Local View: Following Duluth's climate leadership, more can be done - Duluth News Tribune

Local View: Following Duluth's climate leadership, more can be done - Duluth News Tribune | News, weather, and sports from Duluth, Minnesota

Local View: Following Duluth's climate leadership, more can be done

From the column: "Duluth is not alone. ... The same concern and desire for action is bringing more than 400 leaders from across the region to the (DECC) for the Midwest Climate Resilience Conference."

Just last month, nearly 5 inches of rain in one weekend sent local creeks in Duluth over their banks and washed out roadways. This summer, there were days when Minnesotans were breathing the poorest-quality air in the nation due primarily to smoke billowing from Canadian wildfires.

The fingerprints of a warming world are everywhere, including in our own backyards, but solutions also surround us.

Duluth, a city recognized for its climate leadership, has made concrete steps to prepare for the changes caused by climate change. Officials are actively working to improve culverts and other infrastructure, increasing the capacity to manage extreme rain events. On the waterfront, a new and improved Lakewalk is now “megastorm-ready,” thanks to 100,000 tons of rock buffering Canal Park from massive waves. From shorelines and sewer systems to social systems and schoolyards, Duluth leaders and community members are working together to set the example for what a climate-ready and responsive community can look like.

But more needs to be done, both to prepare and to prevent the problem from getting worse.

Duluth is not alone in facing the myriad challenges posed by climate change. The same concern and desire for action is bringing more than 400 leaders from across the region to the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center this week, Wednesday through Friday, for the Midwest Climate Resilience Conference, a gathering of experts focused on how to effectively manage the risks we face from a warming world. These experts include staff from local governments, engineers, natural-resources managers, scientists, planners, students, community members, and others, all working to find and implement solutions to climate challenges across our region.

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I’m the director of the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership, the event’s host. Among the speakers I’m excited to hear from is Beatrice Miringu, who leads sustainability efforts for another Great Lakes city: Toledo, Ohio. And from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, we’ll be joined by Julian Reyes, who is working to improve federal coordination around the delivery and quality of climate information and around opportunities for federal funding to support local climate solutions.

My colleagues and I will also offer a sneak peek at an interactive tool we’ve developed that allows users to explore what we anticipate Minnesota’s future climate will look like — from changing temperature and precipitation patterns to changing snow depths and soil and lake temperatures. Our goal is to make highly localized climate information more accessible, bringing actionable science into the hands of those who need it most. This tool will be available to the public soon, and we’ll be offering tailored workshops and technical assistance for a range of sectors and communities on how to use and apply this climate-risk information in decision-making.

Climate change presents significant challenges for all of us, and we now must work urgently to cut emissions while we also seek to prepare for the changes that are already underway. It’s too much to ask any one municipality, industry, or community to address these challenges entirely on its own. But I believe by working together, exploring new ideas and opportunities, and learning from proven solutions, we can more successfully navigate the future ahead of us.

Our state and local leaders are helping to chart the way forward even as we acknowledge the reality that much more needs to be done.

I thank the residents of Duluth for their leadership and for creating a living example of what’s possible as we seek to confront climate change and build more equitable, healthy, and thriving communities.

Heidi Roop is director of the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership, or MCAP, and is an assistant professor of climate science at the University of Minnesota. She is based in St. Paul, but the partnership has team members living and working in Duluth and the surrounding region. She wrote this for the News Tribune.

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