climate change

Fiddling while we burn: We know what to do about climate change but who will do it?

by Art Cullen, Iowa Capital Dispatch
August 25, 2023

Here we sit sweating it out under a heat dome. It’s supposed to get hot in an Iowa summer, but like this? One heat dome after another. Then a shower just in the nick of time. They say it’s a sign of climate change — that seasonal extremes like a hot August day become more extreme, and linger.

Storm Lake was in a water emergency during RAGBRAI last month. City wells stressed by drought and thirst failed. They got fixed for the time being, but our water system is limping along in need of more improvement than we can afford. Our drinking water sources, underground aquifers, are in decline from increased pumping for humans, livestock and ethanol.

If you don’t think that we are burning up the planet, look around: Maui got toasted as people jumped into the ocean to flee the fire. LA does not get hurricanes, but now it does. Entire towns in Canada are evacuating from wildfires. The smoke gags the Midwest.

If you’re trying to grow wheat or run cattle near the Panhandle, good luck, pardner.

If climate change is not a thing, then what is all this?

Iowa's greenhouse gas emissions back on the rise, 3.5 percent increase in 2017 to 131 million tons

Increased use of coal- and natural gas-power plants for production of electricity and two new fertilizer plants helped pushed up Iowa's greenhouse gas emissions by 3.5 percent in 2017.

The hike in emissions came after two years of statewide declines. Even with the increase, total greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 were nearly 6 percent lower than 10 years ago.

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