Interview above was conducted pre-election.
Sam Vorstag, a 32 year old smoke jumper who references Montana’s catastrophic wild fires in his ads, flipped a Republican seat to join the House next year.
Tne New York Times reported that Forstag was the first Democratic House member elected in Montana in 30 years. While his ads prominently feature his work as a smoke jumper, and in one instance, mention “I’ve seen the Montana that we love burn around us..”, he did not emphasize climate change as a campaign issue.
Sam Forstag, a Democrat running for Congress in Montana, is in many ways a familiar kind of progressive: He is a union worker calling for taxing the rich and expanding Medicare for all Americans.
But there’s one topic he appears to avoid, in his platform and in public forums. When asked recently about the growing threat of wildfires and drought in the West, he discussed a terrible ski season and record-high temperatures but did not name the climate crisis directly.
In my work promoting renewable energy in the rural, red midwest, I have generally not lead with, or even mentioned, climate change in public comments at local meetings, preferring to stick to economic arguments and farmer’s property rights – but my observation is that the climate issue is always lurking in the room.
At one recent meeting to consider a battery storage project in Tittabawassee Township, near Saginaw, Michigan, I took note of a recent, and very unusual tornado that had just ripped through the town, and pointed out that grid enhancements like this could contribute to security and community resilience in the face of increasing extreme weather, “no matter what you may think is causing it.”
I caught some almost imperceptible nods from members of the local board – who went on to approve the facility handily.
I told a local Citizens Climate Lobby group the other day, that we are rapidly reaching the moment where talking about climate no longer counts against you in these settings, as the increasing incidents of WTF weather events has made the topic at least a respectable, if not yet decisive, talking point.
We’ll see how Sam Vorstag handles the topic going forward as Congressional Dems pick up the pace on energy and climate legislation.