Will the legislature get its energy act together again?

Sun shining, wind blowing, temperature barely crept into double digits, fields covered in snow, water ice covered. Thanks to the thaw earlier this week, we've also got icicles hanging from the gutters. Sounds like mid-winter in our North Country. At least we've seen a couple of reports that we're now through the (literally) darkest days of winter. Tomorrow brings us ten hours of daylight.

each winter's sunrise starts a new day

Photo by J. Harrington

In an interesting coincidence to yesterday's posting about Minnesota's climate change failures, this morning we noticed a story in the Star Tribune that Legislators push to shrink Minnesota's carbon footprint to zero by 2050. The 2007 Next Generation Energy Act is, in our opinion, long overdue for an update. We were delighted to see the following in the Strib article:

The proposal also creates enforceability and accountability, for the first time, beyond utilities. The original act contained clear mandates for electric utilities but not for other sectors such as transportation, now the state's No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions, or agriculture.

We've noted, more than once or twice, that if government really wants to rely on voluntary compliance, we no longer need traffic cops. We'll take that further today and say that the IRS can get rid of all its auditors and any computer auditing program if we rely on voluntary tax compliance. Have you seen a reasonable explanation why some government functions warrant oversight and enforcement and others, such as agricultural conservation, don't? That's what we thought. We look forward to reading whatever bill gets introduced.

Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now

Matthew Olzmann

Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,
the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations
of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing
but benzene, mercury, the stomachs
of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic. 

You probably doubt that we were capable of joy,
but I assure you we were.

We still had the night sky back then,
and like our ancestors, we admired
its illuminated doodles
of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles.

Absolutely, there were some forests left!
Absolutely, we still had some lakes!

I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide.
There were bees back then, and they pollinated
a euphoria of flowers so we might
contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask,
“Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”   

And then all the bees were dead.

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