According To a Report Minnesota Cities Continue Climate Work

(Photo by TW Farlow/Getty Images via Minnesota Reformer)

(Minnesota Reformer) – Minnesotans stared at their screens in horror last June as the raging Blue Earth River swallowed a beloved country store near Mankato. The same flood badly damaged a nearby dam and caused well over $1 billion dollars in damage across 22 southern Minnesota counties.

It was one of more than 60 billion-dollar weather disasters to hit the state over the past 45 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. About 20 of those have struck since 2021, laying bare the real-world stakes of a warmer, wetter Upper Midwest.

As the Trump administration sits out an annual United Nations climate change meeting in Brazil that could (maybe) produce a detailed roadmap to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels, local governments in Minnesota and across the U.S. are preparing for more extreme weather to come.

At least 22 Minnesota city, county, regional and tribal governments have published “climate action” or resilience plans to mitigate the human and financial costs of future weather disasters, according to a report out Tuesday from Josefina Hajek-Herrera, a fellow with the Building Power Resource Center and climate policy consultant.