First of all, Europe only moves a few percent of its goods by rail and while north-central Europe has excensice navicable rivers and canals a lot of freight is moved by road. Second of all, water transport currently burns the lowest grade of toxic sludge left over from refining oil (well, the second lowers: the lowest goes to paving roads...)

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan

And who's going to dismantle the things when they've outlived their design life? We can't, at present, get our merchant navies to decommission their ships in ways that don't cause toxic spills on the coast of random third-world countries. Wanna bet that they'll have a better track record with hulls that glow in the dark?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.