"you have to have a firm belief that Global warmng is a fact"

Noting that he had his spray bottle of Roundup weedkiller on the table, Senate Resources and Environment Committee chair Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, presided Monday over a slightly chilly debate about global warming.

Several Republican lawmakers were frozen toward the subject, but Sen. Kate Kelly’s skillful presentation of Concurrent Resolution 17879 helped warm enough of them to print the bill.

The bill’s emphasis on economic opportunity seemed to make the hot topic of the existence of global warming temporarily cool enough to handle. [more]

Western Biofuels Research

Sustainable Oils, a new joint venture between Seattle-based Targeted Growth and Houston-based Green Earth Fuels, will be expanding in Bozeman soon. The research and development center will provide genetically refined seeds to Montana camelina producers and will also purchase camelina crops produced from those seeds through contractual agreements. The harvest will then be refined to produce biodiesel – 100 million gallons worth by 2010, according to the company.

The European Camelina sativa plant is particularly suited for Montana’s cool, arid climate. Recent support for biofuel production of camelina from Governor Brian Schweitzer and Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester is creating a friendlier environment for camelina producers in Montana; first-time camelina growers in the 32 counties covered by Montana's Agro Energy Plan can now recoup some of their seed costs.

“I believe Montana is going to be the poster child for developing a crop like this because of the great support from Helena and the industry at large,” Sustainable Oils President Donald Panter posits. [more]

Stumbling the Walk

I happen to believe global warming is real, not just as something that naturally occurs as our planet hurtles through space over the course of billions of years (yes, I said billions), but also as a process being expedited by our own hell-bent-on-consumption lifestyle. It doesn’t take a scientist, or a Google search, to figure out that as “the global economy” brings more eager mouths to suck at the swollen teat of consumption, stuff is going to get burned through that much quicker. Just look out your window. If you happen to live in a place that more and more people think looks like a great place to be – as we do here in Montana – you can watch, like one of those time lapse movies, the views and resources and access rights get gobbled up faster than we can say, “the last best place!” [more]

Introducing...

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In the Spring Issue and online here:

• Montana’s Cash Cowboy
• Real Ranch Living: Not Everyone is Selling Out
• Essay: The Family Farm, Version 2.0
• Essay: Tracks Across A Landscape
• Have Your Ranch & Develop It, Too
• Design Showcase: The Big and Little of Western Building
• Stuff It: Can Wolf Hunting Help Conserve the Species?
• Traffic Perplexes New Western Communities
• Boise in Its Own Little Bubble
• Revenge of the Resource Economy
• Spotlight North Idaho: On the Agenda: Youth, Growth & Silver
• Spotlight North Idaho: Players of the Panhandle
• Spotlight North Idaho: Coeur d’Alene Tribe Rides the Idaho Boom

[more]

By Robert Struckman, 2-01-08 | comments (23) | email story | print story

 

local solutions to a global crisis

Naming global climate change as the most pressing issue facing the nation, Gov. Brian Schweitzer called for swift and decisive action by individuals, industry and government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a speech at the University of Montana Thursday night.

“The fastest way to decrease our carbon footprint is to decrease our consumption of energy,” Schweitzer said in his keynote address before a panel discussion by state and local leaders on climate change policy.

Schweitzer emphasized his office’s commitment to significantly reduce the state government’s greenhouse gas emissions over the near term and to improve the state’s production of renewable energy to 25 percent of its portfolio by the year 2025. [more]

FutureGen's Future Cloudy

Since I detailed the gaps in Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer's ambitious plans for "clean" coal plants in his state last month, the whole clean-coal movement has suffered a major blow. This week the Department of Energy said it would cancel funding for the FutureGen project, which is planning a commercial-scale coal plant with a carbon sequestration system in Matoon, Illinois.

Citing the high cost and potential difficulty in building a futuristic coal plant of this size, the DOE says it will cut its clean-coal funding and shift the dollars to smaller projects.

To say this is a disaster for developing less-destructive forms of coal generation – which still supplies about half of the nation's electricity – is an understatement.

In other energy news: Xcel Energy sees whopping profit surge; lawmakers object to shift in federal minerals-leasing revenue; and Colorado officials fire back at oil and gas producers over proposed new drilling regulations. [more]

a bluff?

Attempting to transform the way energy is produced and consumed in the West, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has done his best to avoid antagonizing the oil and gas industry. Unfortunately he hasn't succeeded.

The appointment of Matt Baker, the executive director of Environment Colorado, to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission riled the oil-and-gas officials. The drafting of new energy-development regulations, now under revision by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, has infuriated them – so much so that energy-industry leaders are threatening to pack up their rigs and decamp.

This is bluster, of course: the oil and gas industry goes where the oil and gas is, and it's here, on the Western Slope. But Ritter is savvy enough to know that his ambitious plans for remaking the development and production of energy will not succeed if oil and gas producers refuse to go along. It'll be interesting to see how he responds to these latest threats.

In other energy news: EU gets down to brass tacks on moving toward non-carbon-based fuels; 2007 brings warmer temps – and a hot alternative-energy sector; and Xcel Energy charts an ambitious renewable-energy course.
[more]

The Climate Change Debate that Shouldn't Be

University of Montana scientist Steve Running, who shares a piece of the Nobel Prize, told a packed City Club Missoula audience Friday that Americans need to learn how to decipher pseudo science from substantiated research in order to understand global warming.

Much of the discussion centered on Running’s canceled speech to a group of Choteau high school students last week. Some locals in the north-central Montana town complained Running's talk would contain only one side of the global warming debate. That concern prompted the school superintendent to cancel the discussion altogether.

“OK, what is the other side?” Running asked. “And how do people come to the conclusion that another side is needed?” [more]

The CO2 Underground

The U.S. Department of Energy will fund a 10-year, $38 million project to study the long-term storage of carbon dioxide in deep geologic formations on the Gulf Coast. For the next 18 months, the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas will pump about a million tons a year of CO2 into brine formations up to 10,000 feet below ground, near the Cranfield oil field about 15 miles east of Natchez, Miss.

Capturing and storing 60 percent of the CO2 emitted by U.S. coal-fired power plants would require the transport and disposal of a daily volume roughly equal to U.S. oil consumption per day, according to an MIT report.
Texas alone could hold 40 years' worth of US emissions.

In other energy news: shale-oil exploration still only prospective on the Western Slope; Gov. Ritter appoints an environmentalist to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission; and state lawmakers try to head off uranium mining in Northern Colorado.
[more]

censorship?

School authorities in Choteau canceled a talk that University of Montana Nobel laureate climate researcher Steve Running was to have given to high school students last week, and the New York Times is reporting today on the divide it's created in Choteau, and the "deep-seated mistrust of environmentalism" that still lingers in the West.

Some residents of Choteau complained that his presentation would be one-sided because no opposing view would be offered, so the superintendent, Kevin St. John, canceled it. Apparently those who complained had thought Running was an agenda-driven ideologue rather than a leading scientist. Running said it was "almost comical."

"Our generation caused the problem," Running told the Times, "and I want to talk to high schools because they are the generation that will solve the problem. And we can't solve the problem without a free discussion."

Click here for the full story.