As the Duluth City Council prepares to vote on a declaration of climate emergency Monday, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) talked climate change during a Science Museum of Minnesota panel Friday. 

She wants to see a Clean Electricity Standard in President Joe Biden's infrastructure package. 

"By focusing on the electricity sector, we can do the heavy lifting in other parts of our economy like transportation, like building, heating, also manufacturing. When we electrify our cars, we are using clean energy to reduce emissions," Sen. Smith said.

Meteorologist Paul Douglas says Minnesota has experienced 23 separate billion-dollar weather events since 2000. 

"I've been talking publicly, sometimes at my peril, about climate change since the late '90s," he said. "The symptoms have been showing up on my weather maps with alarming frequency. The extremes are now trending more extreme." 

He said the atmosphere doesn't care about politics.

"Addressing climate change is the biggest challenge we've ever faced. We need to move faster, electrifying everything -- transportation, utilities, the grid -- bringing clean energy from wind and solar to population centers. We need to get to zero carbon as quickly as possible," Douglas said. 

Smith wants a Clean Electricity Standard that would leave it up to utilities to choose the method. 

"It is technology neutral, everybody can decide whether it is wind or solar, or CCS, or whether geothermal is a strategy or whether it's nuclear," she said. "As long as you are reducing carbon emissions and are getting to that goal and getting to that standard, you're on the right path." 

It's not clear how much Republican support there would be, but it would likely be viewed as a better option than a carbon tax. Smith said she is confident that when the time came, a Clean Electricity Standard could be passed with bipartisan support. 

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