Production funding for state of change is provided by the Backlund Charitable Trust.

Life in Illinois is evolving.

It is unequivocal that human activities are responsible for climate change.

Our summers are getting hotter, Illinois like the rest of the world has warmed.

intense storms are happening more often.

As you can see behind me this road is completely flooded still, some emergency people were walking through in the water was completely up to their thigh.

Invasive species are thriving.

Some things that would have been killed by cold temperatures.

If the temperatures don't get so cold they may persist.

Generations of farms are in danger.

Because the pollution is heating the planet does what it hits black and brown communities first and worse, but Illinoisans are also taking action.

Together.

We are making history today, taking a giant leap forward to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

And decades after nearly being wiped out, the bald eagle is back from the brink.

Join us as we show you how Illinois is in a state of change.

Hello, I'm Tinisha Spain.

Because of climate change, scientists say the Illinois we know now could very well be unrecognizable by the year 2100.

And those changes already visible.

Need to just find a spot and safely cool off and like to sit in August 2020 meteorologist Andrew Pritchard follow the line of storms charging across the Midwest from the Nebraska Iowa border.

It was you know late morning when we were getting 80 to 100 mile per hour measured wind gusts out of Iowa and so I could tell that this was something big.

In the city of Morris 60 miles southwest of Chicago.

He came face to face with the Draco.

And Andrew shot video of the rain and hurricane for straight line winds that lasted a half hour that sounded almost like you know a freight train or a jet engine coming in as the winds began to progress.

This storm killed four people and caused $12 billion dollars in damage across the Midwest, trees, homes and crops were destroyed.

A year later, Andrew was in Ford county after storms dumped 10 inches of rain over several hours, floodwaters trapped vehicles and intersections and submerged homes and businesses in Gibson city.

The biggest change that we're seeing is a dramatic increase in heavy rainfall events.

And that's these, you know, 101 and 500 year flooding events that we're seeing happen more and more often.

To scientists like Andrew the direct show and for county floods are evidence that climate is in a state of change.

What we're seeing as climate changes here in the Midwest, we're seeing more and more moisture in the atmosphere.

Don Wubbels is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

He served as an expert on climate change for the Obama White House.

Dolan was part of a recently released report about the effects of climate change in Illinois.

flooding rains, like the ones that fell in Gibson city will become more common by the end of the century.

The report predicts rainfall in Illinois could rise by 150%, which could have huge consequences for Illinois agriculture.

than recent years before this, farmers have had difficulty getting in the fields because of the increase in rainfall has largely happened in winter and spring.

And we expect that to continue.

So that that makes it difficult for farmers to actually get in the fields to plant their crops.

And when it's not raining, we'll have more severe droughts and more intense heat.

Don says if we don't curb our greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century, Central Illinois could be as hot as some southern US cities are right now.

100 degrees now we have an occasional day by the end of the century could have as much as a couple weeks or a month with a high scenario.

So it's, again very different.

Very different climate.

A recent United Nations scientific study said like countless of reports before it, human activity is to blame for a rapidly changing planet.

A code read heard around the world.

Is there any hope at all for meaningful action?

There is if it happens really soon if the world is able within the next 10 years to basically zero out our emissions meeting no more greenhouse gas emissions and actually a net negative emissions of heat trapping gases.

In 2021, Illinois lawmakers took a step toward cutting emissions.

We are making history today, taking a giant leap forward to mitigate the impacts of climate change to establish the most aggressive clean energy standards in the Midwest.

Governor JB Pritzker signed Senate Bill 2408 into law, it aims to take most coal plants offline by the end of the decade, and the rest plus natural gas would have to go offline by 2045.

At the latest, to keep three nuclear plants online.

It authorizes nearly $700 million in ratepayer subsidies.

It also offers incentives for Illinoisans to buy electric vehicles.

1 million EVs on the roads by 2030.

Critics say the law may force Illinois to import expensive power produced by fossil fuels from neighboring states.

Some of the lawmakers who voted to make Illinois carbon free by 2045 also voted to build a new natural gas pipeline in one Illinois Township.

Some people there see it as a great opportunity, while others worry about pollution.

More than 150 years ago, when freed black people left the South for northern states like Illinois, they settled in Pembroke Township.

an hour south of Chicago near the Illinois Indiana border.

You'll find family farms and children tending to horses.

We have five generations living in Pembroke.

