I held back a tear as I watched a man and his daughter dance to the spirited tunes of "10 Foot Tall and 80 Proof" at the Red Ants Pants music festival in White Sulfur Springs, Montana. The couple had both donned bright white cowboy hats which caught the hot afternoon sun and spotlighted their swinging motion. The little girl looked up at her daddy with a beaming smile as he twirled her to the music, lettering her take the lead before lifting her in the air much to her delight. The love was transparent. The scene embodied the spirit of the day. Community. From the opening remarks to the mutual respect of the attendees, it was clear the highest valued commodity here is a strong, caring community dedicated to each other and to the good of Montana.

    My travels through Montana started at the Lolo Pass on route 12 out of Idaho. My first stop was south of Lolo in the small town of Hamilton, it happened to be Beer Fest weekend. As often is the case, my first destination when I arrived was the local Public House. As I eavesdropped on local conversation and enjoyed a pint of Bitterroot Brewing Company's famous Pale Ale, I reflected on what it means to live Sustainably. According to the definition my great friend and respected academic Josh Grinith helped craft, it is to "live within the carrying capacity of Earth's ecosystems to maintain humanity's coexistence with all living things." When we think of the human habitat or ecosystem we must think globally and at the same time locally. All of our local communities make up the framework of humanity's influence on nature and collectively we must consider the impact on each ecosystem in which they exist. Seeing how the small town community of White Sulfur Spring rallied around the vision of a country music festival gives optimism to the idea that communities everywhere could unite to protect the fresh water they drink, the fresh air they breathe and the soil that cradles the seeds of their sustenance.

    I recently received a mass email from Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. The email is a call to rally in Washington D.C. to protest the imminent approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone pipe line is a proposed 2,000 mile cipher originating in the oil sand rich provence of Alberta, Canada. The oil sand industry has been working there for years to develop the capabilities of extracting oil from the "bitumen". Bitumen is a tarry lump which is oil that has been decayed by bacteria for a millennium and much of it lies under pristine boreal forests. To release the oil from bitumen, companies such as Syncrude, first must dig up the sands. This means deforesting an area then raising the earth with electric shovels which stand five-stories high. The sands are then moved with the world's largest trucks which each have a carrying capacity of 400 tons. The dirt is then washed with hot water and caustic soda to separate the bitumen from the sand. The waste water is funneled into a toxic tailings pond and the bitumen gets cracked through a fiery process in an "upgrader". The product is then piped to a refinery. All told, according to the EPA, the process produces a carbon foot print 82 percent greater then conventional oil pumps, not to mention the larger local environmental impact of toxic ponds, deforestation, soil compaction, habitat destruction and stream and river contamination. The financial potential of the estimated 173 billion barrels of oil is what helps law makers and businesses in Canada and around the world turn a blind eye to the environmental cost.

     Back to the pub in Hamilton, Montana. I was fortunate enough to engage in conversation with a very bright man who along with working on his masters in ecological planning and protection, works for the Forestry Department in the Segway-Bitterroot national wilderness area. He described the massive tractor trailer loads that steamed up route 12 not more then a few months ago. He said they had to shut down route 12 for six hours at a time as the caravans of two lane wide, two story high loads rumbled up the Lolo Pass on their way through Montana to Alberta's oil sand fields. It made me wonder if there really is any hope of curbing the "full throttle" mentality of the money makers enough to seriously examine the environmental costs of the fossil fuel market. I believe if communities around the world, such as White Sulfur Springs, made it their vision to reduce their use of fossil fuels and protect their local ecosystems at any cost, we would see the major shift needed to form a sustainable future.

Proposed route of the new Pipe Line                 The fragile Ogallala Aquifer

  If you are interested in learning more refer to these helpful links. They represent different points of view. National Geographic, CBS, The Guardian, Alberta Government Site