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Nebraska, 45 Other States Get $3M to Plan Responses to Climate Change; South Dakota Declines

Nebraska just got $3 million from Uncle Sam to figure out ways to buttress its economy against climate change:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the grant, and a similar one for Missouri, this week. Funds came from the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program that was part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Funds will be used to develop a climate action plan in collaboration with municipalities and organizations, according to a press release from the EPA, and to engage with low-income and disadvantaged communities.

…The EPA, later this year, will begin distribution of $4.6 billion in additional climate reduction grants.

The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy has submitted a letter of interest in applying for more grants. But a spokeswoman said Wednesday that whether or not the department applies will depend on whether funds fit state goals.

Earlier this month, the NDEE, in a news release, said its climate plan will include expanding climate-resilient agriculture, promoting electric grid upgrades, improving soil health and encouraging innovation [Paul Hammel, “State Awarded $3 Million in Federal Funds for Climate Impact Study,” Nebraska Examiner, 2023.03.31].

All Nebraska and every other state had to do to get this $3 million and to be in the running for some of that $4.6 billion coming later this year was ask.

As of the program deadline, Friday, March 31, South Dakota had not asked. Neither had Iowa, Kentucky, or Florida.

Federal money is the largest chunk of South Dakota’s upcoming budget pie, $3.47 billion making up 47% of our FY2024 revenue, so it’s not like increasing that federal reliance by another 0.086% should set off any alarm bells. Either the Department of Agriculture (and Natural Resources) was too busy hashing out details of Fluffy’s State Fair contract, or our friends in Pierre think climate change somehow won’t affect crop and livestock production in South Dakota.

37 Comments

  1. On Thursday Nebraska joined 24 other horrible red states in a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s new rule defining so-called Waters of the United States, or WOTUS. In a 2015 study researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln reported that 78 percent of groundwater samples found with unsafe concentrations of uranium were also contaminated with nitrates from industrial agriculture. Researchers learned that nitrates at levels near the 10-parts-per-million legal limit release uranium into the state’s groundwater, which provides drinking water for roughly 85% of Nebraskans.

  2. grudznick

    BAH. This is just another wasteful government spending spree. We are good for not partaking in this nonsense.

  3. Expect Mrs. Noem to GEARUP for another disaster declaration after my home state got clobbered with winter by her god.

  4. All Mammal

    Yuck! Puh! I hate clean water anyways. And my nodes and groweths are my friends. They’re sorta cute.

  5. Oh, right — Mrs. Noem’s god drowned in a grain bin full of cereal.

  6. Donald Pay

    Over the last year I’ve been digging (not literally) into the Bronze Age collapse, and the best evidence for why the Bronze Age empires (except Egypt) all collapsed within a few decades of each other. Everyone seems to have their favorite reason. Climate change happens to be one. Of course, climate change may be an initial perturbation that drives a large set of consequences (drought, followed by food shortages, followed by internal disorder, followed by reduced trade, followed by war between empires, followed by mass migration of people, etc.). Certainly there is plenty of evidence that climate change occurred during the late Bronze Age, but other drivers, such as earthquakes, also occurred.

    You can’t look at the recurring weather phenomenon we are experiencing and not think that at some point even the US government will not be able to sustain this level of damage. The capacity to make everyone whole against the climate has limits, so we had better figure out how to mitigate these problems. Stick your head in the sandbars out in the Missouri River and all you end up with is a mouthful of sand. Best to use the money you have to figure out how to survive. To do otherwise is foolish.

  7. leslie

    Maybe, having learned her “planning” lesson* as a legislator, Helene, as next governor hopeful, i suspect, can marshall a rational legislative solution to the current ignoramus’s refusal to plan the state’s action to the impending global climate catastrophe that could leave South Dakota a barren wasteland over the next quick two decades. By then Kristi will have escaped to some remaining tropical paradise to huddle in bitter obscurity.

    *Helene recently sought a bill (which flamed) to fund the Missouri River pipeline to the Black Hills (it is already extened to Pine Ridge)! The next taxpayer funded unnecessary luxury contract likely, for ReSpec whispers in her ear!

  8. Tim

    If the NWS is correct we are about to have our third “storm of the century” this winter in western SD, I’m glad climate change has nothing to do with the ungodly amount of snow we’ve had with another foot coming Tuesday. I can’t help but think someone should try to pull the snow queens head out of the sand.

  9. sx123

    I’d have taken a big snow blower in prep for this week’s scheduled dump of snow coming.

  10. grudznick

    Fellows, the climate changes. Wrap your brains around it. The dinosaurs had to.

  11. Donald Pay

    Exactly, Grudz, and the dinosaurs went extinct.

  12. leslie

    baaaahhhh is right. half of daily potable water is ground water north of the NE border. The other half big horn sheep flavor.

    look deep into those eyes of sheeple Repubican leaders, grdz at the helm. there is nothing there! No depth*

    Mentioned here previously, Fox turned my very high IQ, photographic memory-ed, masters-degreed engineer, relative, a distinguished, successful white business/banking born-again (personal relationship with Jesus Christ), living for every Friday morning slathered community breakfasts, a WWII vet seabee, into a self-admitted platitude-soaked political bigot.

