, neglects a central point: that the use of fossil fuels (not just for the trucks, the airplanes and the trains you emphasize) has already put us in grave danger.
Just look out the window! Smoke from fires in Oregon (one fire, 150,000 acres), and California (one fire, 90,000 acres) across our valley, already well beyond safe limits for pollution. Worse, we’re in a mega-drought, with fire danger growing through the whole West as the heat continues.
This is not the first time we have been downwind, officially misled about potential danger. It’s time to recognize the full reality we face. It’s coming at us like a house on fire.
The Inland Port is a big component of a vastly bigger challenge. I hope that we stop it in its tracks — not just implore authorities for more details. By no means, however, should we fail to take on the larger threat of climate change, of which the Inland Port is simply one toxic part.
Bob Speiser, Millcreek