If the renewed level of bipartisanship among our political leaders can carryover past this crisis, we can immediately begin building a much stronger and resilient economy by attacking the climate crisis. We have the know-how to put people back to work at higher production jobs. In Montana, these include:
• Advancing energy conservation in all existing and new buildings, adding geothermal or electric HVAC, and passive and active solar.
• Advancing farm and ranch management that increases soil carbon, improves water retention, and bolsters climate resilience.
• Creating jobs in rural communities through a comprehensive forest sequestration program to simultaneously improve habitat, generate wood products, and use small diameter timber, which is a Montana renewable resource, in prefabrication reducing construction time.
• Harnessing our underdeveloped wind resource through extensive turbine development.
• Building closed-loop pumped hydro storage projects to use the extra energy.
• Using electrolysis convert Berkeley Pit water into hydrogen and generate clean electricity by burning it.
• Rebuilding our highways to support an all-electric auto industry.
• Building a zero-carbon electric utility system.
With the Governor’s Climate Solutions Council’s Plan to be finalized before the 2020 elections, this is an unprecedented opportunity to remove climate change as a partisan issue (deq.
mt.gov climate solutions council).
John A. Noreika, Sr.
Belgrade
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor, March 31, 2020