My mom still shares me my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren.

Pam Basu grows organic crops and raises pigs, goats and fowl on land that's been in her family since they left the south.

We moved because my father wanted to get the children out of Mississippi because in material that got killed in 1959 We found laying out here and my dad wanted to bring us out here because this is the only place that he knew where he could grow food and feed his family.

Farmers like Johari Cole Kweli are proud of what the black community has built here.

You want it?

Do you want it to be a lot of information about the community was that this is, you know, very impoverished community that it has nothing that people are trying to run to get out of here that you know, nothing would grow.

You know, there was all a whole lot of nothing's connected to this place.

Derek Jones is one of the people who have returned here.

As a child, he'd visit his grandparents ranch boots and saddle during the summers in Pembroke.

But when he wasn't on the farm and back in his Chicago neighborhood, Derek found trouble.

The guy ran up I thought he had a daughter and I shot it.

Once I took his life after serving his sentence, Derek was paroled to his aunt's house right back on the family farm.

A lot of people incarcerated don't have things waiting for normal now.

So this was in my vision, because it was already here from but Pembroke township isn't a boom town.

30 years ago, the population was 3300.

Now it's just over 2000.

Mayor Mark Hodge leads Hopkins Park.

It's a village within Pembroke Township.

He says a natural gas pipeline would bring much needed economic growth to the mostly empty downtown.

I would like to see some manufacturing bought into the community to sustain families, so people don't have to drive from here to Chicago or outside the community for employment.

Many families in Pembroke township rely on propane tanks or chopped wood to heat their homes.

They see us as this poor black community when the fact is if you leveled the playing field, we'd have the same opportunities as every community around us, which has been denied us to this date.

Nicor gas which posted this video of its Troy Grove gas storage facility on YouTube wants to bury the 30 mile pipeline underneath existing utility lines.

approved by the Illinois General Assembly and signed by Governor JB Pritzker.

The Pembroke township natural gas investment pilot program became law in 2021.

Among those backing the idea, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who invited Shannon piers, Vice President of Operations at Nicor, to explain the benefits at a Rainbow PUSH coalition meeting back in 2020.

Natural gas is a safe, clean, reliable, abundant and affordable energy source that is critical to any community's well being.

Today, heating your home with natural gas will cost you 50% less than the next most affordable energy source.

But not everyone is convinced.

So we're asking our people here in Pembroke to stand up for what is the right thing to do?

Because the pollution that is heating the planet does what it hits black and brown communities firstly, worse.

In mid June, we attended a community meeting with dozens of Pembroke farmers.

A group of those farmers have major concerns about its safety.

Farmer Johari cole Kweli is one of those opposed.

The pipeline is not just, you know, pipe laid without any consequences.

There are long systemic risks involved with this pipeline that has been seen all across the country.

Another factor natural gas pipeline opponents site is Pembroke unique biomes.

Considered one of the world's rarest ecosystems, glacial deposits gave way to inland sand dunes and a black oak Savanna that spans more than 20,000 acres.

Pembroke Township is also home to more than 50 rare and beautiful plants and flowers that grow wild in this mostly undisturbed sandy soil.

Farmers like coal quality wonder why Pembroke Township is focused on natural gas and not renewable energy.

We were do a mule 100 years ago.

Now we're future forward.

So instead of a mule, we need tractors.

Right?

So why give us fossil fuel when the rest of the world is going on renewable energy?

But Pam Basu wants the natural gas to heat her home and greenhouse.

She says it'll help her continue the family tradition of farming.

The way we grow our crops, we grow things like beans, peas, Crowder peas, purple hull, peas, black eyed peas, and those actually improve the soil and they enrich the soil and they actually fix nitrogen into the soil.

This is not corn and soybean country.

But this is so full country.

$1 million in grant money from the state will be used by Pembroke residents to convert their appliances to natural gas.

Illinois is known for its prairies and woodlands, but that landscape is under attack are two forces, climate change and invasive species.

invasives can change the environment around them so fast?

The surrounding ecosystem struggles and sometimes fails to keep up.

Jim Lamer is the director of the Illinois River Biological Station and has studied the Illinois River for 20 years.

The data he's helped collect shows things are changing.

We do see more punctuated and intense rainfall events, which can be detrimental to some species that take that as a cue like our invasive carp species and things as well.

