In Sarah Mearhoff's piece in the Duluth News Tribunes, While Minnesota works toward climate policy reform, Dakotas see emissions increase, we read these paragraphs:
Minnesota, itself, decreased its emissions by 12% in those years. The Dakotas, however, were two of only nine states in the country whose carbon emissions increased during those years [between 2005 and 2016].
In North Dakota, emissions went up 3.9%. In South Dakota, 12.8%.
The Dakotas' carbon emissions, ton for ton, are still well below that of the country's top emitting states. In the Midwest, Illinois emitted 204.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2016, Wisconsin 95.6, Minnesota 89.3 and Iowa 73.1 to North Dakota's 4.3 and South Dakota's 15.
However, consider the states' low populations, and you'll see a different story. According to a 2017 report by the World Resources Institute, North Dakota had the second-largest carbon emissions per capita in the country in 2014, behind Wyoming. South Dakota came in 10th for the country's largest per-capita emissions.
As North and South Dakotans see little in the way of climate change policy, the states face internal conflicts over energy projects like the Dakota Access and Keystone XL crude oil pipelines and drilling in the Bakken oil fields -- projects fiercely opposed by climate activists and Native American tribes, who warn of potential environmental hazards, and see the projects as violations of their treaty rights.
It's worth noting both data sets used in the reports pre-date the terms of current state governors began. We can't use this data to trash the current Dakota governors nor praise Walz. It is fair to ask the Dakotas to get cranking on climate action.
Bluestem wonders whether one could rebrand carbon sequestration in South Dakota as a pheasant hunting initiative, and sneak in grassland conservation and restoration efforts under that effort while Governor Noem hires a few more motivational speakers for the kiddos.
While she's distracted, we'll point out this item from the 2019 South Dakota Pheasant Brood Survey:
Lands enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) represent the premium nesting habitat in the state and have declined by 35% or 553,000 acres since 2007 (Figure5). The combined availability of hayland, small grains, and CRP has declined by 46% or 5.5 million acres since 1990 (Figure 6). This represents an average monthly loss of 15,690 acres, or an area twice as big as Lake Poinsett,for the past 29 years. During the 15-year period of 1982–1997, 1.82 million acres of grassland were converted to cropland (U.S. GAO 2007). A more recent study found 1.84 million acres of grassland were lost, primarily to conversion to cropland, from 2006–2012 (Reitsma et al.2014). Environmental conditions will always contribute heavily to year to year changes in pheasant abundance, but the long term erosion of required habitat will undoubtedly result in lower lows and lower highs.
Properly managed Grasslands More Reliable Carbon Sink Than Trees, we learn at the University of California Davis' Science and Climate, and researchers tell us in Soil carbon sequestration accelerated by restoration of grassland biodiversity, researchers observe in an article In Nature Communications.
Be very, very quiet about it, but South Dakota's Second Century Working Lands Habitat Program and with the USDA kicking off first CRP general signup in four years through February 2020, might help offset South Dakota's rising carbon emissions without letting the governor know she's become a climate emergency activist. It's just about the pheasants.
Photo: Image from GF&P: Grassland Important For Pheasant Habitat, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, 2016. Credit Matthew Grunig, SD GF&P.
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