I just took three trains to make a connection in the Seattle Airport. American’s don’t travel by train much, yet our airports are equipped with well-maintained, efficient electric trains. In this country, the climate crisis cannot be separated from the issue of our archaic transportation system.

The city council of Portland, Oregon (allegedly the greenest city in the country) recently voted to go ahead with the plans for a new bridge over the Columbia River which divides the city from its largest suburb, Vancouver, Washington. The bridge will cost an estimated $4.2 billion, and if history is any guide, the project will probably go over budget.

For (roughly) the same amount, we could have high-speed rail between Seattle and Vancouver and increased public transit between Portland and Vancouver, providing a substantial economic boon to those cities and everything in between and saving immesurable emissions generated by unnecessary SEA-PDX air traffic.

35% of flights in the United States are 300 miles or shorter. Investing in a modest number of high-speed rail routes could cut our dependence on air travel substantially. Not only would this cut our net carbon emissions - trains rides are less expensive and more pleasant.

There were only 10 people on my flight from Portland, less than a third of the plane’s capacity. With the price of oil recently soaring ever-closer to $200/barrel, air travel is increasingly costly and unattractive. It was hard enough to accept it when they took away our in-flight meals - now many airlines are charging to check a bag, and Jet Blue recently announced plans to charge for pillows and blankets.

New technology is sexy - surely I’m not the only one who got a little giddy when I saw sketches Google’s windmill-kite contraptions - but a huge part of our clean energy future must be a reevaluation of the technologies we have. Transportation is responsible for roughly 30% of American CO2 emissions which make up 25% of the global total.

Presented with the question of planes, trains or automobiles, choosing is easy. Getting government and corporate support for the rail infrastructure we need won’t be, but it can be done. In our drive towards a just and prosperous clean energy future, let’s not forget about that clunky old technology from the past that helped build America in the first place.

Here’s to the new American railroad.