Governor Schweitzer attended a special meeting of the Montana State Board of Education on Thursday. I was a small cog in the the support staff machinery which set up laptop computers, data projectors, screens, and audio equipment.
He waved at me early in the day, after about the third time I passed the open door of the meeting room. My mind was on my twentieth errand or so, but I looked up in time, and waved back with a smile.
An hour or so later his dog "Jag" came up to me in the hall, and as I greeted the gray Border Collie, I looked up to see Governor Schweitzer smiling above me.
"How are you doing?" he said...
I was pleased that our guest of honor had noticed a busy worker-bee, and introduced myself. He grinned broadly when I followed up our handshake with: "I'm Kossak MT Spaces -- keep up the good work!" I mentioned Doug (Kossak MT Mofo) and the governor was aware of him, too!
It was time for both of us to get back to work, so we did.
Schweitzer gave a speech at lunchtime that was more than just a speech, and he asked me to write the outlines of what he said on DailyKos, when we met one more time as he was leaving.
1) Montana and the USA possess the largest reserves of coal in the world.
2) Relativly clean gasification and energy conversion technologies exist for many types of coal -- one of them can be done for about $1.25 a gallon with a technology which has existed since the 1920's. He had names, numbers, and details to back up every arguement he made.
3) Political will is critical to develop these resources in beneficial ways -- especially the political will to fund, create, and sustain our educational system so that we have the engineers we need to do the necessary work.
4) Our current energy crisis does not require sacrifice as much as it requires courage and innovation:
Since we import 4.5 billion barrels of oil a year. We can first use our energy wisely -- i.e conserve. If we all cooperate, we can eliminate the need for 1 billion of those barrels.
We can secondly aggressivly make alternative and bio-fuels plentiful and profitable to produce to rid ourselves of the need for another billion imported barrels. (He told about his family's bio-deisel runabout in Helena as his way of leading by example when he can.)
That left 2.5 billion barrels, and he pointed to his plans for clean coal conversion processes as the key to energy self-sufficiency.
(Whew! How did I do, Brian?)
We also talked about Scott Wheeler, our local fireball candidate for House of Representatives. (See his website HERE)
Schweitzer said, "He's going to be a GREAT legislator!"
I mentioned that Scott takes his dog Molly with him too, and that made him laugh.
"I want to mention these dogs on DailyKos," I said.
"That's fine," he chuckled, and was off to another engagement.
The Schweitzer family (and Jag) -- Inset: Scott Wheeler & Molly