Meet Our Speakers: Mayor Louise Carter-King

Here in Gillette Wyoming Mayor Louise Carter-King can’t imagine what it’d be like without the coal. At Eagle Butte Mine, everyone’s daily purpose and livelihood is dependant on the coal mining industry. Standing tall in her blue blazer with the atom symbol sewn into the upper corner, Mayor Louise Carter-King, the first women to lead here, finds herself adamantly defending this area's coal. A pin near her collar proclaims Gillette the “Energy capital of the nation”. Powder River Basin coal is some of the cleanest in the world, having formed in the presence of freshwater which greatly minimizes its sulfur content. Responsible for 30 - 40% of coal energy produced in the USA and with goals of supplying coal to other countries, Alpha Mines sees a future for coal. Especially considering the “sustainable” ways they mine in a moving pit, reclaiming land as they go with the dug up soils followed by the reconstruction of streams. Reclamation leaves these areas looking better than they did before mining commenced, according to Carter-King. The reality in Gillette is that coal is an available natural resource that should be utilized to meet today’s energy needs overlapped with the belief that “climate change is a moot point”. Carter-King recognizes that something always hurts someone. Utilizing the cleanest coal available to run not only the lights of this place but offer people a life as well is her course of action. There is a great deal to be lost here and coal is the deciding factor for this place's future, Louise Carter-King knows that.

By: Emma Rollins

Meet Our Speakers: Mike Borowski

Since 2014, Mike Borowski has worked for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Methow Valley District in northwestern Washington as a forester and timber sale administrator. The National Forest Service’s goal is to leave each acre better than when they found it, using methods of treatment such as fire attenuation through tree felling and prescribed burns. Mike specializes in the administration of timber sales to private logging companies, a large source of revenue for the forest. Each contract for a timber sale takes into account both the proper trees to cut for fire attenuation and stewardship of the landscape whole, not to mention profit for the logging company. Because of the rigorous standards of these contracts and lack of funding, the acreage of treated forest is much less than needed to accommodate for a changing climate: a fact not lost on Mike and his coworkers in the Service. The Forest Service strives to service many times more area in the face of the hotter and bigger fires of this century and stewards like Mike Borowski are dedicating their time and energy to better the forest, one acre at a time.  

By: Amanda Champion

Meet Our Speakers: Kent Woodruff

Kent Woodruff believes that a freight train is coming, and it’s coming fast. Climate change is altering our world to a point beyond precedent, and Kent need not look far past the front door of his Methow Valley home to see the consequences. As he guided us through a whirlwind tour of the Methow Valley’s public land, Kent brought the impacts of an increasingly warm and dry climate here into focus. Moreover, he urged us to take the lead on softening these effects.

Kent Woodruff is a wildlife biologist for the Okanogan District of the U.S. Forest Service, based in the Methow Valley on the eastern slopes of the North Cascade Mountains. A man of unabating energy and resolute enthusiasm for conservation and restoration of the forest, Kent’s enterprises are diverse and his vigor palpable. With great reverence for the forest he loves, Kent’s work is driven by his mantra that “ecosystems are not more complex than we think- they are more complex than we can think”. To bring focus to the complexity of his vocation, Kent views dealing with climate change as twofold; climate mitigation refers to taking actions to slow the rate of climate change, and climate adaption is the softening of the inevitable impacts of climate change.

Kent devotes himself everyday to achieving the latter in the Okanogan National Forest by advocating for wildlife as part of an interdisciplinary Forest Service decision-making team. He also runs a beaver relocation program, bring them back to their natural habitat, works with recreators to minimize impacts on the land, and helps to spot forest fires before they become calamitous, among other endeavors. In order to effectively undertake climate adaptation, though, Kent needs help, and lots of it. Climate change is having such a great impact on this area, he says, that we can no longer look to the past to forecast the ecology of this landscape in the future. We must form a team of writers, storytellers, and climate adaptation specialists to convey that the climate change freight train is coming, and while the rumble can already be felt in the Okanogan National Forest, it will not be long before places across the country find that they too are standing on the tracks. When it comes to climate adaptation, Kent says, we cannot be too bold.

By: Abby Popenoe