Who Is Gov. Tim Walz and Why Is He So Important for the Climate?

By Rachel Rye Butler
We've only got 10 years to work on the climate. But, thankfully the Green New Deal is pushing and shoving its way through Congress — putting elected leaders and presidential candidates to the test to show us whether they're actually serious about climate action.
And while climate champions like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are advocating for widespread and far-reaching federal climate policy, we need to do everything in our power (which is pretty mighty) to make sure state officials like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan keep fossil fuels in the ground right now by stopping projects like Enbridge's dangerous Line 3 tar sands pipeline.
Basically, Governor Walz and Lt. Governor Flanagan are faced with the biggest issue of our time. Their test? Whether they'll stop major fossil fuel expansion in Minnesota and begin to build a green and just economy for all Minnesotans — or continue on with business as usual, which will exacerbate our climate crisis in a time we desperately need to change course.
The administration recently took a good first step by continuing a key appeal of the Line 3 pipeline permits, but there's more that the administration can and should do to make sure that this dangerous pipeline never gets built.
State-based fights like stopping Line 3 are a key part to the current wave of climate movement and #GreenNewDeal momentum. And, if Line 3 is successfully stopped, it'll create a beacon for the rest of the country to look to at a time when it's needed the most.
What Is Line 3?
We know that it's time to stop building more fossil fuel projects like tar sands pipelines. Unfortunately, not everyone has gotten the memo. Fossil fuel company Enbridge is raring to build Line 3, a new tar sands pipeline in Minnesota that is larger than Keystone XL and that would cross indigenous treaty lands without the consent of some of the impacted tribes.
Tar sands are one of the dirtiest sources of oil on the planet. In fact, they produce 30 to 40 percent more climate pollution than "conventional" oil. Not only is tar sands oil bad news for the climate, but it's also bad for the water too. We know it's not a matter of if, but when pipelines spill. And when they do, they can be nearly impossible to clean up.
Water at Risk
Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline would cross Minnesota's freshwater lakes region and the Mississippi River not once but TWICE. Their track record doesn't bode well for all this water.
A recent Greenpeace USA report found that Enbridge and its joint ventures and subsidiaries reported 307 hazardous liquids incidents to federal regulators from 2002 to present — one incident every 20 days on average.
Not only have Enbridge pipelines seen some of the largest pipeline spills in American history — including a spill in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1991, and a spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010 — the data shows that it's both Enbridge's old AND new pipelines that spill. Forty-six of the incidents from 2002-2018 were from equipment installed 10 years or less prior to the problem.
What Can Be Done to #StopLine3?
Over the past ten years, indigenous leaders and frontline activists have worked so hard to stop tar sands pipelines like Line 3 and Keystone XL at every juncture with local mobilizations, lawsuits, thousands of public comments and direct action.
Thankfully Governor Walz and Lt. Governor Flanagan have the opportunity to listen to the people and shut this project down now. In announcing his decision to continue the Department of Commerce appeal of the pipeline permits, Governor Walz said that projects like Line 3 need a "social permit." In the years that this project has been proposed, 90 percent of the public comments collected about the project have been against Line 3, and the Department of Commerce's own analysis shows that the project is more risk than reward for Minnesota.
Continuing forward with the Department of Commerce's legal appeal of the project permits is an important first step, but there is more that Walz and Flanagan can do. The project still needs key permits from the administration to cross over 200 lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands. What's more, Walz can use the bully pulpit of the governor's office to set a new direction for the state of Minnesota.
Here's the thing — stopping fossil fuel projects like Line 3 is a necessary part of action on climate that actually meets the scale of the problem.
Want to create local change that protects communities from fossil fuel infrastructure? Jump-start the transition to a democratic 100 percent renewable energy economy? Limits political power of Big Oil? State-based fights like stopping Line 3 are a key part to the current wave of climate movement and #GreenNewDeal momentum.
What's Next?
Line 3 is a disaster for the climate. It threatens the water. And many impacted tribes have not given their consent. So the question is this:
Dirty #Pipelines Are Bad Investments and a Reputational Risk for #Banks https://t.co/75yCC8FvBY @BusinessGreen @PeopleNotPipes @Greenpeace— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1541642434.0
Rachel Rye Butler leads the Democracy Campaign at Greenpeace USA.
