ST. PAUL, Minn. – A group of conservation-minded Minnesotans will be talking about ways the state's rural areas can better deal with climate change.

Today kicks off the third Rural Climate Dialogues held around the state. For the next three days, 18 Winona County residents will be laying out their concerns on how extreme weather events have affected rural communities and what they can do about it.

Tara Ritter, program associate for Climate and Rural Communities at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, says the local talks could eventually have state and national effects.

"Policies to address climate change tend to leave out the rural perspective,” she points out. “And so, we want these communities' voices raised up so that as more and more climate policy emerges, the rural perspective is really apparent in it."

The talks will take place at Winona State University, where residents will be working with experts to come up with community-based responses to changing weather conditions.

Climate change can often be a politically charged topic and Ritter says the point of the talks is to help avoid that. Her group and the Jefferson Center are hosting the discussions to give Greater Minnesota residents a chance to speak about their concerns in a public but safe space.

"We just want to bring these impacts of climate change, we want to talk about them at the local level,” she states. “We want to talk about what does this community want to do in the face of changing weather in order to remain resilient."

Later this year, Ritter says the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy plans to host a statewide talk where she hopes Minnesota legislators will pay attention to the recommendations from these rural communities.




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On Election Day, a broad coalition of conservationists, labor, and others helped defeat a ballot initiative to repeal Washington State's Climate Commitment Act. The act, passed in 2021, is the state's state's primary vehicle for reducing emissions and pollution and a major source of funding for clean energy infrastructure and climate initiatives.

Billy Wallace, political and legislative director with the Washington and Northern Idaho District Council of Laborers, said passage would have meant the loss of as many as 45,000 clean-energy jobs.

"We started building a coalition, and it ended up being a little over 600 groups, from labor, from environmental. The Catholic Church was on it, We had 21 of the 29 tribes sign on. So it was a very diversified coalition that came together to save this funding." he said.

Initiative 2117 was one of four ballot measures backed by the Let's Go Washington PAC funded primarily by conservative hedge-fund manager Bryan Heywood. Wallace said that over the next 8 years, Climate Commitment Act investments would create 45,000 jobs in Washington State.

Wallace added the coalition faced an uphill battle to help the public understand that jobs and the environment were both on the line.

"These are the investments, even in schools, clean air, clean water. And once we figured out we got to educate the people on what's going on, it was complicated. It was confusing for the general public. So we raised $18.4 million for this campaign from that big coalition," he continued.

Climate Jobs Washington and its member unions formed a coalition to protect the act. Wallace said labor organizations were instrumental in passing the original measure three years ago.

"It was crucial for our members. Our members work in the building trades. About 75%, 80% of the work we do is on prevailing wage work in transpo[rt]. So it was a no-brainer for us to jump in," he added.

New research finds Maryland leading the nation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental Protection Agency data show between 2005 and 2022, greenhouse gas pollution fell in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Maryland saw the largest reduction at 36%, followed by D.C., Maine, New Hampshire and Georgia. Only six states saw emissions increase.

Emily Scarr, senior advisor for the Maryland Public Interest Research Group, said the wide variation between states shows local policy matters.

"It's really evidence that states and regions have a lot of control on their greenhouse gas emissions," Scarr explained. "Showing ways that we can continue to reduce emissions, as well as showing warning signs of things that states do that can actually take us in the wrong direction."

The reductions nationwide are largely attributed to the retirement of many coal-fired power plants. Maryland has shuttered seven coal plants since 2012, with two still operating.

The report looks at emissions data from power generation, industry, transportation, agriculture, residential and commercial sectors. Maryland saw emissions reductions in every category except for the commercial sector, which includes commercial buildings, landfills and wastewater treatment centers. Scarr pointed out fossil-fuel-based winter heating is driving emissions in the commercial sector.

"The majority of those emissions are actually coming from heat for commercial buildings," Scarr observed. "That's a specific place where, if properly implemented, the Building Energy Performance Standards can start holding commercial building owners accountable."

The Maryland Department of the Environment will collect energy-use data from buildings larger than 35,000 square feet in 2025, to develop energy performance standards based on those numbers. The state has set a 2040 target for large buildings to have net-zero emissions.


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Community members in Seattle had a unique opportunity to weigh in on the policies guiding the city's climate goals.

In 2019, the City of Seattle passed the Green New Deal Resolution and Green New Deal Executive Order, with the goal of eliminating climate pollution by 2030.

To help guide that process, the initiative's oversight board supported community assemblies.

Peter Hasegawa is the organizing director at MLK Labor and co-chair of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

He said the idea behind the community assemblies was to do deep listening with many different community members.

"To have the opportunity to present information and get feedback," said Hasegawa, "and have people think about solutions together over a longer period of time, was appealing to us because we thought we could get higher quality feedback."

MLK Labor and Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle hosted the assemblies.

The goal was to ensure that people on the front-lines had their voices heard, and were at the table as the city crafts policies going forward.

Faduma Fido is lab leader with the People's Economy Lab, which helped support the community assemblies.

She said they're piloting this type of engage at the city level because people are tired of going to listening sessions.

She said the assemblies provide a more empowering setting, with people compensated for their time and eating meals together. Fido said they want to bring democratic practices like these back.

"There's an appetite and willingness now to empower the citizens," said Fido, "empower communities to practice democracy beyond the ballot box, because often that tends to be very polarizing."

Hasegawa said they heard from a variety of people over the three sessions.

In the first, they heard about people's experiences being affected by extreme weather, such as the 2021 heat dome, and a freeze last winter that caused many people's pipes to burst.

In the second session, they heard about wins on the ground to protect people and workers from the effects of climate change.

Hasegawa said in the third, they brainstormed about what the city and local labor movement can do about climate change.

"In certain ways that ended up being the easiest session," said Hasegawa, "because there was a very high level of consensus that what workers in Seattle want is to be protected from extreme weather, they want to be protected from heat and smoke, and bursting pipes, and they want to be protected whether they work in a building or outside or in a home."




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