Iowa Devastated by Climate Change, Demands Governmental Action
Iowa is the first state to weigh in on the U.S. presidential primaries, so it’s important to get a read for the issues that matter there. Insofar as the state is landlocked and heavily dependent on farming, one might guess you’d hear a great deal about things like rural health care or ethanol subsidies, and that concern for climate change mitigation would be relegated to the coasts.
Floods of biblical proportions are ruining crops, and washing away retirement plans along with them. The trends in rainfall have been steadily on the rise for the past couple of decades, and this year, historic rainfalls battered both eastern and western parts of the state.
In addition, the Upper Midwest is likely to see the largest increase in premature deaths and be disproportionately affected by hotter temperatures caused by climate change.
The result of all this in-your-face climate-related damage: 7 in 10 Iowa voters say they support government action that addresses climate change, according to a Climate Nexus poll from July.
One might have expected that a position of climate denial may have passed muster in this and other fly-over states. One would have gotten that dead wrong.
