Does Minnesota believe in sustainable development?

Today we're about midway between the World Day of Love and Thanks to Water [July 25] and Earth Overshoot Day [August 1]. We are not surprised, but we are disappointed that, despite Minnesota's focus on water during the past several years, we can find online no recognition of the Day of Love for Water in Minnesota. The situation is similar for Earth Overshoot Day mentions in Minnesota, although Minnesota Public Radio does have a piece about it, there are no local mentions other than that.

The United Nations has adopted a set of Sustainable Development Goals. Minnesota, particularly in the nonprofit sector, has begun "to discuss how the Sustainable Development Goals can provide a framework for local collaboration around key issues in their state, including health, education, employment, and inequality."

Can you find Minnesota's boundaries?
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

One of many reasons we find Minnesota's almost complete silence on sustainability very disheartening is that our state, at one time, adopted its very own Sustainable Development Plan. It was one of the outcomes of {brace yourselves} "The Minnesota Sustainable Development Initiative [which] was launched in 1993 by Governor Arne H. Carlson, the Environmental Quality Board and the commissioner of Trade and Economic Development." Governor Carlson was (and remains, we believe) a REPUBLICAN. 1993 was a generation ago. What happened? How have we lost focus and taken our eyes off the ball? Obviously, sustainability isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a partisan issue. And yet, since the original Minnesota plan was last revised in April 1998, sustainable development has disappeared from most state public agency radar screens. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has made continuing efforts to keep our home planet habitable and more just. Here are a few examples:

• Kate Raworth, in England, has written a book, Doughtnut Economics, framing how "to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet." (We wonder if such framing might help further discussions on the urban-rural divide.)


• The Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University has become "a reference point for research on global sustainability.


• At Minnesota's substate level, Region 5 has continued to update and use The Central Minnesota Sustainable Development Plan

We strongly suggest that Minnesota and Minnesotans are well past the point of deciding to vote for either Republicans or Democrats. We need to vote for those who are dedicated to representing us, our children, and their children in the restoration of a habitable Earth, and the creation of an equitable Earth. Ben Franklin was absolutely correct when he pointed out that "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." If you haven't noticed, there's a growing number of heat waves, floods, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes or some other catastrophic event just waiting to make life miserable, or end it, for each of us and our friends and families.

My House is the Red Earth

By Joy Harjo

My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world. I’ve heard New York, Paris, or Tokyo called the center of the world, but I say it is magnificently humble. You could drive by and miss it. Radio waves can obscure it. Words cannot construct it, for there are some sounds left to sacred wordless form. For instance, that fool crow, picking through trash near the corral, understands the center of the world as greasy strips of fat. Just ask him. He doesn’t have to say that the earth has turned scarlet through fierce belief, after centuries of heartbreak and laughter—he perches on the blue bowl of the sky, and laughs.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.