    *Sheeple have poor depth perception; shadows and dips in the ground may cause them to BAULK. wiki

    know thyself

  13. John

    Donald has a good point. Here, Dr. Eric Cline addresses the Bronze Age collapse.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU
    Human evolution is a two-way street. Modern republicants are taking evolution in the regressive direction with haste.

    25% of college applicants avoid entire states for political reasons. In addition to declining enrollments from the demographic pyramid, red states are giving up on 25% of the college population. It’s time, again, for South Dakota to consolidate colleges. Wyoming does fine with one state university and several community colleges.https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3926811-one-in-four-college-applicants-avoids-entire-states-for-political-reasons/

  14. Joe

    From The Hill piece:

    “One issue, at least, cut across ideological lines. A significant share of conservatives joined their liberal classmates in rejecting states with restrictive abortion laws.”

    Very interesting.

  15. grudznick

    No, Mr. Pay. Dinosaurs did not go extinct. They evolved into crocodiles and chickens and some say sparrows.

  16. Bob Newland

    It is sinful to accept federal money to use to subvert God’s will.

  17. Donald Pay

    Yes, Grudz, a branch of dinos did evolve into birds, but Crocs evolved from a group, called Archesaurs, I believe, which was also a precursor to the dinosaurs.

  18. Arlo Blundt

    It’s simple. Climate change is not recognized by Hillsdale College. It is a Liberal construct and must be avoided, regardless of the consequence. The Club for Growth also approves Mrs. Noem’s position.

  19. Former NPR guy, Bob Garfield sent a great tweet the other day. “Soros-backed tornados kill 23 in Mississippi, proof of Biden’s failed policies. We need to arm citizens against woke Marxist weather.”

  20. Jenny

    It’s South Dakota, what do you expect?

  21. grudznick

    So, as Mr. Pay points out, dinosaurs survived the “change in climate”, which is just a regular thing that has gone on for millennia.
    And goes on today.

  22. grudznick

    Apparently the “climate change” did not have any negative effect on the Archesaurs. Today, they thrive.

  23. Donald Pay

    I believe, Grudz, you are looking at this superficially. For one, the climate change was extremely rapid for the dinosaurs. If a meteor would hit earth today, and similar climate change occured, we couldn’t plan for that. Whether humans survive would be a crap shoot.
    However, climate change occuring today is slow enough that we can prepare. It’s not a question of human survival, but of societal survival. Evolution gave some of us a brain. Your line, apparently, missed out.

  24. Grudz it’s nice to know your still an illusional delusional.

  25. grudznick

    Thank you gentlemen, both.

  26. Richard Schriever

    grudz, so, SD doesn’t participate in wasteful activities like planning for the future – eh? I guess you’re maybe right on that. Explains a lot about the state. Can’t get beyond the gravy taters and misses the gravy train.

  27. In August, 2017 this interested party proposed an interstate highway that would connect I-25 at Trinidad, Colorado to Rapid City, South Dakota.

    Signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022 as part of the Ports-to-Plains Corridor an existing portion of US 87 would become a newly named I-327 connecting Dumas, Texas with I-25 at Raton, New Mexico. I-27 would continue north and connect to the Heartland Expressway at Limon, Colorado at I-70 and State Highway 71, intersect I-80 at Kimball, Nebraska continuing to Scottsbluff then to US385 at Alliance and on to Rapid City.

    Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) is cosponsor of S.992, A bill to amend the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 to formally name the Ports-to-Plains Corridor Interstate 27. According to the Ports-to-Plains Alliance I-27 would connect to the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway at Rapid City ultimately reaching the Canadian border at Raymond, Montana.

  28. jakc

    Archosuars are a clade of diaspids (the diaspid name coming from the holes in their heads) first found about 250 MYA. They can be distinguished from fellow diaspids ancestral to snakes and lizards and the synapsids (which have different holes in their head) ancestral to mammals.
    Most archosaur lineages went extinct at the time of the K/T event, a pretty good example of a climate change event, albeit not an anthropocentic one. Two archosaur lineages that persisted are the crocodiles and relatives, and the birds. Dinosaurs didn’t evolve into birds (there are no flying T Rexes) rather birds are dinosaurs. Birds survived the K/T extinction and have radiated out since, thus the modern proliferation. Non-avian dinosaur lineages didn’t survive, not even on Noah’s Ark, nor did the sister clade to dinosaurs, the pterosaurs (again, no room on the Ark apparently).

    you know, the School of Mines has a paleontology department, with faculty and degrees and a research lab, and a fine Museum of geology, where many of these things can be learned. All supported in part with SD tax dollars, so take advantage

  29. jakc

    well Larry Kurtz, having driven those roads, anything that gets you out of Dumas Texas faster is to be applauded

  30. Mr. Cummings, I have said the same thing about Deadwood — the northern terminus of US 385.

  31. Standing for office anytime soon, Mr. Cummings?

  32. DaveFN

    For what it’s worth, 99% of the species that ever lived in earth have gone extinct. Very little of that which comes to birth, survives. Lossiness in the kingdom of the living greatly exceeds what is preserved.

  33. Adam

    It takes a rural to refuse federal money that everyone else thinks is a good idea.

    Population centers as large as a few thousand people need to draw a line in the sand between the outsider feral country folk and the real actual members of their community.

Comments are closed.