Panel leading charge against a warmer state

Calling global warming "a huge and defining issue of our time," Gov. Tim Pawlenty kicked off Thursday's meeting of a group that will help establish climate-protection strategies that could reshape daily life in Minnesota for the next several decades.

The Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group, made up of more than 50 leaders from the state's major businesses, utilities, environmental groups and churches, will assemble a salad of strategies designed to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

At its meeting in St. Paul on Thursday, the group discussed ways to get there, including ideas as broad as setting up a carbon trading market, reducing speed limits and increasing grassland and forest.

They also talked about specific measures such as streamlining trash pickup in St. Paul to reduce the number of garbage trucks in city alleys.

"We'd all feel better about it if we'd done this 30 years ago, but better late than never," said Rep. Bill Hilty, DFL-Finlayson, one of the legislators who helped shepherd Pawlenty's Next Generation Energy Initiative into law earlier this year.

That bill authorized the climate change group, established the emissions reduction goal, and also set one of the nation's toughest courses for utilities to convert to renewable energy sources. In addition, it set goals for reducing fossil fuel consumption and required utilities to help cut the state's energy use.

The climate panel will meet four more times as a whole in the next seven months and more often in smaller, technical groups. It will bring its recommendations to the Capitol on Feb. 1, where they might either be enacted by Pawlenty through executive order or offered to legislators as possible bills.

The Minnesota group faces a steep learning curve and a tight timetable, said Tom Peterson, executive director of the Center for Climate Strategies, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that is coordinating the panel's work and has done similar projects in 10 other states.

"This group is bigger than most," he said. "The good news is that there are hundreds of different ways to fix the problem, and the bad news is that there are hundreds of different ways to fix the problem.

"But the state's been more active than most, and the recent legislation is unique in its degree of focus on the issue," Peterson added. "And Tim Pawlenty is taking the idea about as seriously as I've seen any governor take it."

The panel's diverse membership includes representatives of corporate giants, labor organizations, environmental groups, schools and polar explorer Will Steger. Jeff Korsmo, chief administrative officer for Mayo Clinic Rochester, said he's involved because he recognizes climate change as a health issue and that solving it is a matter of solid corporate citizenship.

Mark Wolak, superintendent of the Mahtomedi Public Schools, said he views it as a chance to build on the district's strides in energy efficiency through building design, operations and education.

The public will be able to listen and participate in working group sessions by phone.

"The public is engaged on the issue of global warming," said Cesia Kearns, clean air and energy organizer for the North Star chapter of the Sierra Club, which is not represented on the panel. "This is one way Minnesota could be on the cutting edge of solving global warming."

Economic costs and opportunities will be central to the group's discussions. J. Drake Hamilton, a panelist who is also science policy director for Fresh Energy, a group that explores economic benefits in energy efficiencies and new technologies, said she thinks the panel's recommendations will be "eye-opening."We're shifting the whole economy," she said. "People are going to like stopping at the fuel pump less often."

The group's work, following the Legislature's backing of Pawlenty's bill, also signals that the discussion about climate change has taken an emphatic turn.

"We're starting from a point where the governor has said, 'Let's not debate the science, but figure out what we can do here in Minnesota to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,' " said David Thornton, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which along with the state Department of Commerce helped organize the panel.

"We want to preserve the economic issues that are vital to the state of Minnesota, and understand the menu of options," he added.

Bill McAuliffe • 612-673-7646 • mcaul@startribune.com