Final Thoughts for this Class?

1. Final Thoughts for this Class? Or Beginning Thoughts for the Next Class?

2. Geog. 3111 Geography of Minnesota

3. Minnesota Geology (Minnesota Geological Society) • Minnesota Climate (Minnesota DNR) • Minnesota Climatology Working Group • Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group • Climate and Health (Minnesota Department of Health) • MN350.org • Minnesota History • Minnesota in a Century of Change • Soils of Minnesota • Minnesota Agriculture • Minnesota Forestry

4. Landscapes of Minnesota • Chapter One Battleground of the Elements • Chapter Two The Shape of the Land • Chapter Three Changing Vegetation • Chapter Four Indians, Voyageurs, and Croupiers • Chapter Five Dividing the Land • Chapter Six The First Great Industry • Chapter Seven Settlers Move In • Chapter Eight From Wheat to Dairy Farming • Chapter Nine Farming to the Fore • Chapter Ten The Corn Belt and Its Farmers • Chapter Eleven Small Towns • Chapter Twelve The Iron Ranges • Chapter Thirteen A Demographic Mini-Atlas • Chapter Fourteen A Twin Cities Primer • Chapter Fifteen The Lakeshore Resort and Retirement Belt • Chapter Sixteen What Next?

5. Minnesota Geographic Bee

6. Maxims • “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where to find information on it” (Samuel Johnson Boswell'sLife of Johnson) • “Intelligence is not the ability to store information but the ability to find it” (Albert Einstein) • “If you can't explain something simply, you don't know enough about it” (Albert Einstein)

7. Aim of the Course • To suggest a way of describing Minnesota • To allow you to carry out personal research • To show you how to gather information about Minnesota placed on the World Web

8. Don’t like my map, my data, my ….? • Google Images <maps of minnesota> • Make your own (United States Department of Agriculture) • Minnesota Land Economics • Minnesota Geospatial Information Office • Ramsey County Surveyor’s Office

10. Landscapes of Minnesota

11. Landscapes of Minnesota • To describe how Minnesota is organized

12. Organized Spaces and Behavior • Through a lens of public policy • Provides • A context in which individuals, corporations, and governments decide to behave and presumably act • Cues for subsequent rational behavior – constraining behavior • offering opportunities • imposing duties and obligations

13. The nature of landscape • (A)ny landscape is an artifact - an object made by man. Its condition, rightly seen, reveals a society's culture as directly as does a novel or a newspaper or a Fourth of July oration because today's environment, the "natural part included, is synthetic • (Roderick Nash The American Environment: Readings in the History of Conservation, 1968 ix) • Our human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, reflecting our tastes, or aspirations, and even our fears, in tangible, visible form.... All our cultural warts and blemishes are there, and our glories too; but above all, our ordinary day-to-day qualities are exhibited for anybody who wants to find them and knows how to look for them • (Peirce Lewis "Axioms for reading the landscape, some Guides to the American Scene" in Donald Meinig (ed) Interpretations of Ordinary Landscapes (New York, Oxford University Press, 1979 23) see also New Axioms for Reading the Landscape: Paying Attention to Political Economy and Social Justice – Don Mitchell Political Economies of Landscape Change

14. Aim to describe land use in terms of landscapes, the artifacts we can see and the goods and services land use produces

15. What makes dairy farmers behave the way they do? • Statutory, Administrative and Case Law regarding milk production, marketing, and sale • The actions of large milk companies – Land O’Lakes – and federal and state law influencing the way in which they operate to produce, market and sell milk • Consumers of milk and milk products • Legal characteristics and circumstances of individual farmer

16. United States Department of Agriculture Minnesota Department of Agriculture

17. A Paradigm for Landscape Activity Goods Service Artifacts Legislation Regulation Judicial Opinions Organization of Space Organization of Behavior Law Public Policy Landscape Evaluation

