Category Archives: news

Approaching harvest - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicmcphee/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

From Apple Valley high school students to Will Steger, Minnesotans are all over the Copenhagen climate conference. MPR reports that students from St. Benedict’s and St. John’s universities are also producing a documentary, the Will Steger Foundation and Stonyfield Farm sent a dozen young Minnesotans, and other organizations are also present. Rolf Nordstrom of the Great Plains Institute says that the Midwest is pivotal in climate discussions. Jim Harkness of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy says that agriculture is crucial to the discussion.

Back at home, MPR explores differing farmer opinions on ag approaches to climate change.

Carmen and Sally Fernholz have used organic farming practices on their 360 tillable acres near Madison, Minnesota for almost four decades. They won the 2005 Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service Farmer of the Year Award. Carmen Fernholz told MPR:

“The less we can have a carbon footprint I think the better we are,” says Fernholz. “So yes there’s no question that’s where I’m looking at, in those directions.”

If the U.S. House has its way, there could be a lot more farms like Fernholz’s in the future. The House passed a bill last summer aimed at reducing global warming and the Senate will take up the legislation soon. The House bill would pay farmers to manage their land to store carbon – the carbon is “sequestered” in agricultural parlance. Fernholz said the legislation signals a change in the world of farming.

On the other hand, farmer Lawrence Sukalski told MPR that saving energy may not be good for farmers. He fears that the climate change bill will result in increasing energy prices, as energy companies are forced to reduce greenhouse emissions.

“If it passes we’re going to have Europe-style food prices and Europe-style fuel prices,” said Sukalski. “Everything will be so high you won’t be able to do anything.” …

“I am not sold that this will make money for the farmers later on down the road,” said Sukalski. “There’s just too many things to it; it’s too complex.”

The Uptake is there, producing video (below) as well as live coverage.

This morning’s big Minnesota news is all about weather, not climate, with forecasts of the first blizzard of the season. But, as we all should know by now, weather is not the same as climate, and yesterday offered plenty of climate change news. Continue reading →

As delegates from about 192 nations gather in Copenhagen to take action to mitigate or reverse global warming, only about half of the U.S. believes that climate change is happening. The Copenhagen conference, nicknamed COP15, runs December 7-18. The official website offers numerous articles, and links to live webcasts of proceedings, both in the original language and in English.

An NPR story explains two reasons for decreasing U.S. citiizen concern. First:

Anthony Leiserowitz of the Yale University School of Forestry puts one reason above all the rest: “First of all, it’s the economy, stupid.”People can only worry about so many issues at one time, he says. So it’s no surprise they worry about issues that hit closest to home.

Then there’s the psychological reason:

Even as scientists become more confident that climate change is a serious hazard, public opinion is shifting the other way, says Kari Marie Norgaard at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. …
[As] as people start to feel overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, they simply turn away from the topic. It’s a form of denial, she says.”We just don’t want to know about it, so we are actively distancing ourselves from it or trying to protect ourselves from it.”

Finally, “There’s a large and well-funded effort to block legislation that could hurt the industries most responsible for carbon emissions.”