It was
an interesting coincidence that the ‘Minnesota Prepares for Pars’ meeting
organized by the Environmental Quality Board was held this week that we were
investigating climate policy and politics. The meeting was filled with people
from all different backgrounds and reasons for going to or being interested in
the COP21 talks in Paris. Just at my table were 2 high school students from the
School of Environmental Studies (who just the day before were told that their
trip to Paris was canceled by the school district due to security concerns-they
were so sad!), a councilwoman from the city of Minneapolis, the executive vice
president of the BlueGreen Alliance, the MN Commissioner of Agriculture, and
the Interagency Climate Adaptation Team Coordinator from the MN PCA. We each
brought a different perspective and background into the discussion. The
councilwoman from Minneapolis is wanting to see how other cities around the
world deal with urban planning while using climate change as the framework. The
BlueGreen Alliance is an organization that brings together the environmental movement
with the labor movement in order to provide good jobs while caring for the
environment. She had gone to a number of COPs before and is delivering position
statements on behalf of her organization. The students had been studying and
preparing for the meetings intensively for the past few months and still seemed
a little shell shocked that they wouldn’t be going (although apparently some of
the students and their parents are still going ‘on vacation’ in Paris during
those two weeks…). The Commissioner and the MN PCA staff member were not going to
Paris but seemed interested in why we were all traveling there and what part of
our ‘Minnesota Climate Story’ we were bringing with us. All of us talking about
why we were going and what we hoped to bring back was the best part of the
morning – it was a great living and breathing example of how this issue of
climate change reaches all parts of our lives.
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