Good News from Montana in Climate Change Mitigation …. Or Is It?
From the Daily Montanan:
The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a district court ruling in the nation’s first constitutional climate change trial, affirming that the youth plaintiffs have a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment” while revoking two Montana statutes.
The 70-page decision, authored by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, comes 16 months after Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled in the landmark Held v. Montana lawsuit, explicitly stating that the state’s greenhouse gas emissions are “proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment, and harm and injury to the youth plaintiffs.” Seeley’s decision also rolled back two laws enacted by the 2023 legislature that changed the Montana Environmental Policy Act.
The state immediately appealed the decision to the Montana Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the appeal in July. The court found in a 6-to-1 decision that Montana’s constitutional guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment” includes a stable climate system, “which is clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers inclusion of the right.”
“Plaintiffs showed at trial—without dispute—that climate change is harming Montana’s environmental life support system now and with increasing severity for the foreseeable future,” the order states. “Plaintiffs showed that climate change does impact the clear, unpolluted air of the Bob Marshall wilderness; it does impact the availability of clear water and clear air in the Bull Mountains; and it does exacerbate the wildfire stench in Missoula, along with the rest of the State.”
The six-justice majority found the law which limited analysis of greenhouse gas emissions during environmental reviews violates the Montana Constitution’s “right to a clean and healthful environment,” and enjoined the state from acting on it.
All this sounds great, but what does it mean in practice? OK, analyses of greenhouse gas emissions are admissible in environmental reviews. But what actions can be taken to force the reductions of these pollutants?
In my own less-than-sophisticated words I would say that program music is music that is about something.
Well, this really is what progressives are all about: more inclusion and better education.
I just came back from the gym where, unfortunately, they have one of their televisions locked on Fox News. I noticed a segment called Voters Eagerly Await Trump’s Return to White House.
For better or worse, there will never be another revolution here in the U.S., given our nation’s annual military budget that’s just shy of $1 trillion.
Here’s something from 20th Century playright Thornton Wilder.
It’s hard to know exactly what Kurt Vonnegut was referring to when he used the word “indecent” here. Maybe it’s just an amorphous combination of war, poverty, denial of healthcare, lack of clean water, and injustice.
When my kids were in elementary school, I loved to volunteer as a chaperone on their field trips, and I remember with great fondness one of my daughter’s favorite teachers, Englishman Martin Cook, whom she had for 5th Grade.
A reader asks: When you say “He’s not as happy as ______” do you say “me” or “I?” 
If you think this guy should have been tapped to be attorney general, our nation’s highest law enforcement official, you have the moral sensibilities required to be a member of the MAGA crowd.
