Today the Puget Sound Regional Council, at the request of Mayor Mike McGinn, agreed to study a controversial proposal to allow coal terminals in Washington State. As has been much reported, the terminals would lead to some 18 trains of a half-mile each sprinkling coal powder in their wake every day—perhaps along the downtown Seattle waterfront. This study is designed to augment the official environmental analysis by gauging the trains' "impacts on trade and development, property values, land use, employment and railway congestion within the central Puget Sound region," McGinn's office says.

But the government's environmental studies—with or without research from regional councils—usually seem like a formality that ratify the interests of investors (see: downtown tunnel, Sodo arena). So if these terminals and their ensuing trains are approved despite obvious drawbacks, would you join a mass civil disobedience to stop them?

That's today's poll: