Minnesota's future: A short list of priorities that might not be on your radar

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. (To contribute, click here.) This commentary is included among a collection of articles that were submitted in response to, or are otherwise applicable to, Star Tribune Opinion's June 4 call for submissions on the question: "Where does Minnesota go from here?" Read the full collection of responses here.

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This article was submitted by the leadership team of Global Wellness Connections, a nonprofit that seeks international recognition of the Upper Midwest as a "wellness corridor," with its unusual number of food and health care companies. Their names are listed below.

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People in Minnesota: You have a future. But you may not know it.

The past, often considered our state's "best days," gets mentioned a lot. But the best days are ahead. People in Minnesota should be thinking forward, not backward.

Just in Minnesota we have one of the world's highest concentrations of food companies and all that goes with that, including some of the finest farming country anywhere. And not just that, we also have the best health care our nation can produce, right here within reach of most people. We are well positioned for innovation.

In a very real sense, this state has food, water and energy. And not many places on the planet have all three. We may be rarer than we think.

We tend to take all of the above for granted, just assuming it's always been there and always will be. That has never been true, and given the uncertainties of the moment, less true today. Still, those assets are real.

There are those who predict that this state, along with a few others in the northern tier, will be climate change targets, as people figure out that climate change is real, that it is creating new lists of winners and losers, that extreme weather is in our collective future. If so, Minnesota will have a new problem, but a good one.

Global Wellness Connections (GWC) is composed of leaders who understand the past and are creating a better future for all of us. GWC is taking on the toughest issues and making progress with them.

Here is a short list, but it is the right list to be working on for a better future:

Freight. Now that is not a common term. But it matters. No one knows how much freight is moving, mostly by trucks, along Interstates 94 and 90 to Chicago, bound for international distribution. But if you drive those roads, you know it; you see trucks everywhere. We need a study that compares the costs of moving freight by air cargo as well as by trucks. We need a study that evaluates freshly what destinations air cargo might reach. GWC can do that and has sponsored several meetings that are not only good intellectual collisions but are getting everyone closer to doing such a study.

Water. Water, especially drinking water, is an assumption people make; they do not think about water, they just assume it will always be there. GWC is not making that assumption. We know that many cities in Minnesota do not have the financial capacity to even evaluate their vulnerability to a water crisis. They do not know what's in the water every day. And some cities are exemplars, models of what every city needs. GWC is urging mayors to take on this issue, to get ahead of the curve, as opposed to chasing it later with money they do not have. We are urging them to see the economic development potential of proving that they have a modernized water system and that people can move to their cities confident of the drinking water for decades to come.

A fast connection with Rochester. GWC is working on funding for a feasibility study that would ask and answer obvious questions about a faster connection: What would be the advantages of Minnesota getting back into the cargo game? Is magnetic levitation in bored tunnels underground the most innovative way — and the strategy most likely to avoid a repeat of the understandable objections from landowners along the path — to traverse the distance between the Twin Cities and Rochester? What would be the implications for both airports — MSP and RST?

Twins with the Twin Cities. The metropolitan region is rich with medical-device companies and all the technology that this concentration makes possible. Those concentrations can be found in two cities that are natural twins — Plymouth and Edina. GWC is exploring what these two cities might do together that is bigger than they might do alone.

Last year GWC helped to sponsor a look at the future by the international firm Foresight, with David Beurle at the helm. That study confirmed most assumptions around the founding of GWC and added some. Lori Sturdevant of Star Tribune Opinion devoted a December 2022 column to the subject.

As citizens of Minnesota, we need to get serious about the future. We have assets but we need to use them, not just assume they will always be there. We must build on those assets to create a better future.

Contributors to this article, members of the Global Wellness Connections leadership team, are Jim Hovland, Jeffry Wosje, Lisa Clarke, Michael Wright, William Goins, Curt Johnson, Christine Hanson, Lori Syverson, Barb Marshall, Mark Ritchie and Donna Koren.