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Dennis Anderson's column "Walz pledge doesn't add up" (Jan. 6) should have been at the top of the front page instead of the sports page. For me, growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, my days were filled with swimming in my nearest lake, fishing with my parents on their vacations and playing sports with all the neighbor kids. Nowadays, with lakes being constantly contaminated (and 350 more water bodies contaminated since Gov. Tim Walz took office), it isn't so easy to swim anywhere nearby. You also can't always eat the fish you catch — too risky.

We have more and more birders in our state (I'm one of them in my older years), and more and more people who love camping as a family. If Walz refuses to put kids and families first, just how does he plan to make our state so great for them? (His pledge.) With the state's natural-resource management system "rigged in the politicos' favor," no one will be taking care of our resources for the kids. Habitat conservation, something I've always taken for granted in this state, is rigged for the developers, farm groups and "anyone else whose bottom lines are tied to utilization of the state's woods, waters, fields and wildlife."

Wake up, people! Let's have an outcry from the people who love the outdoors who can be part of a citizens' council to hire and fire a resource leader who will set the state's conservation policies with kids in mind. Gov. Walz, are you listening?

Gail Kleven, Bloomington

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Recently, nearly 190 countries agreed to protect 30% of Earth's land and water by 2030 (at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference), a goal set to prevent the extinction of a million animal and plant species. This should make me feel optimistic, but I live in farm country.

Currently Minnesota protects only 7% of its land and water; 18% if you include mining, logging and off-road vehicle riding. Mining, logging and off-road vehicle riding — the mere suggestion that these be included in protected land and water is insane. If this is the mind-set of our decisionmakers, our troubled wildlife and plants are doomed.

Voluntary programs don't work. Decisionmakers need to get a backbone, set change-making rules and enforce them. It's the only way change can happen, the only way our precious gifts of diverse animals and plants have a chance at surviving.

Bonnie Meyer, Princeton, Minn.

Minneapolis residents should call on the city to abandon its costly and interminable effort to evade state environmental law and instead comply with reasonable requests made by environmental groups in a 2018 lawsuit ("Mpls. will appeal 2040 Plan ruling to high court," Dec. 28).

The city should not again (!) appeal the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court but rather get going on an environmental review of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan — something it should have done before adopting it.

The aim of the lawsuit is not to stop the plan, but to help the city achieve the plan's environmental goals. It simply asks the city to identify unintended negative environmental impacts that will likely be caused by the cumulative effects of new density and plan to remediate them. This is constructive and wholly reasonable.

Plaintiffs have responsibly used engineering data to establish, in court after court, that the plan will likely cause environmental harm. Incredibly, the city, offering no refuting data, has only responded with mindless denial. So far, Hennepin County District Court, Minnesota Court of Appeals and the Minnesota Supreme Court (by unanimous decision) have rejected the city's baseless arguments.

Further appeals will not produce a different result. Rather than continuing to waste time and taxpayer money to make irrelevant excuses before judge after judge, Minneapolis should get down to business: Conduct an environmental review and use it to revise and improve its comprehensive plan. This would be in the best interests of the city, now and in the future.

The plaintiffs' request is more than reasonable. It is responsible, fact-based and designed to protect Minneapolis from environmental degradation and infrastructure collapse. The city should give up its fool's errand and bend to science.

Mary Pattock, Minneapolis

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I was disappointed that the list of challenges facing Minneapolis in 2023 ("New year brings fresh start for Minneapolis as well," Jan. 2) did not include the revision of the city's climate justice plan, which is currently underway. The last plan was adopted 10 years ago and does not reflect our new understanding of the urgency of the problem or the best ways of addressing it.

At the recent U.N. climate meetings, new, more aggressive goals for greenhouse gas reduction were established. To his credit, Mayor Jacob Frey has committed the city to meeting the newly established goals, specifically net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and the adoption of a scientifically sound way to get there. Achieving these goals in a way that also advances justice goals in the city will require significant action and reliable long-term funding. This plan revision presents the city with a great opportunity to take action with both global and local significance. We should not miss this chance.

For more information and to follow the planning process, contact Mayor Frey, the city's sustainability office and/or your City Council member.

Brett Smith, Minneapolis

Responding to a letter published on Jan. 6 that legislators are interested only in expanding the size of government by creating revenue from legal marijuana and not interested in cutting taxes: At least five Democratic state senators have recently stated that they are interested in ending the Social Security tax, although it is more likely for a partial cut to the tax to happen this session. Would cutting the Social Security tax or part of it decrease the state's revenue stream? It would. However, that revenue stream could be made up by the revenue of legal marijuana. Therefore, revenue from legal marijuana might not increase the size of government spending but actually allow the state government to decrease other revenue streams, like the money made from Social Security taxes, and give some citizens needed tax relief.

William Cory Labovitch, South St. Paul

For the first time in a hundred years the U.S. House failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot. As of this writing, Kevin McCarthy's hopes of becoming the next speaker were thwarted more than 10 times, making it the longest battle for the gavel since the Civil War.

This is no doubt a reflection of an extraordinarily partisan and divided country but, further, of a party suffering the inevitable consequences of its own actions/inaction. This staggering self-inflicted ineptitude should not be surprising to anyone who has paid even a modicum of attention.

In a shortsighted gambit, the Republican establishment ignored a litany of red flags and offered its unwavering support to Donald J. Trump. In turn, Trump transformed the party and created a brand of politics that elevated the platforms of the very people to which the establishment now find themselves beholden.

The GOP under Trump and his acolytes has been allied to racism and bigotry, indebted to disinformation and conspiracies, and dismissive of science and all that is erudite. Despite an abundance of opportunity for the establishment to object, it has instead chosen a path of deafening reticence.

Now, on the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Republicans find themselves beholden to the party's most vocal traffickers of insurrectionist rhetoric and noxious conspiracies. Unmoved by appeals to integrity or honor. Immune to persuasion by even the most cogent of axioms. The Republicans have created monsters, and the monsters are eating them alive.

Jacob Mazurek, Mound