Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told a COP31 audience in Antalya on Thursday that American states never stopped working on climate change after the federal government stepped back, and that Minnesota is putting the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Accords into practice on its own, through state law and state government.
“And I think the biggest message I hope everybody here takes away: none of this work stopped,” Walz said. “Minnesota is trying to implement Kyoto protocols, the Paris Accords. We are moving to make sure it happens. And the reason we’re doing that is, the science is not debatable about the impacts of climate change.”
Walz pointed to a summer of wildfire smoke as the evidence in front of his state. “Wildfires burning at an unprecedented rate this summer,” he said. “At one point in time, Northern Minnesota’s air quality was the worst on the planet. This is a pristine area almost untouched by humans, and yet the air quality is being impacted by climate change.”
Walz spoke at the America Is All In pavilion during a panel on local action and global partnerships with New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Palo Alto Mayor Vicki Veenker, moderated by former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who chairs America Is All In. The governors and mayors led a U.S. delegation of more than 120 state and local leaders to Antalya to show the world that American climate work continues below the federal level, even with no official U.S. government pavilion at this year’s climate summit.
Video: America Is All In
