Montana: Big Sky country at an environmental crossroads

[BlueMTexpat]

Glad to see this story and hope for more like it. The people united ....

The fuels these proposed projects would transport are among the filthiest on earth, some scientists warn. Environmentalists argue that burning coal and Canadian tar sands oil could saturate the atmosphere with a critical amount of carbon dioxide — so much that the climate would heat up even faster than it is already warming. Many are calling the northwestern United States, with Montana at its heart, a carbon choke point — that is, a place where opponents might stop dirty fossil fuels before they can be burned.

Montana is "potentially a real cork in the carbon bottle," said author and activist Bill McKibben. "And it's a perfect illustration of the emerging, sprawling fossil-fuel resistance. It's necessarily centered in local concerns."

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/2/big-sky-country-atanenvironmentalcrossroads.html

As a Montanan from birth until my 20s and with lots of family and friends there still, I know that people there share more than divides them - much as inside-the Beltway pundits and politicians of both parties aided and abetted by M$M - would like to dismiss all so-called "red" states without ever even trying to understand what can unite good people everywhere.

Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders are two who do try to understand. Fortunately, their number seems to be growing.