Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Moorhead joined 15 other Minnesota cities Monday urging action on what’s termed a climate emergency, calling on state and federal government to support cities in “mitigat(ing) and adapt(ing) to the effects of climate change.”

It mandates a number of actions by the city – working climate action into Moorhead’s Comprehensive Plan; hiring a city sustainability coordinator’ establishing a working group under the Moorhead Resiliency Project; and continuing to implement the Minnesota GreenStep Cities program’s best practices related to energy, climate actions, adaptation and resilience. The city has been part of the environmental GreenStep system since 2017 and achieved step four (out of five) in May 2021.

The resolution was developed and brought to the City Council by members Shelly Dahlquist and Steve Lindaas. It was passed unanimously without discussion.

The resolution cites a long list of evidence of the effects of climate change, from increasingly extreme weather conditions, with the 10 warmest and wettest years in history recorded since 1998, to Minnesota’s failure to meet its own goals set in the bipartisan Next Generation Energy Act, passed by the Minnesota State Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty in 2007.

Among other cities passing similar resolutions are Bloomington, Grand Rapids, St. Paul and Rochester, Minnesota.