To the Editor:

The article in last week's Enterprise about the "oil train" protest at the Guilderland trestle raises some issues.

For one thing, the article mentions the fact that the five  protesters came from Vermont; Minnesota; Massachusetts; Florida; and Windsor, New York. Unless these people arrived in Guilderland on foot, by bicycle, or skateboard, they arrived by some means of transportation that required oil. But I suspect the irony is lost on them.

Secondly, one of the protestors — Maeve McBride — is the mother of two young boys.  Although they were not present at the protest, the fact that Ms. McBride was rappelling from a trestle on an active railroad line — a remarkably dangerous act — means that, had things not gone according to her plan, the boys could have been left motherless.

Thirdly, Ms. McBride invokes one of the Left's newer buzz phrases when she talks about "environmental racism."  While it is certainly true that oil-bearing trains pass through some of the less affluent parts of cities, oil trains bound for downtown Albany pass through Guilderland, Bethlehem, and other highly affluent areas of Albany and other counties, making the term "environmental racism" in this situation fairly lame.

Finally, I note that Ms. McBride states that her Unitarian faith plays into her activism.  The Unitarian Society has long been an outspoken advocate of abortion rights.  I wonder how Ms. McBride would react if a dozen or so people blocked access to a Planned Parenthood center on the grounds that their religious faith compelled them to do so.

For all of the talk about solar energy, wind power, and other forms of so-called "green" energy, the fact remains that oil is going to remain a central element of the economies of the world for decades to come — stunts like the one at the train trestle notwithstanding.

Michael L. Nardacci

Albany

Editor’s note: Michael Nardacci writes the “backroads geology” column for The Enterprise.