When a tree falls in the woods, and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Likewise, when two separate federal judges strike down a state’s climate law as unconstitutional, and lawmakers elsewhere don’t listen, does it mean it didn’t happen?

If you track Minnesota political trends for long enough, you’ll find that state policy proposals often reach us a few years after they pass our coastal cousins. For Minnesota’s farming community, this trend is increasingly alarming. 

Minnesota corn growers know this playbook well. The state imported California’s Clean Cars mandate despite concerns about its impact on Minnesota ethanol, only to see the federal government later move to dismantle the California framework on which it was based.

Minnesota crop seed farmers have reason to pay attention: This past year, DFL lawmakers proposed restrictions on neonicotinoid-treated seeds explicitly modeled after laws adopted in New York and Vermont. Pork producers, meanwhile, face regulatory uncertainty and increased compliance costs as a result of California’s Proposition 12 animal production mandate.

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A climate superfund law, which would assign liability and financial responsibility to large fossil-fuel companies for climate-related costs, surfaced in both the Minnesota House and Senate this past year. Forty DFL legislators signed on as authors: five Senators, and 35 House members. Since then, it has been adopted as part of the DFL’s action agenda. 

Minnesota government has also spent years quantifying the costs climate change imposes on the state’s taxpayers and communities, work that provides a ready-made rationale for those who support a cost-recovery mechanism like a superfund.

The premise of the legislation is so far-reaching that many Minnesotans may be shocked to learn how seriously it is being considered. But this concept did not arise from nothing, and it will not disappear quietly. It is a facsimile of East Coast lawmaking that climate activists are bringing to Minnesota, and that Minnesotans must reject swiftly and with good reason. 

Before we once again import a policy model because it sounds good, we must examine what happened in the state that first adopted it. Thanks to not one, but two federal district courts, we now have an answer. In the last month, two federal judges appointed by presidents of different parties rejected New York state’s Climate Change Superfund Act as an encroachment on federal authority. And this term, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider federal pre-emption issues at the core of climate liability cases.

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Against this legal backdrop, Minnesota lawmakers would be taking a huge risk in assuming a similar law here would survive judicial review. Minnesota farmers have a responsibility to demand answers from those who put their names to this legislation: Does your support still stand? 

Minnesota agriculture already has enough real problems to solve. Farmers are navigating high input costs, volatile commodity markets, rising property taxes and labor shortages, all contributing to an increasingly challenging farm economy. They don’t need lawmakers searching New York and Vermont for a new regulatory experiment to bring to Minnesota. They need lawmakers focused on pragmatic solutions that help ensure the next generation can afford to farm here at all. 

There will always be policy creep from one state capitol to another. But measured governing requires understanding which proposals deserve Minnesota’s limited time, attention and resources.  A proposal modeled on a law that has already been rejected twice in federal court should not be competing for them. 

Minnesota farmers need their legislators solving problems at the State Capitol, not manufacturing new ones.

Deb Whalen is president of MN Agri-Women.

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