With Christmas quickly approaching, last weekend my husband and I embarked on the annual pilgrimage to the attic to retrieve our large Tupperware containers filled with festive decorations. As relatively new homeowners, the task of holiday decoration is still fresh and exciting for us, so I opened the boxes with the energy of a four-year-old on Christmas morning, eager to start decorating (I have been informed by more veteran homeowners that this chore loses appeal with each passing year).
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Not to get too personal, but if you’re thinking of making a baby anytime soon, you might not want to wait until spring. That’s the conclusion one could draw from a recent analysis that correlates atrazine contamination spikes, time of year a baby is conceived and increased rates of birth defects. This is just the latest in a long line of studies indicating that the popular corn herbicide’s negatives outweigh its positives. The EPA announced last month that it is going to reconsider whether atrazine is safe enough to be used on this country’s crop fields. Let’s hope research like the birth defects study is on top of the agency’s review pile. (more…)

“I love to come up with great ideas and I sometimes think pixy dust is all you need to accomplish them,” Erin Yanish told me recently during a recent LSP podcast interview (episode 68). “Unfortunately, they don’t take that for the mortgage payment.” (more…)

By Elena Velkov, media center coordinator, Fresh Energy

Representatives and partners of ElectriCharge Mobility visited Fresh Energy yesterday to talk about some exciting developments in the field of electric vehicle transportation. Partner Paul Axt said people often view the development of the industry as a chicken-and-egg problem between the vehicles and their charging stations. What must come first to grow the other? ElectriCharge Mobility and charging-station developer Coulomb Technologies believe we first need to show people charging stations are widespread and accessible, in order for people to purchase electric vehicles. (more…)

The Conservation Minnesota Voter Center’s annual legislative scorecard is now available for the 2009 session. Seven legislators scored a perfect 100%. Issues included safe baby products, farm stewardship, clean and renewable energy and others. Click here.

John Tuma’s Capitol Update – the Fall Version

In the final installment in a series about Minnesota’s role in the local food movement, John continues his journey through the history and meaning of a state constitutional provision and its impact on locally grown foods.

“…the majority opinion, by upholding the custom meat processing regulations in the context of the present dispute, guts the constitutional protections granted to farmers to sell their own products…”

G. Barry Anderson
Dissenting Opinion
State v. Hartmann
700 N.W.2d 449, 460
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When Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan announced the awarding of the first round of Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grants on Tuesday, it was no accident she chose the home of Eric and Lisa Klein in southeast Minnesota as the location. Their Hidden Stream Farm has deep roots in the Land Stewardship Project, and it was LSP’s Policy Program organizing that made BFRDP a reality. It is also LSP’s Farm Beginnings program that Merrigan is holding up as a national community-based model for training the next generation of farmers. Last but not least, Hidden Stream is where Lisa’s father, Everett Koenig, first began to “give a damn” about the future of family farming. (more…)

Capitol Update from MEP’s lobbyist at the Capitol – John Tuma

 ”That’s different is indispensable in Minnesota… That’s different means you have an opinion, but you’re holding back the details.”

Howard Mohr

How to Talk Minnesotan*

Having five generations of roots here in Minnesota, I enjoy Howard Mohr’s little book on how to speak Minnesotan.  It is absolutely hilarious and so true – ya know.  We definitely have some unusual ways of putting things.  So when those of us from Minnesota say that “they’re different”, we pretty much know what we’re saying without having to say it.  It would be so un-Minnesotan to delve into the details, but we all know what we mean.  There is no need to expound on the term “different”; it is always in relation to something that is in the negative.  Mohr didn’t clearly explain that negative thing in his paragraph on the subject, but maybe that’s because it’s so understood.  It’s on pages 3 and 4 of his book if you care to read it. (more…)

By J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director, Fresh Energy

As Congress debates clean energy jobs and emissions reduction policy to address climate change and grow a clean energy economy, 18 leading scientific organizations have sent a letter to U.S. senators stating the consensus scientific view on climate change. Read the letter and view the signatory organizations. (more…)