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Wildflowers vs. Coal Mines in the Flathead

By Beacon Staff

The lithe and sensuous beargrass flower rarely blooms in full grandeur on consecutive years. But blessed has been our recent weather and moisture conditions: This year’s mass beargrass bloom looks to be as spectacular as 2008. And it’s not just beargrass. This year is looking to be a banner year for every shape, size and color of native flowers in valley, prairie and mountains of the Crown of the Continent. Huckleberries even have flowered nicely and berries are forming, which (knock on wood) suggests another banner crop.

This is what normal used to look like. After a decade of drought, blowtorch summers, anemic winters and raging wildfires, it’s a great relief to hear the weather prognosticators suggest we’re in for a quiet fire year and, possibly, the ebb of a 10-year drought cycle. But don’t be lulled into complacency that we’ll avoid for long the vagaries of an angry climate in Montana.

Glacier scientists recently revised the death-watch date for the demise of Glacier’s remaining 26 glaciers, already down from 150 a century ago. A few years ago, researcher Dan Fagre estimated that all of the park’s glaciers will melt by 2030. But the puddling effect has accelerated faster than expected, and Fagre now forecasts all will be gone by 2020.

Climate impacts in Montana will have broader implications than melting glaciers, even if this is the most obvious evidence. The Obama Adminstration on June 16 issued a comprehensive report, started under the Bush Administration, that summarizes the science and impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, the regional averaged temperature rose about 1.5 degrees during the last century and is expected to increase by up to 3-10 degrees over the next century. Gnarly fires, drought, vicious storms, and rainy winters will follow.

The climate report leaves no doubt — in case you still have any — that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the leading cause of rapid global warming. A paper in the June 19 issue of Science says that the earth now has more carbon in the atmosphere than at any time during the last 2.1 million years (based on boron isotopes in shells of marine plankton).

Yet denial and business as usual continues to dominate daily life. So while I’m happily smelling the wildflowers in the Flathead Valley, my friends Will Hammerquist of Whitefish and Ryland Nelson of Fernie, BC are in Spain appealing to international diplomats to help resist open-pit coal mining and methane drilling plans in the headwaters of Glacier and the North Fork River in British Columbia. Instead of pulling together to find alternatives to fossil fuels, North Americans are still fighting rearguard battles against coal strip mining upstream of a World Heritage Site. Read their daily blog from the World Heritage Commission meetings in Spain.

Fortunately, we finally have political leadership, as well as progressive initiatives by diverse businesses, to curb our addiction to fossil fuels. But President Obama needs a bit more help from the Montana congressional delegation, including Senators Baucus and Tester and Representative Rehberg. The National Parks Conservation Association has made it easy to contact your Congressmen. Click here and do it!

Then take a pause for the cause and go hiking where the flowers bloom like crazy.