Does Governor Greg Gianforte have a plan for climate change?
In Montana’s hot, smoky moment of truth, the Republican governor is focused on streamlining regulation to encourage innovation. Advocates for climate action say that’s not nearly enough.
etween an expansive drought bringing rivers and soil moisture to alarmingly low levels, a series of heat waves that have set scores of temperature records across the region, and a fast and furious start to a wildfire season that’s obscured many Montana horizons behind a haze of smoke, this summer has announced itself as a tipping point for conversations on climate change.
The ways that politicians — Republicans in particular — talk about climate change is undergoing a shift as well, with a growing number of conservative policy makers acknowledging the scientific consensus on the role humans play in the warming climate.
Among them is Montana’s Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, whose responsibility for issuing disaster declarations gives him a front-row seat to many of the impacts researchers have long warned of. He’s issued two such, regarding drought and wildfire, in the past six weeks.
“When you start affecting health, finances and quality of life, people will take action and politicians will have to follow. We are in an incredible moment of crisis, and this crisis should not be…
