In early February, lawmakers in Minnesota passed a law requiring the state's power utilities to supply customers with 100 percent clean electricity by 2040 — one of the more ambitious clean energy standards in the United States. Democrats, who clinched control of the state legislature in last year's midterm elections, were euphoric. But not everyone in the region is enthused about Minnesota's clean energy future. The state may soon face a legal challenge from its next-door neighbor, North Dakota.
Not long after Minnesota's governor signed the law, the North Dakota Industrial Commission, the three-member body that oversees North Dakota's utilities, agreed unanimously to consider a lawsuit challenging the new legislation. The law, North Dakota regulators said, infringes on North Dakota's rights under the Dormant Commerce Clause in the United States Constitution by stipulating what types of energy it can contribute to Minnesota's energy market.
"This isn't about the environment. This is about state sovereignty," North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the chair of the Industrial Commission, said. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a longtime proponent of clean energy legislation, was quick to respond. "I trust that this bill is solid," he told reporters. "I trust that it will stand up because it was written to do exactly that."
[...] It's no mystery why North Dakota was so quick to go on the offensive. Most of the state's power comes from coal, and it sells some 50 percent of the electricity it generates to nearby states. Its biggest customer is Minnesota. [...]
"Minnesota is under no legal duty to prop up North Dakota power plants," Michael Gerrard, founder of Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told Grist. The state would find itself in legal trouble if it discriminated between in-state and out-of-state power plants, he said. [...]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Monday March 06, @09:47AM (15 children)
Of course it's not about the environment, it's about something much bigger, politics! If Minnesota Democrats introduced a bill to cure cancer, North Dakota Republicans would sue to block it because there's no way you can let the other side get away with something. Political point-scoring is what matters, not the environment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Monday March 06, @10:34AM (1 child)
Well there are hierarchies. For example: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Here, the following applies: "Never attribute to ideology that which is adequately explained by greed."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday March 06, @03:42PM
I think at some level it becomes malice when politics is treated as thoughtlessly and casually as a football game. Rah rah or OUR TEAM!!! GO TEAM!! It's about winning the game. Not about policy. Not about what is good. Just what can be done to stop the other team.
Let's hear their grate plan for health care, education, infrastructure, social security, and other issues that everyone, including Republicans, actually care about from day to day. Mitch McConnell said it the most goodest. It is only about stopping the other side from winning. Winning is all that matters. It doesn't matter if we have controlled fright into terrain.
It's not exactly stupidity. It is quite calculated. I assert that it is some form of malice. After all, no compromise of any kind can even be allowed or hinted at. But it is now a game instead of serious business.
The subject is right. It's not about the environment. Or about clean energy. Or even supporting coal fired power plants. It's about WOKE Energy!!!
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:49PM (11 children)
You do realize how dumb that sounds, right? This is rather a case of economic self-interest. If a bunch of neighboring states get off of coal power, that hurts North Dakota's economy badly. OTOH, it doesn't sound to me like North Dakota has standing, much less a serious legal case, here.
(Score: 5, Touché) by helel on Monday March 06, @02:24PM (3 children)
Man, it sure would be crazy if huge numbers of republicans refused life-saving vaccines, even banned vaccinations outright, just because they felt like democrats supported inoculation! But that would never happen! Economic self interest says get the free jab now so you don't risk getting sick or worse latter!
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Monday March 06, @02:37PM (2 children)
They have actual, if rather stupid reasons even if you choose to ignore them.
(Score: 2) by helel on Monday March 06, @02:45PM (1 child)
We're both smart enough to know that's a lie.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @12:07AM
In order for it to be a lie, it'd have to be false first. If you had actually paid attention to the complaints, it's classic risk skew. For example, paying attention to the minuscule side effects of vaccination while ignoring the rather larger side effects of a covid illness. Or obsessing over pseudo-expert knowledge: babble about spike proteins, ADE, original antigenic sin, etc.
This latter thing is where I think you get the mistaken impression that they're more about rejecting what "Democrats" support. Their choice of pseudo-expert may be ideologically driven - the "expert" makes the right noises ideologically so they appear more credible to this sort. But anti-vax predates covid by decades. And many of the arguments against covid vaccination retread earlier arguments against other vaccines.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Monday March 06, @03:20PM (3 children)
Two things can be true at the same time. North Dakota has nobody to blame but themselves if they didn't see this coming. I also doubt they'd be talking about this lawsuit if Republican states were doing it either.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 06, @03:51PM (2 children)
It is just pure economics. Plain and simple.
