I assumed (I know - an ass out of you and me) that you would be a supporter of restarting the cement plant and the railroad when it became more economic to operate again (soon, hopefully) - and also that you would find yourself in a woeful minority, given the reputation of the area..

My point was that if the railway or cement plant are shut down long enough for anyone to notice, we will then discover an entrenched opposition to any restart. It has happened time and time again. Opposition to any industrial activity whatever (let alone, needed growth), has been intensifying in Coastal Northern California for decades.

There will not be anywhere near enough supporters to ever overcome the inevitable noisy opposition - which is absolutely certain to come from NYMBYS and trail hounds, and who knows who else. And even if they are not in the majority, they will be noisy enough and litigious enough to get their way. Once operations cease, the railroad and the cement plant are doomed ! --- No matter how hard working and empassioned any supporters of a restart might be. Even if the are right - it ain't gonna happen!

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As for what a non sequitur might be! I always thought it referred to a logical syllogism where the conclusion did not seem to follow the given premises.

Now you see that every day in California politics - such as: 1) nobody seems to have any money to spend, so everybody stopped spending it, trashing the economy even further; 2) the state now is now woefully short of cash but has the power to tax; therefore we can get whatever the state needs by taking it from citizens who don't have any either. The non sequitur hides the fact that the weakened economy will simply not support state spending as it was originally planned. Now I wonder why they would want to hide that!

An even more common way to come up with a false conclusion, is to start with a false premise. Even if it follows logically, the conclusion will still be false. But don't tell anyone. In this particular case, any premise that an industrial restart along the coast will not be vehemently opposed, is just plain demonstrably false. Surely, you notice politicians carefully picking their premises, so as to make a false conclusion appear true. Witness the NWP debacle.

Of course, the worst non sequitur of all is the notion that we will ever successfully feed, cloth, shelter, and educate the human race, as it actually is, without significantly more industrial growth. Not a chance! Or maybe many of us will volunteer to depart this life early. Or perhaps, as George Orwell opined, such will be forced upon us.

They will never get it - will they. But forgive me - I digress!

As to the pot pipe question?

It's a joke, son -- a joke!