19. DeconstructLandscape Activities Goods Services Structures Landscape

20. Activities

21. Goods

22. Electricity

23. Services

24. Transportation

25. Structures

26. Structures

27. Deconstruct Public Policy Activities Goods Services Structures Legislation Regulation Judicial Opinions Law Public Policy Landscape

28. Deconstruct Public Policy Legislature Legislative Mandate Start anywhere. Statute, also known as legislation, act, or even law (yea – confusing) Rule, also known as regulation, administrative law Case law, also know as judicial opinion, even ruling (yea – also confusing) Current Public Policy/Law Executive Legislation Courts Regulation LAW – PUBLIC POLICY

29. The legislative process • The Legislative branch of government enacts legislation, statutes, acts that • defines and establishes broad social goals • outlines what behavior modifications are needed to achieve those goals • delegates authority necessary to change behavior • appropriates revenue • Minnesota Constitution • Minnesota Statutes

30. The regulatory process • Minnesota Statutes • Department of Natural Resources • Department of Agriculture • Pollution Control Agency • Public Utilities Commission • Department of Transportation

31. Minnesota Judicial Branch • Resolves disputes that concern • legislation • regulation

32. The legislature defines and establishes broad social goals, outlines what behavior is needed to achieve those goals, delegates authority necessary to change behavior, appropriates revenue • The executive creates (promulgates) rules that are designed to implement legislation and change behavior • The judiciary examines claims by individuals, organizations, even governments, that specific legislation or specific regulation violates their constitutional rights and cause some harm

33. Stillwater Bridge • St. Croix River Crossing Project (MNDOT) • St. Croix River Crossing Project Authorization Act • Injunction to halt work on St. Croix bridge is denied in federal court (Star Tribune May 6, 2013)

34. The Production of Goods and the Provision of Services • Public enterprise • Private enterprise • Under coercion • Regulates – • big stick citation, fines, confiscation, imprisonment • carrots – taxation • Financial Incentives – loan, grant • Risk assumption • Public infrastructure construction (water treatments, sewers, roads, airways, waterways) • Collects and disseminates statistics • 2. Without any coercion – “free market”

35. Landscape change appropriately seen as “Muddling through” – the process of disjointed incrementalism • The political and legal entity we know as Minnesota - comprising landscapes and people – reflects the result of several iterations of debate involving the federal, state, and local governments • Most, if not all, of its geographical characteristics, both tangible and intangible, have evolved as we have "muddled through" 150 years Nuclear waste in Minnesota

36. Most outcomes of debate represent a definition of “public interest,” reflect compromise, with positive and negative impacts

37. In the course I view Minnesota as • The outcome of numerous debates about the role of government, commonly termed public policy or law, prompted by the demands of individuals, corporations, and governments – usually about what goods should be produced and what services offered and how – and how space and behavior should be organized • The response of those same individuals, corporations, and governments to such public policy

38. Minnesota is one type of space simultaneously • contained in other spaces • containing other spaces • Federal, State and Local Governments

39. Intellectual/Technological Revolutions • Computers • Space exploration – satellite technology • Earth sciences – continental drift, oceanography • Green Revolution • Biotechnology • Nuclear power • All overcame initial skepticism

40. Cognitive Dissonance • We want medical care so we can live longer, but we don't want to work longer to help fund our retirement – nor do we want to save for it • We want affordable health insurance, but we don't want to eat less to help make it affordable. Then we want to be able to sue the doctors if we are still sick • We want jobs, but we don't want to go to school more days per year so we can effectively compete for world jobs. Nor do we want to study the material that would help to prepare us • In the face of undeniable emerging energy shortages, we still want air conditioning and large vehicles • We want reliable and cheap electric power but try to put up a power plant or a transmission line • We want a pristine environment, but we continue to buy products with expensive and voluminous packaging, one of the most significant contributors to a degraded environment. Then we purchase many goods from China, whose firms have pollution rates several times the levels of U.S. firms

41. What can governments do? • What must governments do? • What should governments do? • Peter Sagal talks about 'Constitution USA,' and his Harley-Davidson (MPR May 7, 2013)