Excerpt from Governor Dayton’s State of the State address tonight.
I want all of us, and especially Minnesota’s future generations, to live in a healthy environment; in safe, inclusive communities; and with the same rights and protections as every other American citizen.
A healthy life starts with, and depends upon, clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, protected natural environments to enjoy, and a secure ecological future. No one can endure the severe droughts or floods of recent years; endure (or, some, enjoy) our milder, snow-scarce winters; lather on sunscreen to walk outdoors without being greatly alarmed.
If you’re not, talk with my good friend and world-premier polar explorer, Will Steger, who is here tonight, about the drastic climate changes he has witnessed.
Even more alarming is that our state and our nation are still not doing enough to reverse this path toward global catastrophe, before it is too late.
In Minnesota, we have made real progress in areas like energy conservation, more efficient farming and manufacturing practices, and the development and use of clean, renewable energy, especially wind energy, instead of polluting fossil fuels.
The question is: are we progressing fast enough? Are we doing all we can to utilize other renewables, such as solar, and also to make Minnesota the best place to locate these new industries and their jobs?
Many of you, who served in previous legislatures, deserve great credit for your pioneering work to expand our use of clean energy, including Lieutenant Governor Yvonne Prettner Solon and former Senator Ellen Anderson, who is also here tonight.
I challenge this legislature to work again with our state’s visionary clean energy advocates, large energy providers, large energy users, other stakeholders, and my administration to use your past achievements as springboards for Minnesota’s next big leap toward a sustainable energy future.
View live here. Full transcript here.
We need to begin with the land and the economic forces that drive decisions and move on up through the food, fiber and energy supply webs. Our successes of the last two decades have been carried forward with a lot of effort, but to reach a new plateau to be effective long-term the state government needs to discuss a new business model, or governance. The recently released Water Governance Evaluation and recommendations view governance as much the same as it has been for decades with the added hope that agencies will set aside turf issues and work together.
Instead, we need to embrace smart technologies, networks and data management of the last decade to move the governance into this century. For the first time in human history, technology will allow governance to shift toward the practitioners, the oft target of policy. This shift is happening at a rapid pace outside government agency walls in such sectors as retail, higher education, environmental management, and health care.
It is a natural occurrence due to the value that is generated by allowing the practitioner to participate in the governance. This is certainly to cause another turf concern among government agencies as the farmer, student, patient, and consumer are not only empowered, but also begin a key player in providing solutions.
The discerning questions will then become, “How do the unions create the best outcomes for students’, How do the state environmental regulators create the best outcome for landscape management, How do hospitals create the scenario for patient care once the patient leaves the hospital.
We are beginning to see great value in shifting the governance, or better stated, sharing the governance in these complex, data intensive sectors. It is also why the existing systems seem to be inadequate, as their prime time has past. A vision of this was used in a recent campaign: https://prezi.com/c1vrjlsybaeb/gieseke19a-strategy/