Climate activism is an uphill battle in Montana, and we need your support.
Our major utility is completely out of step with our neighbors, advocating new and expensive fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when every state in the West has found renewables and energy storage cheaper and cleaner. Our regulating body, the Montana Public Service Commission, is often dysfunctional and thinks its job is to serve the utility, not the people. And many officials elected to state government deny what the Montana Climate Assessment has intricately detailed: that a warming climate will degrade the twin towers of Montana’s economy, agriculture and tourism.
Our work this past year was bold and effective:
- We submitted a stockholders’ resolution to NorthWestern Energy’s management that would have required the company to do a comprehensive study on renewable energy. The company refused to present the resolution. We then took them to federal court where we detailed the effects of climate change to the judge and the company’s team of lawyers. Unfortunately, the judge ruled the resolution too prescriptive. Stockholders, these days, cannot tell management how to run the company, according to rules of the Security and Exchange Commission.
· We raised $60,000 to commission Vibrant Clean Energy to model Montana’s future energy needs and costs. The study compares business-as-usual, burning coal and natural gas, with moving to wind and solar backed by energy storage technologies. We will publish our findings early next year.
· We took part in public comments on every fossil fuel expansion proposal, whether it was the Keystone XL pipeline, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s cleanup of the waste ponds at Colstrip, the expansion of coal mining near Roundup or near Colstrip, or the State of Washington’s utility regulation board, which recently rejected NorthWestern Energy’s stubborn attempt to keep Colstrip-4 polluting until 2045.
Won’t you please consider a donation to 350 Montana on Giving Tuesday so we can continue our work?
It’s easy. You can write a check to JRPC*/350 Montana and send it to P.O. Box 7006, Missoula, MT 59807. Or you can go to www.JRPC.org and fill in the donation form. Make sure you click on “Reason for your donation” and select 350 Montana.
* The Jeannette Rankin Peace Center in Missoula is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization and is 350 Montana’s fiscal sponsor.
Thank you.