Trains are on the ballot this year. They don’t belong there, but that’s where they are.

One candidate supports Amtrak, the other wants to “burn baby burn.” Part of the game plan of Project 2025 is to kill Amtrak. These people are telling us who they are and we need to believe them.

Trains are the most efficient way to get around. Steel wheels on a steel track have very little friction. Regenerative braking means that electric trains charge themselves while slowing down.

Tracks take up much less space than roads. Tracks are more durable than roads. A train can hold far more people than 100 cars. With our increasingly unstable weather we need more resilient infrastructure.

Trains are also a social equalizer. People of all classes take the train and interact with each other.

China has invested heavily in renewable electricity to power its high speed rail system. It has bolstered their economy tremendously. We could do that here but only with Harris. Remember that Trump wants to “Burn, Baby, Burn,”

Like his Tariffs or his plan to deport millions of people, not investing in trains will be a disaster.

Tariffs are a tax on domestic consumers. It isn’t paid by the other country. It’s paid by the person importing the goods. So if you are a merchant buying products made somewhere else you have to pay the U.S. government. That cost is then passed on to the consumer. Harris wants to carefully target tariffs so they won’t hurt American manufacturing.

Trump wants to deport people. Some 52% of farm workers are undocumented. What will happen to the crops in the field if they are all rounded up?

Harris wants an orderly path to citizenship. She wants to work out a system where employers get the workers they need and people have an opportunity to make a new life here.

Back in the 1970s scientists said “look, we are putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere we are changing the chemistry of the air itself.” At that time they argued that if we switched from burning fossil fuels to generating power in any other way, wind, solar, geothermal, water or literally anything else, we could keep the stable environment that we enjoyed at that time with hundred year storms coming every 100 years or if we keep polluting we will start having 100 year storms every five years. Eventually the storms would become so frequent we could not maintain the interconnected global economy we enjoy today. Trains will be important.

In the 1990s I wrote letters to the editor about global warming. That decade was our last chance to keep the stable environment we’ve enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. We thought then that our grandchildren would see the effects. Well it’s been 35 years and we are seeing the effects. On Sept. 28, the French Broad River in Asheville, N.C., rose 24 feet in a few hours. What would happen to Fredonia if the Canadaway Creek rose 24 feet in a few hours? What would happen to all our communities built 200 years ago close to the water such as Forestville, Silver Creek, Gowanda?

It’s too late to keep everything from happening. It isn’t too late to prepare for what is coming. We have to stop polluting now. We must stop adding fuel to the fire. The fossil fuel companies convinced a third of the population that Global Warming is not real. Winters now are nothing like they were when I was a kid 60 years ago.

Lake Erie used to freeze solid. It most likely will not freeze again in my children’s lifetime.

Project 2025 kills The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. They claim it is the source of climate alarmism. There will be no hurricane forecasts without them. It’s like closing your eyes and thinking no one can see you. It is in fact delusional.

We need to prepare for the future. That means trains because tracks are easier to repair than roads. It means building everything to stand up to harsher weather including higher wind speeds and sudden changes in temperature. In the 2022 Buffalo blizzard, 39 people died. People froze to death in their homes and in their cars.

We need to work together. Tom Carle will go to congress and fight for Kamala Harris’s plan to pay families for home health care so seniors can stay home longer. Mike Bobseine will represent us in Albany. He will work with the Democrats in Albany to bring good things to our County.

Kamala Harris has an 80 page plan of everything she wants to do. It’s on her A New Way Forward – Kamala Harris for President: Official Campaign Website. You can see what she has to say for herself. Her plans are solid and well thought out.

A vote for Harris is a vote for trains.

Marie Tomlinson is a Fredonia resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com