Minnesota Goes Green, Really Green

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Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota signed a law yesterday requiring that all state utility companies generate at least a quarter of their power from renewable sources by 2025. (One company, Xcel, which provides the state with half of its electricity, must meet 30% by 2020.) This plan is more ambitious than the state’s previous 10% by 2015 objective.

Not ones to count on feds whose idea of an energy bill includes reversing decades of renewables wisdom and polluter protection waivers to solve the nation’s energy problems, some two dozen states have adopted renewable energy goals. California, Hawaii, New York, Nevada, and New Jersey have all set their mark at 20% or more. “As states are catching up with us, we want to raise the bar,” Pawlenty said.

Minnesota’s law passed just days after EU energy ministers weakened a “20% renewable energy by 2020” plan by recommending that the target be made voluntary. Last year, China enacted a 15% by 2020 law, and Australia remains committed to producing enough renewable energy to power the homes of 4 million of its 20 million people by 2010.

Though New Hampshire and Colorado are considering stricter standards, Minnesota’s initiative to more than triple its 8% renewable energy production in less than two decades prompted analysts to call it “the most aggressive in the country.” If Pawlenty’s bar-raising doesn’t inspire other domestic and even international actions toward going greener, his Republican-governed Northern Great Plains state may become the most environmentally progressive place in the world.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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