November 27, 2006

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

A New Coal Boom for Montana?

Montana may be on the edge of a coal boom led by the state’s Democratic leaders. This is interesting because it was the Democrats, with considerable bipartisan support, who led the charge to contain the last coal boom, way back in the early 1970s. At the time the federal government was pushing Montana and other northern Great Plains states to develop their coal resources to help meet ongoing growth in American electricity consumption while also reducing acid rain emissions. The low-sulfur coal in eastern Montana and Wyoming offered an opportunity to do that. The federal government scared many Montanans by projecting that hundreds of coal-fired electric generators the size of Colstrip 3 or 4 would need to be built along with the coal strip mines, the water pipelines, and the transmission lines to serve them.

Montana’s Democrats and conservative Republican ranchers in Eastern Montana went on the defensive. They passed a law regulating strip mining and requiring quick reclamation of mined land. They passed the Major Facility Siting Act, giving the state government the power to control the location of large industrial energy facilities and the transmission lines used to export the energy. They passed the highest coal severance tax in the nation. At the same time, a new Montana constitution was proposed and passed by the voters that declared that Montana citizens had a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.

The coal industry has always argued that this regulation created impenetrable roadblocks for any serious coal development in Montana and that the Democrats knew that when those laws were passed. Overtime, the coal industry has maintained a steady and persistent pressure to eliminate these laws and regulations so that the coal industry could bloom again. And they have been successful. The Major Facility Siting Act has been almost entirely gutted. The coal severance tax has been cut in half. And the coal reclamation law has been weakened so that natural contours and vegetation do not have to be reestablished.

But we are on the verge of going beyond simply weakening environmental laws to encourage coal development. Legislation is in the works to lend state government financial support to coal development. Governor Schweitzer is an enthusiastic supporter and chief cheer leader for the new coal boom. He wants to convert coal into diesel fuel as well as electricity. He sees coal mining as just another productive use of the land, like farming. He has even called strip mining coal just “deep farming.” As the Governor sees it, coal development is one of the few positive things Eastern Montana has going for it.

This has been a disorienting turn of events for many environmentalists. The Governor has even chuckled over how isolated those opposed to a new coal boom in Montana have become. Montana’s newspapers seem to have joined in as coal cheer leaders, sneering at those who are hesitant to embrace coal as naïve purists who refuse to face the reality of the nation’s huge and growing energy needs.

But it is the coal enthusiasts who are being breathtakingly naïve. Coal is our most carbon intensive fuel. A major coal boom would pour huge additional amounts of greenhouse gases into the already overheated atmosphere. The Governor can talk about capturing the CO2 from his coal-to-diesel plant and burying it in the earth. But the coal industry has been one of the most vociferous opponents of controlling greenhouse gas emissions. They do not believe that their product or human activity causes global warming. When faced with the costs associated with sequestering carbon, it probably will not be done in the foreseeable future. The proposed coal plant in Great Falls, for instance, which the Governor supports, will make no attempt to capture the carbon from its emissions.

We may be on the verge of committing ourselves to an orgy of greenhouse gas emissions just as the evidence of rapid global warming from human sources becomes indisputable. The madness of this seems to escape those who are focused on the dollars to be made and the tax revenues that will flow into government coffers. When the state government is awash with mineral tax revenues and enjoying the luxury of debating what to do with massive surplus revenues, it is hard for politicians not to love energy development.

The hardnosed, no-nonsense, practical road is not to greedily turn to the most greenhouse gas intensive energy resource just because we have lots of it. It is to begin immediately to invest in energy conserving technologies that could drastically reduce our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It is also to begin to use our tax system to inform energy consumers, in an equitable way, what the real costs associated with our energy consumption are. That would dramatically change the way we use energy.

As depressing as it is, this is not about to happen. The coal cheer leaders are ecstatic. We have gutted our environmental laws just in time for a new, government subsidized coal and carbon dioxide boom! There is no “inconvenient truth” being heard here in Montana.