Yellowstone Bend Citizens Council - Blog

YBCC Farmer's Market booth on Wednesday Aug 16th

9/26/2017

Our yielded many conversations and lots of opportunities to share our work. Sam Francis talked with three Park Electric Co-op members who may be interested in working with our YBCC Park Electric Committee to expand renewables in the Co-op. We added names to our list of those who will join in the YBCC02 Carbon Diet campaign when the website is ready to launch. We shared literature about YBCC. Members Lauren Dalzell and Laurie Talcott made a whole flock of kids happy by painting faces. And two families who won the raffle for fruit trees went home ready to plant. (Thanks Sandi at Blake Nursery for the trees). All in all, a great day!

The Soil Will Save Us: Kristin Ohlson at the Annual NPRC Meeting

12/4/2015

When Kristin Ohlson says “The soil will save us”, she means it. That’s the title of her book, and also her message. She was the keynote speaker at the Northern Plains annual meeting in November.

Is this just one more crackpot idea? No. It’s based on solid science. For once, we modern humans don’t have to feel solely responsible for the climate mess we’re in. When we started plowing soil, we also began releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Of course, our industrial ways have greatly magnified the problem. But a few very simple practices can actually REDUCE the legacy load in our atmosphere. We’ve got some good examples of these practices happening in Montana; NP members Wade Sikorski and Steve Charter are just two of many putting the principles of ‘carbon farming’ into practice.

Planting without plowing (“Nothing in nature repeatedly and regularly turns the soil”), planting cover crops, using mulch and compost are the mainstays. These are also practices we can use in the tiny plots in our backyards.

It’s comforting to know there’s a way to actually drop the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. And it’s a joy to be able to turn the land we tend, however small, into a part of the healing we wish for.

Yellowstone Bend Citizens Council Passes the 1 Year Mark

10/19/2015

Yellowstone Bend Citizen Council’s annual celebration 'From Fledgling to Flying’ will be held Wed Oct 28th at 7:00 at Elk River Books/Wheatgrass Saloon (120 N. Main St, Livingston). Come enjoy desserts and wine, and visit with friends and neighbors. Everyone is welcome!

Alaina Buffalo Spirit, Northern Cheyenne artist, activist and Northern Plains Resource Council member, will share stories of the fight to save the Tongue River Valley from coal development. Alaina’s beautiful and evocative ledger art will be displayed for sale.

Yellowstone Bend (YBCC) held our kick-off party a year ago in June. With only a year under our belt, we’re heading into our second year with full steam. We expect to be completing a solar project on a public community building in 2016. We facilitated a tour of the Red Lodge wastewater treatment solar array for our city officials to explore how solar might provide savings in Livingston’s treatment plant. We’ll be hosting a “Making Energy Work for Your Business” in the spring for business owners to learn about grants and loans for renewable installations. We joined the legislative effort to promote renewables, and collaborated with PCEC on several projects. And we’ve added our energy to the effort to collect signatures opposing a new rail link that would make possible a huge new strip mine in the Tongue River Valley, resulting in lots more coal trains rolling through our town.

We see our two goals as a right and left hand, working in concert. With one hand we work to support local renewable energy projects, especially those returning savings to our community, and with the other, to mitigate the negative effects of fossil fuel transport coming through the center of our town every day.

We hope to see you on the 28th!

Joan Kresich

YBCC Attends the POCO Training (Principles of Community Organizing)

7/26/2015

Have you ever thought about the difference between an issue and a problem? I hadn’t, but the 4 day training in Billings put on by WORC (Western Organization of Resource Councils) taught me the difference, and much more. 33 of us from around Montana and neighboring states learned best practices from the science and long history of community organizing,

Why bother? Because we know that what we do in our own communities can radiate out and become amplified into the powerful voice of a real movement. That process is visible in our YBCC effort to prevent the Tongue River Railroad from being built, which in turn stops the opening of a gigantic new coal strip mine. While we work in our town to stop that one railroad and mine, people in Oakland are working to prevent a Utah company from using the Oakland Port to ship coal to Asia. We’re doing our part, and they’re doing theirs.

If you would like to hear about the training, contact YBCC chair Joanie Kresich joankresich@gmail.com

CCA gives us ENERGY DEMOCRACY

5/16/2015

4 bills designed to boost our ability to move to more renewable energy were killed in our legislature, largely by the efforts the NWE monopoly. But the huge majority of people WANT more renewable energy.

There is a way we can detour around the roadblocks. It’s called Community Choice Aggregate (CCA). You can read a great summary here.

Here’s some of the good news, according to Marin Clean Energy (MCE):
“Today’s CCAs can offer consumers both competitive rates and a high percentage of renewables. For example, MCE’s default “Light Green” option charges customers $80.98 for service using 50 percent renewables, whereas Pacific Gas & Electric charges $82.42 for equivalent service using only 22 percent renewables.* MCE customers can also choose a “Deep Green” option (100 percent renewables at slightly higher rates) or “Local Sol” (100 percent local solar at the highest rates).”

CCA’s are clearly showing the way around the roadblocks!
--Joan Kresich

It only takes a few activists to change the world

5/16/2015

Yellowstone Bend Citizens Council is a strong organization. We are growing, now at 84 members. All our members are good people, involved in what they feel is important. Most of us are involved in other activities and passions, hoping to bring about change in our world. Being human we have to pick and choose those causes upon which to focus. Some of us feel climate change is the most important cause we can work on, others feel human hunger has the greatest need, still others are swept up in disaster relief such as helping with the Nepal rehabilitation after the horrifying earthquakes that have occurred there.

Some of the YBCC members, who are doing the administrative work, attending meetings, maintaining the website and newsletter, and helping further the Northern Plains agenda, are in danger of burnout as we try to do too much. This article is a reaffirmation that very small, active, dedicated groups who persevere and don't give up - can accomplish mighty things. The goal is to keep on pushing forward (or pushing against obstructions). That said, we hope to pull other members who have time and interest in the fight on climate change, into the activities planned. The fellowship the group can give is well worth the time input.

Read the article: One Magical Politician Won't Stop Climate Change. Its Up to Us.
You will gain perspective and feel refreshed, and know that all the time and effort is worth it. No matter what cause has lit your fire and passion in which to be involved, it is all worth it.

A Silver Lining???

2/19/2015

“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
--- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

One can only hope that a silver lining to the recent WV oil train derailment/explosion tragedy will be that it helps us re-orient our collective compass. We can't just stay the course anymore. As evidenced, the regulatory changes aren't nearly effective enough, and we are preciously short on time. This could very easily have happened in Livingston, hurting or killing people we know and love, and polluting our precious landscape! Let's make this a re-energizing call to arms. Together we can do this!
--Monica

Welcome

1/20/2015

Feel free to post any comments or questions that you may have regarding YBCC or any other relevant issues or ideas. Simply click on the blog title and you can post your comment. We update this site frequently and will try to respond to any questions, concerns or issues in a timely fashion. You are also welcome to use the comments section to create a dialog with others.

How to Balance Activism and Preserve your Spirit

1/20/2015

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

― Edward Abbey