Jim took us out on the river in Havana to get an up close look at the heavy cart population firsthand.

He dropped a low voltage electric current in the water and the silver, big head black and grass carp are collectively known as Asian carp.

And they can jump some 10 feet out of the water.

This animated map shows one of the carp species growth from 1981 to 2020.

And they were brought to the US to help clean and filter retention ponds.

They eventually spilled into the Mississippi and then made their way into the Illinois River.

Asian carp densities here some reports some of the highest in the world.

And in these Illinois River here, especially in this stretch if we get these large rainfall events, especially in a smaller basin like the Illinois River You know, it can bring the water level up quickly, it can stimulate those females to want to spawn in the males as well.

Somewhere around 325,000 fish, just in this area.

And so if you're looking at fish that might be seven eight pounds on the silver carp on average.

You know, the wait adds up quickly.

More carp puts a strain on resources, and other fish in the food chain who eat plankton can't thrive.

That puts a dent in Illinois multimillion dollar sport fishing industry.

And the list of invasive plants is even longer.

Nicole flowers Kimmerly is an Illinois Extension Educator near Peoria.

She trains volunteers to go out and help control invasive spread in their communities, which also happens to be where the problem often begins.

A lot of the invasive plants we have were are brought in by people either in for landscaping, or initially to do something good, like prevent erosion or make a habitat for birds.

And so they've been brought in but now we find that they are taking over our native diversity D in our forests and our kind of grassy areas or our wetlands, wind and roots and birds have always moved seeds and plants and spores to new places.

But what's different now is the habitability of that new environment.

Scientists say heavy rainfall in Illinois has increased some five to six inches since the 1900s.

And Illinois is getting warmer, things that would have been killed by cold temperatures.

If the temperatures don't get so cold, they may persist.

And then we might see changes in those ecosystems.

Those changes not only affect the landscape, they eventually choke out food and habitat for native insects and animals.

When we reduce the diversity that makes it harder to support the other animals.

As Illinois continues to warm and our lands and waterways provide a suitable new home for invasive species.

They will become a permanent fixture in the Prairie State.

As Illinois continues to warm livestock farmers are working hard to keep their animals safe.

Dana Cronin has more on that story.

It's feeding time on Borgic Farms in Raymond, Illinois.

Hundreds of 12 week old pigs are crammed into a long barn climbing over each other in search of feed.

It's pushing 90 degrees today and the air here is humid and heavy with the smell of pig manure.

Phil Borgic owns this farm he just turned on eight massive cooling fans with six foot blades to suck the hot air out of the barn.

The temperature comes up like this afternoon and we're getting warmed up then we'll turn on the water.

But the first thing that comes as a breeze, and it gets warmer yet that we bring out the garden hose and hose out to kids and glue them off.

Borgic's parents bought the farm in the 1950s when most livestock farming was done outside as the climate warmed over the years, they've since moved things indoors to help keep the pig safe from increasingly high temperatures.

As we went through time, our fans kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger to pull more air through and over the top of the pigs and to get that heat out of there.

And then the rise beginning we didn't add water.

And so as we learned we started adding that sprinkle water then to help cool them off some more.

Average temperatures in Illinois have already gone up by between one and two degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years.

Right now the state sees about a week of temperatures above 95 degrees during the summer.

climate scientist and University of Illinois Professor Don Wubbles says if we continue emitting high levels of greenhouse gases, the state will only get hotter and the heat will last longer.

If you looked at the high scenario, which is what we're following right now.

The most of the summer ends up being above 95 degrees again very different Illinois than we have right now.

Those scorching temperatures threatened not only farm animals comfort and health, but also their productivity.

Amanda Stone researches heat stress in dairy cows at Mississippi State University and says when the heat index is above 68 degrees Fahrenheit, much cooler than the 90 degrees here today, a cow's milk production can decrease up to 25%.

So if a cow is producing 100 pounds, during periods of stress, she's only producing 75.

And it's not just cows.

It's goats too.

Every morning at 5am the 100 Plus goats here at Prairie fruits farm and Creamery outside Champaign, Illinois filing for milking Milk meters measure how much each goat produces per day when it's hot farm co owner Wes Jarrell says there's less milk and he has noticed the changing climate is having an impact.

We've always known that in the summer heat, their production goes down.

And we know just by looking at the records that the duration of that and the intensity of that is increasing.

