The Washington Post reported yesterday on a proposal to make land in eastern Montana a carbon sponge because it is home to"thousands of acres of porous rock where oil company executives say greenhouse gas could be piped in from afar and stored forever." The headline is "Biden and oil companies like this climate tech. Many Americans do not." Here's an excerpt from Evan Halper's story:
In the ranching community of Carter County, Mont., the prospect of shipping in all that carbon pollution and injecting it underneath an area called Snowy River is about as popular as an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease.
“The question I keep hearing is, ‘Why are they making us the dumping ground for the rest of the country?’” said Rod Tauck, chairman of the Carter County Board of Commissioners and a descendant of homesteaders who more than a century ago settled his family ranch. “Not a single constituent I know wants this.”
Carter County lies in the state's far southeast corner, and has a population of just 1,415.
Halper mentions other places similarly resisting energy company plans:
Hostile community reception is undermining plans from the Gulf Coast of Louisiana to the prairies of South Dakota. Energy companies racing ahead are facing tough questions around safety, environmental impact and technological viability.
Many in the local community see something else: big corporations looking for a payday partnering with an administration turning a blind eye to a flawed technology. They point to problems that carbon capture projects are encountering around the world, such as Chevron’s sprawling Gorgon operation at a massive natural gas field in Australia. It is not trapping even half the carbon dioxide planned, amid persistent technological troubles.
This is just one way the green energy transition is pitting rural against urban, and it's not so different from environmental injustices that have made rural places dumping grounds for essentially urban waste.
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