People Power: How Montana Stopped the Biggest Coal Mine in North America
April 1, 2016
People Power: How Montana Stopped the Biggest Coal Mine in North America
by Nick Engelfried
Campaigners are celebrating after defeating plans to build America’s largest open pit coal mine, writes Nick Engelfriend. In an epic ‘David and Goliath’ battle, Montana activists challenged the project, and all the politicians and businessmen that supported it, with fierce opposition, protests and demonstrations. The outcome spells hope for all in the fight against dirty energy.
Montana communities won a victory against one of the world’s biggest coal companies earlier this month, when Arch Coal abandoned the Otter Creek mine – the largest proposed new coal strip mine in North America.
The story of how the project imploded is one of people power triumphing over a company once thought to be nearly invincible.
To many observers, the Otter Creek project once seemed unstoppable. It certainly appeared that way in 2011, the year I moved to Missoula, Montana for graduate school. Then-Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer enthusiastically supported the mine, and coal more generally.
Forrest Mars, Jr., the billionaire heir to the Mars candy fortune, had just joined Arch and BNSF Railways in backing a proposed railroad spur meant to service Otter Creek. Arch and politicians like Schweitzer predicted a boom in coal demand from economies in Asia.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/01/people-power-how-montana-stopped-the-biggest-coal-mine-in-north-america/