Prairie fruits farm is pasture based, meaning the goats spend most of their time outside grazing on acres of grass and shrubs.

Like dogs.

Jerell says goats pant when they get too hot and take cover in the shade under trees.

And while the farm does have a couple of small barns, he says they're making plans to build a bigger indoor facility, in part because it's getting harder to keep the goats cool enough.

And summer when it's going to be hotter and more humid, we need the best ventilation possible, and we need protection.

The price tag on that new barn is nearly $700,000.

The Illinois Department of Agriculture doesn't currently offer any assistance or information for farmers dealing with the effects of heat stress on their animals.

Jerell says they'll have to find some way to pay for the new barn.

And there are a few options except to pass the costs on to consumers.

Obviously, what we need to do is make sure we can sell the products and we can look at what customers are willing to pay.

Are they willing to pay any more for a product that addresses all these other societal and environmental problems that we're talking about?

jarrell's hoping the answer is yes.

So don't be surprised when you start paying a little more for your milk, pork or goat cheese.

It may just be another cost of doing business in a changing climate for state of change.

I'm Dana Cronin.

at its lowest point, there were only three bald eagle nest in Illinois.

But the Raptor is on the rebound.

You got something or talents on a chilly morning in Vermillion County.

It's time for breakfast for a family of bald eagles.

The second magnification is takes me to that level.

And you can actually there's one up there doing winger sizing right now.

See the head Oh yeah.

Perched quietly in his director's chair.

danfo resident Wayne Haugen has spent 1000s of hours photographing bald eagles.

He's jokingly named them the van dikes a nod to Danville his famous family.

Well, they can see five miles, it can hover up a mile in the air and see a fish down below and dive down and get it.

He's been lucky enough to capture intimate moments many don't get to see like them bringing food back to their nest which can weigh up to a ton mother just brought in a fish about this long.

And big lead stolen away from his mother took it, grabbed it in its mouth and swallowed it whole.

So nobody else got any lunch that day.

He was a piglet for sure.

He goes like big open trees and near water.

In nearby Champaign County, we meet University of Illinois Associate Professor Michael Ward as he visits a nearby owl nest.

Ward has spent his life studying bird ecology and behavior.

He remembers when America's national symbol was almost killed off entirely.

So DDT, the chemical that was sprayed to control pests, and bio accumulates, I mean that insects have it and they're eaten by maybe mice and then there goes into the, you know the water.

And so by the time it reaches Raptors such as bald eagle, there's a lot of DDT in their system.

For decades.

DDT was used by the ton in farming.

Then in the 70s, scientists discovered a high concentration of DDT caused soft egg shells.

And so they'd lay their eggs.

They'd serve their eggs like all birds do to incubate them and then eggs a crack until obviously a cracked egg doesn't produce a baby.

And so that was causing declines.

When I first started, it was not something that anybody would see here.

Susan Biggs Warner has worked in conservation for 37 years.

at their lowest it was estimated that there were fewer than five bald eagle nests in the entire state.

At Forest Glen preserve in Georgetown, they have 50 years worth of bird sighting charts thanks to vermillion county conservationist Marilyn Campbell.

Each year since 1970, naturalist and bird enthusiasts jot down the birds they see in the park.

The first year I could find with 1970 that we did this and I'm sure that this was Marilyn's idea.

Oh, somebody saw Golden Eagle here.

We're seeing Maryland in here a lot.

I found that the first one was really right here was in 83.

That was our first one.

Well, then so that's 83.

So then, in 86, I see there's one here.

But by the time we got to about 2000, I started seeing more and more and more.

The Bald Eagle was eventually removed from the state endangered list in 2009.

I would guess that they breed in every county in Illinois, and probably had pretty good numbers in certain counties where we might have a dozen plus nests and in different counties, Illinois is second only to Alaska for the most bald eagles in the country.

But that doesn't mean the threat is over.

You know, we change the environment all the time, we were changing in terms of destroying habitat in terms of changing the climate, and we don't often think about how the birds change with it.

A close call for America's national symbol brought back from near extinction.

It'll be up to the next generation to make sure these majestic birds have a place to call home.

Former President Barack Obama once said no challenge poses a greater threat to our future generations than climate change.

Our actions now will determine just how big that challenge will be.

I'm Tinisha Spain.

Thank you for joining us for our special state of change.

Production funding for state of change is provided by the Backlund Charitable Trust