MN strengthens climate change focus. WI needs different legislature to get there.

Minnesota is bringing more state resources to the climate change battle. 

Gov. Tim Walz Monday tapped the heads of multiple Minnesota government agencies to be part of a new collaboration aimed at getting the state back on track with its climate change goals.  

Walz said he’ll look to the new climate change subcabinet to suggest policy changes and coordinate responses to reduce harmful emissions and to provide more resiliency as the state experiences heavier rains and warming temperatures. 

I was surprised to see that despite its broad investments in wind power, Minnesota was not meeting its green energy targets, but heartened to see that the state is getting more serious about getting there. 

Gov. Evers is moving Wisconsin out of the anti-science, climate change-denying, policy backwater where Walker buried it - - 

Man with sign has it right. Walker put Wisconsin in a deep, anti-science climate change hole and a GOP-controlled legislature will do everything it can to keep us there. Judith Davidoff photo.

- - is specifically organizing agencies around changing climate conditions, and found more funding for electric vehicle charging stations.

But the GOP-led Walkerite Legislature continues to throw up obstacles to a broad range of environmental matters, from preventing rural groundwater pollution to remediating urban lead piping to undermining Evers' appointment prerogatives.

Wisconsin’s ag secretary designee fired after Senate Republicans reject confirmation

Note also that the GOP-controlled, special interest-focused and spitefully-driven State Senate has yet to approve Evers' nomination of Preston Cole as Secretary of the DNR. 

Cole has a university degree in forestry and a background in forestry and environmental program management in St. Louis, MO, and in Milwaukee - - credentials (details, here), which Walker's longtime DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp - -  high school graduate and former McDonald's manager - - did not bring to the position.

Without all that GOP legislative opposition, Evers faces an uphill fight bringing effective environmental programming into the government at the very time all public agencies need to elevate science to combat resource degradation, air pollution, water contamination and climate change.