As untold numbers of Minnesota students prepared for a global student climate strike, Minnesota House Democrats formed a “Climate Action Caucus” Thursday in what one veteran lawmaker said was the party’s intent to “double down” on climate change legislation.
“We hear you, and we stand with you,” state Rep. Patty Acomb, a first-term Democrat from Minnetonka, said as she turned to a group of leaders of the student strike during a news conference at the state Capitol.
Student climate strikes — where students walk out of school to protest perceived inaction to human-caused aspects of the earth’s warming — have rapidly become the hallmark of a global movement which has grabbed attention but whose impact remains uncertain.
Friday’s will be a big one.
With demonstrations in more than 130 countries, Friday’s climate strike is being billed by organizers as perhaps the largest mass protest in history. In Minnesota, events range from Bemidji to St. Paul, where participants will gather at 11:30 a.m. at a sculpture garden west of the Capitol.
The movement’s local demands range from largely symbolic — “declare a statewide emergency on climate” — to specific and controversial — “safe removal and a halt on construction of Line 3 and similar pipelines.”
During the spring session of the Legislature, a number of Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers in the House supported a Minnesota version of a “green new deal” bill that was largely written by youth climate activists. However, the bill failed to garner enough support among Democrats, who control the chamber, to advance it to the Senate, where it faced a certain death before a Republican majority that has generally not viewed the changing climate with the same sense of urgency and includes some members who don’t believe the science.
Mia DiLorenzo, one of the leaders of the Minnesota Youth Climate Strike, said the goal was to remove partisanship from the issue. She and other activists said they hear from other youths who come from conservative families who are persuading their parents to change their views, as well as youths from Democratic families who are unsatisfied with how Democrats have approached the issue.
“We strike to cause a massive disruption our politicians cannot ignore,” DiLorenzo said Thursday.
Yet, the very room in which she spoke was an image of partisanship. The only lawmakers there were Democrats.
Acomb was tapped by House Speaker Melissa Hortman to chair the Climate Action Caucus, which aims to push legislation to reduce the use of fossil fuels in virtually all facets of Minnesota life, including power generation, transportation and household appliances. Aside from Acomb, the other members are DFL veterans of the House with long histories of environmentalism, including Reps. Jean Wagenius of Minneapolis, Rick Hansen of South St. Paul, and Frank Hornstein of Minneapolis, who chair key House committees.
House Republicans appear to want no part of it. In response to the DFL/student event, state Rep. Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent, the lead Republican on the House energy and climate committee and a climate skeptic, issued a statement saying, in part: “Proposals House Democrats pushed in the 2019 session would have taken us backward in all three of those areas, heaping expensive tax increases, fees, requirements and policies on people in our state.”
In an interview last week, Swedzinski said the view by an overwhelming majority of scientists that humans are causing global temperatures to rise is “up for debate.”
Not among scientists.
According to NASA: “Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the ‘greenhouse effect’ — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.” The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and other human causes are “extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” (emphasis original)
The global movement of climate strikes, which was started last year by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg, has garnered media and social media attention for the dramatic ways in which young activists speak of the issue.
On Thursday, Janani Srinvasa, another one of the Minnesota organizers, cast climate change as the defining of her generation.
“We have no other choice,” she said. “Our home is in danger and we will fight to save it.”