Viewpoint: Climate change slicing away at Montana’s core economy

Jeffry Smith

Respectfully, let’s put the Governor’s August 7 rah-rah, siss-boom-bah for Montana’s coal industry into perspective. In his press release, Greg Gianforte and his environmental departments (DEQ and DNRC) loudly called for burning more federal coal in Montana power plants.

This is the Governor who, when he had the chance in a court of law to once and for all silence the climate scientists, to call their bluff, to present his side of the argument, to discredit their findings that Montana’s profligate greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is raising temperatures and endangering Montana citizens, especially our kids … he whiffed.

Let’s review. The findings of fact from the Montana kids’ 2023 trial, Held v Montana, which was upheld by the Montana Supreme Court in December 2024, run more than 100 pages. Nowhere did the Governor or his attorney general contradict the facts, accepted by scientists since 1842, that pouring CO2 and methane into our atmosphere raises temperatures. The one witness called by the Gianforte administration offered testimony that “was not well-supported, contained errors, and was not given weight by the Court.”

The court established the following undisputed facts:

• Global temperatures have already risen 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures will rise to 9.5 F, enough to scorch the face of the Earth, by 2100 if we keep pouring GHGs into the atmosphere.
• Montana is warming faster than the rest of the U.S., and we see this most clearly in our mild winters, early spring runoff, and multi-year drought.
• Snow at high elevation provides 85 percent of Montana’s fresh water. This snowpack is shrinking, as is the water in our lakes and rivers. Irrigation suffers in our fields. Our forest turn into tinderboxes.
• Our wildfire season is two months longer than the 1980s, and fires will get even progressively worse if we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• “The unrefuted testimony established that [the kids] have been and will continue to be harmed by the State’s disregard of GHG production and climate change,” says the Court record.

And now, skunked in a court of law, Gianforte is telling us to accelerate the climate destruction? This is the definition of insanity.

Gianforte calls coal-derived power “affordable and reliable.” This is Orwellian. At trial, Mark Jacobson from Stanford University told the court in unrefuted testimony that moving to clean energy would drop Montana’s annual energy bill from $9.1 billion to $2.8 billion by 2050, a 70 percent decrease in cost. And testimony at trial pointed out that the two 45-year-old coal plants at Colstrip are anything but reliable, with a history of breaking down when we need them the most in the dead of winter and when the air conditioners switch on in the summer.

Finally, let’s briefly consider the effect of climate change on our economy. In a study done for Farm Connect Montana, economists have shown that Gianforte’s plan, to accelerate greenhouse gas pollution and the resulting extreme weather events, will cost Montana’s number one industry, agriculture, 20 percent of its revenue, or $95 million a year and 5,000 jobs by 2050. Another study, for the Montana Wildlife Federation, looked at Montana’s second largest industry, recreation. By mid-century, due to warming, skiing will shed 1,000 jobs and $35 million in labor income, fishing will lose 30 percent of its revenue ($60 million) and 1,900 jobs, and hunting will lose 8,800 jobs and $263 million.

Greg Gianforte – and all of us – should take to heart the court conclusion: “Every additional ton of GHG emissions exacerbates injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.”

Jeffrey Smith is co-chair of 350 Montana.