By Marya Hart
Campaign teams advocate for legislative change on environmental issues.
Stop Line Three
Members of the Stop Line 3 team wrote a comprehensive blog post that recaps the 2021 movement and reaffirms our need for serious systemic change, and they’re putting out a call-to-action to ask volunteers to leave thank-you messages for their legislators who stood with us against Line 3. They are continuing to support the Resist Line 3 media collective in their Drop the Charges campaign and supporting partners in the beginning stages of planning events for next year. Looking ahead, they will be spending the next couple of months reflecting on research and using it to vision and plan for where the Stop Line 3 team goes from here. On January 16, the team will be tuning into the appellate court hearing on the Rights of Nature lawsuit filed over the summer against the DNR by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe on behalf of manoomin.
Clean Air
The Clean Air team is developing partnerships with two organizations with similar missions: Climate Justice Households and Youth ‘N Power. The former is seeking ways to enable households to access financial assistance to improve their homes’ energy efficiency. The latter is training young people to be community organizers. One area of discussion is that households seeking assistance must fill out applications that are onerous in their length and complexity. Members of the committee are investigating to see if there is any way to make the applications shorter and/or simpler to complete.
Zero Waste Task Force
The Zero Waste Task Force team picked up trash at Bde Maka Ska, met with a number of groups working on food waste and encouraging a more plant-based diet, and helped with a PFAS water sampling test for the NRDC. In addition, they finalized legislative priorities which are to work on an Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging bill and a bill to ban PFAS for all but essential use. Here are some additional resources for those who want to learn more:
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The Smart Human podcast, Episode 13 by Dr. Jane Muncke – “Food Packaging, Plastics and Our Health”
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A blog post by Sonya Lunder, Sierra Club, Sr Toxics Policy Advisor – “Who is dumping PFAS? Nobody really knows”
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PBS Newshour Dec 9th - “Why PFAS are so impervious, and who is most at risk from the forever chemicals”