My Public Comment on the Saint Paul Climate Action and Resilience Plan

[Russ Stark presenting the plan to the City Council.]

[Yesterday, the Saint Paul City Council held a public hearing and then adopted the Climate Action and Resilience Plan. You can see the plan here,  listen to a podcast on the topic, or read my column on it. Many people gave testimony before the Council. These were my comments.]

I’m grateful that Saint Paul leaders have crafted this ambitious slate of goals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions within the city. I strongly encourage the Council to pass this plan, and to follow up by meeting these goals with concrete action.

Sitting here today in 2019, the list of things we have to do might seem daunting. When you look at these goals from our perspective, they seem ambitious. To take just one example, the transit and vehicle miles targets included here represent huge strides, compared to what we have been doing in Saint Paul.

But unfortunately for all of us, when you look at climate change action from a different perspective -- from that of coming generations, your children or grandchildren -- things change dramatically. It sorrows me when I hear politicians, like the recent comments by leaders of Minnesota Republican Party, scoff at warming the earth by 2º Celsius, which, by the way, is a hopelessly optimistic outcome.

This existential, global problem is is no laughing matter. Warming the earth’s climate by two or more degrees Celsius will be catastrophic for Minnesota and for Saint Paul. We will experience severe flooding, droughts, death from heat exposure, massive storms, collapsing infrastructure, the extinction of countless species and irreparable transformation of the world. There is no end in sight.

This is why these steps are so critical. Again, unfortunately for all of us, I am confident that, when future generations look back at the 2019 Saint Paul Climate Action and Resilience Plan, they will see not a huge radical change, but the very first steps that we made as a city and as a society. The goals laid out in this plan will look like common sense, only the most basic of adjustments. Even if we meet these targets, people will be saying to their elders: Why didn’t you do more?

Here in Saint Paul, it might feel like we are doing something today. But it will be critically important to act on these goals, and not simply put them on the shelf next to the long library of our city’s ambitious but unmet aspirations.

The most disturbing fact I’ve heard in a while is this: “More than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels have been emitted in just the past three decades.” This means that climate change was not inherited, but was caused in my lifetime, and by our actions. This is our problem.

When you vote for this plan, and more importantly, when you act on these goals, it will seem like a big change. But this is just a critical beginning. This plan charts out the first steps toward addressing the biggest political challenge of our lives. I urge you here today to support the Saint Paul Climate Action and Resilience Plan, for our children and their children, in Saint Paul and all over the world.