Environmental activism runs strong as ever, reinforced by climate and equity movements

12 October 2023

In divining the essence of “The Good Life in Minnesota,” the authors of the 1973 Time magazine cover story frequently alluded to a remarkable reverence among the state’s people for their well-watered and richly diverse natural landscape.

“Most of the mood in Minnesota has to do with comparatively unspoiled land. Such an abundance and accessibility of nature has much to do with the Minnesotans’ sense of place and roots,” Time observed. “More than almost any other American people, they are outdoor people, and at least 50 percent of them customarily vacation within their own state.”

Time also suggested Minnesota was out front in what was then a still nascent environmental movement. Activists at the time were fighting to stop the dumping of asbestos-laden taconite tailings into Lake Superior and to preserve as pristine wilderness a vast expanse of lakes, rock and forest on the boundary with Canada.

Related: Reappraising ‘Minnesota: A State That Works’: Examining political shifts by the decade

Minnesota (meaning “sky-colored water” in the language of our original inhabitants) contains a truly magical mosaic of biodiversity: sparkling clear lakes, wetlands and mighty rivers, deep woods, rolling hills, wide-open prairies and farmscapes and more parks and protected public lands than most other states. Then and now, a strong environmentalist ethic and a vigorous outdoorsy culture prevail. As climate change and environmental injustice for a more racially diverse community escalate to the level of existential challenges, these nature-loving traits are being reinforced.

On almost any ranking that pertains to environmentalism, conservation or outdoor activity, Minnesota ranks near the top or above the median among the states. Key comparisons by national organizations include these: The state ranks third in per capita investment in parks and recreation; fifth among bicycle-friendly states; seventh on overall environmental protections and “greenest” states; seventh on recycling; 12th in air and water quality, and 13th least polluted. (See rankings summaries attached to the end of this commentary.)

Creative Commons/briandjan607

South Temperance Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

In addition to multiple state agencies and local government offices now dedicated to environmental stewardship, Minnesota’s culture is shaped by scores of effective nonprofit organizations that wield influence through research and advocacy. They reveal problems and publish reports, attract media attention and often file lawsuits. The Minnesota Environmental Partnership’s website lists about 100 environmental groups and nonprofits, with the advisory that the list is not exhaustive.

Despite this legacy and a historic leap forward on environmental protection in the 2023 legislative session, progress often has been delayed in recent years by an increasingly intransigent political faction in the state and nation. Although early environmental action before 1973 often was achieved under moderate Republican leadership, cooperation from that party has evaporated in recent decades. A far more conservative GOP has aligned itself ever more closely with fossil fuel companies and other polluting industries and with anti-government ideology that opposes further environmental regulation. MAGA Republicans, loyal to former president Donald Trump rather than traditional GOP values, often describe climate change as a hoax and climate action as a socialist plot.

Moreover, some environmental leaders in Minnesota, as well as agency employees, worry not only about fierce obstruction from MAGA conservatives but also about state agencies they contend have become too complacent and accommodating. DFL leaders acknowledge they fear that more aggressive action will lead to further defection from conservative rural voters who often are influenced by agribusiness and extractive industries in their communities and by conservative media.

Loving the land, counting the ways

In a brief aside about the state’s drawbacks, as a counterpoint to all the natural wonders, Time flagged the undeniable fact of “winters as hard as the Ice Age.’’ There is no major metropolitan area in the United States with colder winters than the Twin Cities. Average lows in January in the Twin Cities are slightly colder than Moscow and Anchorage, and of course the lows in International Falls and Ely are on a par with Siberia.

Related: Reappraising ‘The State that Works’: High rankings hold up, mostly

Aside from winter, which has been so reliably cold and snowy that it has created one of the nation’s larger winter tourism industries, there is everything to love about this geography. (A disclaimer is in order here about the author’s pre-existing condition, namely, a prideful affection for this particular part of the earth. I grew up in Alaska and perversely relish returning from winter Sun Belt getaways and inhaling a draft of cold, crisp air on stepping out of the airport. I do try to resist the temptation to denigrate those who can’t stand the extremes as “riffraff.”)

MinnPost photo by Peyton Sitz

A bicyclist-cum-pedestrian walking their bike through the snow.

Superlatives about this place are endless, starting with the “minne,” the water prefix that is attached to dozens of place names. This land is the burbling, gurgling fountainhead for the eastern two-thirds of the continent, the headwaters for the drainage area between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Almost no water flows into Minnesota from somewhere else. Water that falls here flows north to Hudson Bay, south to the Gulf of Mexico and east through the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic. This gives the state ocean-like frontage of the largest freshwater lake on the planet and we own a larger stretch of the Mississippi River than any other state. These facts allow ship-sized vessels through both the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Mississippi River, and the right to claim status as the North Coast of the United States.