Green energy is the future. Fossil and coal power is the past. It will come to an end. It will run out. Assuming the human race continues, green energy will be the only energy left standing eventually.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday March 06, @06:11PM (1 child)
I agree, even if we cut back our consumption to zero, fossil fuels aren't going to regenerate ever. For those that want to continue to use ICE vehicles and other equipment, probably the best bet would be to convert over to biofuels. I remember years ago looking into a local company that was retrofitting cars to run off of expired olive oil. And proper biodiesel does a much better job in general than regular diesel does.
This reminds me of Kodak practically running itself out of business trying to kill the digital cameras that it invented. I'm not even sure that it's economics, if it is, it's extremely short sighted on the part of North Dakota. Which, I can't entirely blame them, they're addicted to oil company money at this point and the state doesn't really have much else going for it that would allow them to maintain the same level of economic activity. This is as opposed to Alaska that still has fishing, tourism and rare metals to fall back on as we get off oil.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 06, @07:17PM
North Dakota is where the Funeral Directors' Annual Convention is held. I learned this in, about 1984 ...
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday March 06, @04:18PM
I've read so many reports of social conservatives' sheer dumb spitefulness that them trying to block a cure for cancer is entirely believable. Many of them have refused vaccinations for COVID. They like that AIDS seems to plague the gay community more. Even attempting to subtract the media bias for drama, which I suspect has somewhat misrepresented conservative stands by focusing on the outrageous stuff while ignoring their valid concerns, conservatives are still doing poorly. It's not a mere image problem. They are massive hypocrites. They are. Now more than ever, they have exposed themselves as such, and no amount of marketing or spin can clean that stain from their reputation that they indelibly soiled.
Personally, I favor fiscal conservatism. I've been very unhappy with the conservatives ever since I realized fiscal concerns were being used as pretexts for their real agenda of destruction, of education, democracy, and our freedoms. It's mortifying to have been fooled by their dog whistling on this. Then, I believed in Balancing the Budget. I still believe in fiscal responsibility, but I no longer trust the Republicans on that. They further aggravate the offense by laughing mockingly at people like me for being so "stupid" as to believe they were being sincere. A-holes, to twist giving them the benefit of the doubt and trusting that they were sincere, into reason to doubt our intelligence. Well, no more. "Ha, ha, you so stupid for trusting us and carrying on as if we weren't completely full of bull! You don't get that it's all bull! Everyone is as big a liar and scumbag as we are! You looser moran, their are no honest folks!" Uh, no, that's not so. Liberals aren't paragons of virtue and honesty, but their lapses in no way even approach the magnitude and scope of the moral turpitude of social conservatives.
If conservatives want to win back some respect, and mean to act with some honor by not using what little they manage to regain to again betray and sucker the rest of us, they've dug themselves into a very deep hole. Don't think for one second that I forget that the neo-cons lied the US into a war in Iraq in 2003, over non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. And then to have inflicted the US with even worse leadership, incredible that it then seemed there could be worse! The business wing can start by cutting loose the whackadoodle social conservative far right wingnuts. Meanwhile, this lawsuit over green energy is so not a surprise, what with them still denying that there is a Global Warming problem, as well as still fighting against science with such ridiculous positions as the denial of biological evolution. Social conservatives ought to but won't stop making asses of themselves over ships that sailed so long ago they've completed a lifetime of voyaging since, and been honorably retired and decommissioned. As they won't listen to reason, I really think the thing to do is ostracize them.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 06, @09:31PM (1 child)
Politics is frequently dumb? Thanks for noticing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @12:08AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @05:37PM
Of course it's not about the environment, it's about something much bigger, money! (you're welcome) Politics is just the means to make more.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday March 06, @01:57PM (1 child)
Before you nit-pick on dormancy, you're right; The commerce clause is far from dormant. (Thanks Gibbons v. Ogden!) In this quote it's specifically referring to the "Dormant Commerce clause", that forbids individual states from imposing controls on interstate commerce not specifically regulated by Congress. i.e. where congress is "dormant".
IA still NAL, though it's on my to-do list.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 06, @03:53PM
If one state chooses what it does and doesn't buy, for the good of its own people, and the will of its own people, those economic decisions are not a limitation on interstate commerce. States can buy and sell freely as they see fit. That seems to support interstate commerce if anything.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Informative) by anotherblackhat on Monday March 06, @04:27PM (1 child)
North Dakota hasn't sued yet.
A sect within North Dakota is asking the government to fund their lawsuit, and even that hasn't happened yet.
Yawn.
Hopefully North Dakota will tell those idiots to pound sand, but if they don't, then it will be up to a judge to do it.
But if they win, I look forward to the lawsuit about selling a drug in a state that doesn't allow that drug.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Monday March 06, @05:56PM
When ND's governor, who happens to be the chairman of the group calling for it, is talking about it, you can count on the lawsuit going through.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.