Tone Lanzillo

It’s about nine in the morning. I’m sitting on a bench at the Rose Garden. Enjoying the sun, slight breeze and expecting the temperature to reach the mid-seventies. Truly a beautiful day. Days like this, when I can be outside, definitely sustain me.

About a month ago, on Aug. 17, Mayor Roger Reinert wrote a commentary for the Minnesota Star Tribune entitled “We’re actively shaping our city’s future.” In that commentary, Reinert stated, “Duluth is growing and thriving exactly because we are taking the deliberate and measurable action steps necessary to secure the future of our beloved Zenith City.”

Within several weeks of that piece coming out, I heard and confirmed that the mayor had decided not to hire a full-time sustainability officer to replace the former officer, Mindy Granley, who resigned in February. In fact, Reinart announced that the city was no longer looking for anyone to fill that position and the sustainability initiative was not a top priority.

In reflecting upon the mayor’s decision, I thought of something I read in Jordan Peterson’s book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life. Jordan wrote, “It appears that the meaning that most effectively sustains life is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.” So I had to ask myself, was Reinert being a responsible mayor and public servant when he decided to not hire a sustainability officer. (more…)

On July 27, Northern News Now reported that Duluth had a heat index of 101 degrees, with Eveleth hitting 104 and Two Harbors reaching 106. Three days earlier, the lead story on NNN was about Minnesota having another air-quality alert due to the Canadian wildfires. It was also the 27th day that Duluth had been under an air-quality alert since May.

And then three days before that, on July 21, Wisconsin Public Radio ran a story about the Great Lakes region warming up about 3 degrees and precipitation increasing by 15%. A study by the Environmental Law and Policy Center showed that summer water temperatures on Lake Superior warmed up by 4.8 degrees between 1979 and 2023. Also, the region would likely see more extreme weather patterns, including 30 to 60 days of temperatures over 90 degrees.

Also, on July 21, there was an article in the New York Times headlined “Climate change is making fire weather worse for world’s forests.” According to a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the area of forests lost to fire in 2023 and 2024 was at least two times greater than the annual average of the previous two decades. It reported that climate change is making severe fire weather more common around the world. (more…)