Minnesota also has a more varied and sharply contrasting set of biomes than most states between the Appalachians and the Rockies. These include prairie grassland in an L-shaped area to the west and south, a belt of aspen parkland in the northwest, evergreen boreal forests on the rocky Canadian Shield in the northeast and rolling hills and deciduous forest in the southeast and up through the Twin Cities and central Minnesota.

Minnesota overflows not only with H2O, the compound that is basic to all forms of life, but it is off-the-charts rich in other vital stuff that humans value. Deep, rich black earth in the southern and western counties produces crop yields that are among the world’s highest and puts the state perennially at about fifth in total value of farm products. Iron is the mineral substance on which the Industrial Revolution was built, and Minnesota was blessed (or cursed) with the largest deposits in the United States, still accounting for 70% of U.S. production. Add to these resources the vast tree-covered acreage, and although the magnificent virgin white pine was obliterated almost a century ago, Minnesota still ranks 14th in the total value of forestry products.

From exploitation to conservation

When European traders and explorers first saw this terrain, they also saw dollar signs. And those with the most money and power took early advantage, quickly seizing these abundant resources from the Ojibwe and Dakota people and exploiting human labor to build enormous personal fortunes and grand mansions along Summit Avenue and palatial homes on Lake Minnetonka.

Related: Reappraising ‘The state that works’: Part II, racial disparities belie ‘the good life’

MNOpedia, the Minnesota Historical Society’s online encyclopedia that runs every Monday in MinnPost, offers a concise overview of how all this activity had turned Minnesota by the late 1800s into “a humming cauldron of agricultural and industrial activity. It also profoundly disrupted the state’s existing ecosystems. Busting prairie sod, denuding woodlands, and tunneling deep beneath the earth destroyed forests and grasslands, increased soil erosion and decimated wildlife populations.”

Among the most immediate disastrous results were devastating fires that swept across the dry slash left by clear-cutting, killing hundreds of people in four horrific fires between 1894 and 1918. As rivers became open sewers and farming methods depleted the soil, Minnesotans rose to the occasion and joined national efforts to challenge corporate exploitation of places and their people.

Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

View of the Hinckley main street the morning after the fire, 1894.

Minnesota led the way with the creation of the first congressionally mandated national forest. Hunters and anglers won battles to regulate fishing and hunting so that populations would not be wiped out and created a Department of Conservation in 1931 (now the Department of Natural Resources). Minnesotans also built one of the nation’s earliest and eventually one the largest state park systems, with more than 75 parks or recreation areas, strategically distributed so that no resident is more than 50 miles away from a park unit.

The transition from a society based on extracting natural resources to a tourism economy more focused on appreciating the land began to really take hold in the 1930s, with the marketing of Minnesota as “The Land of 10,000 Lakes’’ and the nation’s premier summer destination. (When I first laid eyes on Minnesota as I crossed the St. Croix River on Interstate 94 in 1971, the first thing I noticed was a huge billboard that said “Welcome to Minnesota. Have Fun!” I did.)

Countless thousands of ordinary Minnesotans played their part in these efforts to protect their precious part of the Earth and a few became nationally prominent. These include Sigurd Olson, author and activist who helped write the federal Wilderness Act of 1964; Winona La Duke, an Ojibwe tribal member and fighter for Indigenous and environmental causes who was twice a vice-presidential candidate for the national Green Party; and Ann Bancroft and Will Steger, polar explorers and leading voices for climate action.

Accelerating activism since 1973

Since 1973, environmental concerns have risen steadily as a top policy priority. Early success in reducing the flow of sewage and industrial effluents into our rivers led to greater vigilance by communities and public agencies, discovery of further degradation, and efforts to address the problems.

A list of major initiatives would include statewide recycling and solid waste reduction, hundreds of millions of dollars invested in storm sewer separation and improved water systems, discovery and remediation for impaired surface water in all forms, challenges to further growth of nuclear power and waste storage, expanded mass transit systems including light-rail for the Twin Cities, restoration of habitat for threatened bees and pollinators, sustainable agriculture and local food movements, legal action against dozens of industrial polluters and the introduction of “smart growth’’ plans that discourage suburban sprawl and automobile emissions while encouraging housing density and healthier lifestyles.

Twice over that period in voting for ballot initiatives, Minnesota voters made decisive statements of support for environmental investment. A constitutional amendment creating a state lottery in 1988 provided for 40% of the proceeds to go toward an Environmental Trust Fund. In one of the most extraordinary displays of popular support for the cause, Minnesota voters in 2008 approved a statewide ballot initiative – the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment – that raised their own sales taxes for environmental projects and arts and cultural investment.