A tornado tore through a city north of Birmingham, Alabama, Monday night, killing one person and injuring at least 30.
- Tornadoes and Climate Change: What Does the Science Say ... ›
- Tornadoes Hit Unusually Wide Swaths of U.S., Alarming Climate ... ›
- 23 Dead as Tornado Pummels Lee County, AL in Further Sign ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By David Konisky
On his first day in office President Joe Biden started signing executive orders to reverse Trump administration policies. One sweeping directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who "disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities."
Michael S. Regan, President Biden's nominee to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, grew up near a coal-burning power plant in North Carolina and has pledged to "enact an environmental justice framework that empowers people in all communities." NCDEQ
Trending
By Katherine Kornei
Clear-cutting a forest is relatively easy—just pick a tree and start chopping. But there are benefits to more sophisticated forest management. One technique—which involves repeatedly harvesting smaller trees every 30 or so years but leaving an upper story of larger trees for longer periods (60, 90, or 120 years)—ensures a steady supply of both firewood and construction timber.
A Pattern in the Rings
<p>The <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/coppice-standards-0" target="_blank">coppice-with-standards</a> management practice produces a two-story forest, said <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernhard_Muigg" target="_blank">Bernhard Muigg</a>, a dendrochronologist at the University of Freiburg in Germany. "You have an upper story of single trees that are allowed to grow for several understory generations."</p><p>That arrangement imprints a characteristic tree ring pattern in a forest's upper story trees (the "standards"): thick rings indicative of heavy growth, which show up at regular intervals as the surrounding smaller trees are cut down. "The trees are growing faster," said Muigg. "You can really see it with your naked eye."</p><p>Muigg and his collaborators characterized that <a href="https://ltrr.arizona.edu/about/treerings" target="_blank">dendrochronological pattern</a> in 161 oak trees growing in central Germany, one of the few remaining sites in Europe with actively managed coppice-with-standards forests. They found up to nine cycles of heavy growth in the trees, the oldest of which was planted in 1761. The researchers then turned to a historical data set — more than 2,000 oak <a href="https://eos.org/articles/podcast-discovering-europes-history-through-its-timbers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">timbers from buildings and archaeological sites</a> in Germany and France dating from between 300 and 2015 — to look for a similar pattern.</p>A Gap of 500 Years
<p>The team found wood with the characteristic coppice-with-standards tree ring pattern dating to as early as the 6th century. That was a surprise, Muigg and his colleagues concluded, because the first mention of this forest management practice in historical documents occurred only roughly 500 years later, in the 13th century.</p><p>It's probable that forest management practices were not well documented prior to the High Middle Ages (1000–1250), the researchers suggested. "Forests are mainly mentioned in the context of royal hunting interests or donations," said Muigg. Dendrochronological studies are particularly important because they can reveal information not captured by a sparse historical record, he added.</p><p>These results were <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78933-8" target="_blank">published in December in <em>Scientific Reports</em></a>.</p><p>"It's nice to see the longevity and the history of coppice-with-standards," said <a href="https://www.teagasc.ie/contact/staff-directory/s/ian-short/" target="_blank">Ian Short</a>, a forestry researcher at Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority in Ireland, not involved in the research. This technique is valuable because it promotes conservation and habitat biodiversity, Short said. "In the next 10 or 20 years, I think we'll see more coppice-with-standards coming back into production."</p><p>In the future, Muigg and his collaborators hope to analyze a larger sample of historic timbers to trace how the coppice-with-standards practice spread throughout Europe. It will be interesting to understand where this technique originated and how it propagated, said Muigg, and there are plenty of old pieces of wood waiting to be analyzed. "There [are] tons of dendrochronological data."</p><p><em><a href="mailto:katherine.kornei@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Katherine Kornei</a> is a freelance science journalist covering Earth and space science. Her bylines frequently appear in Eos, Science, and The New York Times. Katherine holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles.</em></p><p><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://eos.org/articles/tree-rings-reveal-how-ancient-forests-were-managed" target="_blank">Eos</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>Earth's ice is melting 57 percent faster than in the 1990s and the world has lost more than 28 trillion tons of ice since 1994, research published Monday in The Cryosphere shows.
By Jewel Fraser
Noreen Nunez lives in a middle-class neighborhood that rises up a hillside in Trinidad's Tunapuna-Piarco region.