By Cari Kimball and Anne Hedges
Wow, what a year and what a month… As we look back on everything that 2024 contained, we are heartened to reflect on some wins, but share your grief/frustration/anxiety about what the recent political developments will mean for a clean and healthful environment for Montanans.
In 2024, MEIC and our partners leveled oral arguments in front of the Montana Supreme Court twice this year for the protection of the Smith River and to stop the Yellowstone Valley Generating Station gas plant. These hearings represent the culmination of many years of motions, court filings, arguments in front of lower courts, and advocacy efforts from our members and supporters. MEIC helped hundreds of Montanans speak up for the environment in front of the Public Service Commission, Legislative Interim Committees, and the Department of Environmental Quality. We were successful in helping convince the U.S. Supreme Court to reject NorthWestern Energy’s attempt to exempt the Colstrip plant from following new rules to reduce toxic air pollution. We are so grateful to our partners, allies, and supporters who made all this possible.
This year, MEIC started building our Community Connectors program, an effort to invest in and draw upon “people power” for a more healthful environment (see article). MEIC’s Community Connectors Program was made possible by the generosity of some of MEIC’s longest, most stalwart supporters, our Clean and Healthful Legacy Society donors. It is yet another example of how the elders of MEIC’s community of supporters are enabling our organization to thrive into the future. The Clean and Healthful Legacy Society members are people who have included MEIC in their planned giving, such as through a bequest in their will or by designating us as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy. Their thoughtfulness is already improving our organization; with our Endowment reaching the $2,000,000 threshold in 2024 and our board thoughtfully developing a policy for investing some of the Endowments’ earnings into our work. It can feel taboo to talk about death and dying, but we invite folks to keep in mind that bequests are created by passionate living people who are making a powerful statement today about their values and their hopes for the future of Montana. For many individuals, a bequest is the largest donation they’ll ever make and making that arrangement can offer an immense sense of satisfaction and peace.
On the personal and professional fronts, Anne was recognized in November as the the Headwaters Award winner by the NW Energy Coalition for her achievements and leadership for climate action and clean energy (see article). And in May, Cari had the opportunity of a lifetime to travel to Vietnam (pictured left) to participate in a professional exchange program through the U.S. Department of State and the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, where she learned about some of the environmental problems experienced by diverse communities in Vietnam and the solutions they are developing to address them.
As our organization anticipates what’s coming our way in 2025, we feel the chill of headwinds that just got stronger. The past four years of relatively progressive climate policies and environmental protections at the federal level are behind us. In the coming months and years, MEIC will defend attacks on the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, mining laws, and other regulations that govern fossil fuel industries. As we gear up for the 2025 Legislative Session, we are preparing to fend off legislation intended to weaken measures that require polluters to pay for cleaning up their messes and rules that assess and prevent pollution in the first place. Our four lobbyists are prepping to be at the Capitol day-in and day-out, and we’ll be ramping up our outreach efforts, ensuring that people all across Montana have what they need to speak up for Montana’s environment.
Anne Hedges attended a. breakfast with 350 founder, activist, and author Bill McKibben and many other activists in Bozeman. The breakfast
was hosted by the League of Women Voters.
We also know, of course, that we will be leaning on you all in the coming months and years for your ideas and your energy, your humor and generosity, and your willingness to hold many conflicting truths at the same time. We hope you’ll lean toward us also. Like you, we anticipate that with the incoming administration, we’ll experience grief and fear when policies are created to antagonize our friends and family members and when we see laws passed that will degrade the integrity of our treasured waterways, lands, air, and the climate, and we will also be tapping into our sense of righteous indignation as we push back against these harms. Through it all, we hope you’ll also make time to get outside and revel in the beauty of Montana and to gather with your loved ones. The need to build up our reserves of joy, satisfaction, and connection to draw strength from has, perhaps, never been greater.
This article was published in the December 2024 issue of Down To Earth.