In recent years, the push for racial equity has dovetailed more closely than ever with environmental movements. As the state’s racial diversity increased from 2% to 25% from 1973 to 2023, policymakers became increasingly responsive to research showing how environmental damage disproportionately affects marginalized communities of color. Examples include the inevitable proximity of polluters and low-income neighborhoods of color and rural communities; Latino farm workers exposed to toxic chemicals; and indigenous tribal lands threatened by spills from pipelines. An environmental activist base that had been primarily white for many decades is now strongly reinforced by younger people of color.

Minnesota’s environmental ethic has been so strong for so long that even its most conservative leaders have felt compelled to at least pay lip service to the ideals. Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty departed from right-wing orthodoxy to push for renewable energy goals more than 20 years ago. But further progress in recent years was stymied by gridlock in the Legislature when conservative Republicans held narrow control over one or both chambers.

The 2022 election cleared the obstruction, at least temporarily. A DFL trifecta and the most racially diverse Legislature in history immediately pushed through the most ambitious green agenda since the 1970s. The centerpiece of the $2 billion package was a requirement that the state’s electric power grid be carbon-free by 2040. In addition, a $115 million fund was created to match federal dollars for climate and energy projects. In addition to increased funding for existing public agencies charged with environmental oversights, dozens of other appropriations and laws were approved. Among them: funding for solar panels on schools and public buildings, rebates for electric vehicles, creation of a “green bank” to finance clean energy projects, tough new regulation on “forever chemicals” like those involved in the 3M Company’s contamination of groundwater in Washington County, and new protections for “environmental justice areas’’ that have been subject to pollution in the past. Funding also was increased sharply for traditional outdoors pursuits, for hunters and anglers and campers, from planting trees and restoring wetlands to building new boat ramps and fish hatcheries and campground facilities.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

Many more battles lie ahead and pushback against implementation of 2023 legislation is inevitable. Opposition to greener policies remains fierce, entrenched and well-funded. Internal conflicts are developing in the broad center-left pro-environment side of the spectrum, over issues such as returning to nuclear power for carbon reduction or reversing smart growth policies for the Twin Cities. Some activists, including former Republican Gov. Arne Carlson, are openly and bitterly critical of DFL Gov. Tim Walz for not doing more to stop any new mining projects in northeast Minnesota. Public enthusiasm for environmental policy can be hard to sustain, and polling shows that many citizens and consumers turn against green policies if it involves even minimal cost or inconvenience. Optimism about the world’s ability to reverse climate change runs up against indifference and pessimism about an apocalyptic global climate collapse

But in Minnesota at least, the case for optimism can be found in that basic instinct that Time identified in Minnesota’s culture 50 years ago: a reverence for the natural world and a desire to live in sustainable harmony with it. This guiding ethic can be heard in ancient indigenous prayers asking for the Great Spirit to help humans “walk softly” on the land. Beloved Minnesota naturalist Sigurd Olson’s poetic pleas for protecting our blessed piece of the earth echoed that hopeful refrain:

“If we can change our priorities, achieve balance and understanding in our roles as human beings in a complex world, the coming era can well be that of a richer civilization, not its end.”

Minnesota rankings on environmental metrics

#2 Best City Park Systems (St. Paul)2021 Best Park Systems: See Where Parks In Your City Rank | Across America, US Patch

#3 Best City Park Systems (Minneapolis) 2021 Best Park Systems: See Where Parks In Your City Rank | Across America, US Patch

#3 Annual Per Capita Investment in Parks & Recreation15 States Spending the Most on Parks and Recreation (moneytalksnews.com)

#4 Lowest Overall Risk from Climate Change Best & Worst States for Climate Change | SafeHome.org

#4 Best Tap Water Best & Worst Tap Water in the US: State-by-State Analysis (waterdefense.org)

#5 Bicycle Friendly States: BFS_2022_Overall_Rankings_Chart_v2.pdf (bikeleague.org)

#7 Best for Natural Environment (describe) The 10 Best States for Natural Environment | Best States | U.S. News (usnews.com)

#7 “Greenest” States Which States Are the Most Environmentally Friendly? – Earth911

#7Recycling Rate New Report Ranks U.S. States Based on Recycling Performance (waste360.com)

#12 Air & Water Quality Rankings: Air and Water Quality – Best States (usnews.com)

#13 Least Pollution Rankings: Pollution – Best and Worst States (usnews.com)

#16 State Outdoor Recreation as a Percent of Economy orsa1122.png (2070×1355) (bea.gov)

#16 Percent of Land Protected States That Are Conserving the Most Land | Stacker

#17 Trees Per Capita Most Forested States [Updated May 2023] (worldpopulationreview.com)

#22 Lowest Population Density US Population Density by States [Report 2023] (usabynumbers.com)