This is outrageous.
In an age when our children are literally protesting in the streets and begging us to give them a livable future, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is proposing to permit an enormous expansion of Montana’s largest coal mine – the Spring Creek strip mine. What’s worse than this? DEQ’s draft environmental impact statement, doesn’t consider any climate impacts from the mining and burning of 72 million tons of coal. None!
This shameful decision to outright ignore climate change impacts from a giant expansion at the largest coal mine in the state can and must be reversed, and you can help by contacting DEQ TODAY!
If DEQ approves this mine expansion, the additional 72 million tons of coal will result in about 150 million tons of greenhouse gases when the coal is burned. This would be the equivalent of over 30 million cars being driven for a year. The failure to consider the climate impacts of this expansion is confounding in an era when our valleys (and lungs) fill with smoke from hotter and larger forest fires, our rivers lose flow from earlier runoff, and our annual temperatures are getting hotter and hotter. All of this severely impacts to our economy, our livelihoods, our health, and our way of life, and can be directly attributed to mining and burning fossil fuels.
Please take a few minutes, and contact the DEQ. Tell them to consider climate impacts from coal mine expansions. It’s the least they can do.
