In America’s Climate Century, Iowa State Senator Rob Hogg asserts, “climate change is the defining historical issue of the 21st century.” If it is, one wouldn’t know it from listening to people, and that seems the point of the book: to educate citizens of the potential negative effects of human-caused global warming, to persuade about the immediacy of the problem, and to outline ways for citizens to engage in solutions.
As Hogg points out, there is broad consensus in the scientific community that the planet is warming and the cause is related to human activity. As a member of the Iowa Senate, Rob Hogg is one of a very small number of the 150 members in both chambers willing to work on addressing climate change. This book is a plea for like minded citizens to join him. We should.
The book is written by an Iowan to encourage advocacy and this perspective informs the narrative. If you live in Iowa and are concerned about the consequences of climate change, you should consider reading America’s Climate Century. It is a primer of key issues, with step-by step suggestions on how to advocate for political change that will address them.
America’s Climate Century was a quick and engaging read, with personal anecdotes and bullet pointed to-do lists. Whether one knows a lot or a little about greenhouse gas emissions and their consequences in the form of global warming and more frequent and intense weather events, the book was informative and easy to understand.
I found value in reading the book and recommend it to others whether you live in Iowa or elsewhere.
LAKE MACBRIDE— When people talk about suppression of wages in the United States, and the growing inequality between the richest Americans and the rest of us, Walmart and the heirs of Sam Walton have been the poster children with the biggest target on their back. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders notably said in a tone of moral outrage, “today the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America.”
The Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce recently published a report based on data about Walmart employees in Wisconsin who participate in federal social programs. The report quantifies the financial impact of Walmart employees on the U.S. social safety networks, and on the economy more generally. The report said, “rising income inequality and wage stagnation threaten the future of America’s middle class. While corporate profits break records, the share of national income going to workers’ wages has reached record lows.”
Thomas Stackpole released a story about the Democratic report on Mother Jones yesterday, and if a person is interested in the issue of low paying jobs, it is worth a read. The author circulated two of the progressive nostrums I mentioned in my article, “Working for Low Wages,” increasing the minimum wage and union organizing. Stackpole wrote, “Walmart’s history of suppressing local wages and busting fledgling union efforts is common knowledge.”
In my article, I made the case, based on my personal experience as a warehouse worker, that there is more to working a low wage job than the pay. There has to be because the cost of living, including health care, transportation, food, shelter, and interest on debt, is more than low wage jobs pay. Nothing would change if the minimum wage were raised to over $10 per hour as some legislators propose. Low wage jobs fall short of a living wage, so people have to adapt, and one of the ways they do is to take advantage of governmental social programs. It’s not the only way people adapt, but it is an expense to taxpayers to provide these programs, and because Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S. they are used as the whipping boy for the impact of their low wages on the expense of social programs to taxpayers.
Unions have to become more relevant to low wage workers before they have a chance in companies like Walmart. The repeated failures of union organizing attempts at Walmart serve my point. Part of the failure to organize is the resources the company’s management brings to bear on any organizing attempt. Part of it is the failure of unions to provide what is perceived by a majority of targeted workers as value. Creating a Walmart employee union does not seem to be in the cards despite all the noise in the corporate media. Sanders’ moral outrage, and ours, goes unaddressed, and will until unions become more relevant to the needs of low wage workers, as those workers perceive it.
The debate over Walmart employees using the social safety net seems a red herring, especially at the granular, local perspective of a person who has recently worked a low wage job. It is doubtful that government, especially one with close ties to Wall Street, will be able to do much to impact working people in a meaningful and positive way. Nor is it the role of government to preserve and build the middle class. It’s the working class that needs help and the two aren’t the same thing.
When government creates a program like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), reduced price school lunches, subsidized housing, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), they address poverty in the way government knows how. That a big company has employees on government programs is neither surprising, nor a source of the same moral outrage that should be expressed about the the disparities between the richest Americans and the rest of us.
Participating in government programs is one of the ways low wage workers get by. Shining light on Walmart and Sam Walton’s heirs contributes little to resolving the needs of working people, even if some with a national perspective are fond of doing so.
“Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future” by Dorie Clark is worth a read for its useful nuggets of advice and for the perspective she spent years developing and refining. Many of us in the baby boom generation need to be reinventing ourselves to deal with a changing retirement picture and the related need to work long into retirement, both for our economic viability and for social enrichment. Read her book for an insightful perspective that can be useful not only to boomers.
I met Clark at a political workshop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa a few years ago, and found her personal anecdotes about fundraising to be useful and spot on. She was not afraid to tell us to do the hard work, and if one followed her advice, superior results could be attained. I felt similarly when she wrote in “Reinventing You” about the 360 interview, something that in some businesses has become a stale and mechanical process driven by professional human resource managers. She breathed new life into this long-standing process. While what Clark proposes is often hard work, based on my past experience with her advice, I would be willing to try it and hopeful for positive results after reading “Reinventing You.”
Some of what Clark writes is time-tested advice on things like highlighting our differences for competitive advantage and the role of volunteerism during transition. She adds a layer regarding social media which is important to consider. There was plenty of sound new advice in the book on topics that were already familiar.
I found the book engaging and a quick read, offering pragmatic advice as I transition into what’s next. You might too.
RURAL CEDAR TOWNSHIP— A student from Nepal greeted me at the work bench where four trays of soil blocks awaited transplanted eggplant seedlings. She was like so many college students, alert, intelligent, and possessed of the confidence of youth. She asked me a lot of questions: where I lived and about local culture. So many, I didn’t get a chance to ask her about Nepal and her reasons for coming to the United States. She had just finished laying down mulch in one field and planting rows of eggplant in another with a group of farm workers. She was ready to call it a day and go on to what’s next. One of many chance encounters that have made the last 15 weeks of farm work an enriching experience.
When my work moved from the germination house (formerly known as the greenhouse), to the barn, the sheep and lambs became occasional neighbors. The gentle bleating combined with bird songs made a soothing background while I made soil blocks, planted lettuce and transplanted seedlings. The two dogs hung out with me, napping most of the time. The intermittent encounters with other farm workers, combined with interludes of solitude in the barn—it is life as good as it gets.
Last week I brought jars of home made apple butter for the crew. My apple trees are expected to bear fruit this year, so the old stock needs circulation. To a person they liked it, making me happy to contribute to their farm experience.
There are apple trees on the farm, and if things work out, I’ll make apple butter from the fruit in exchange for some of the apples. My part time work on the farm has become a bartering process that gains complexity as time goes on.
There is something deep in meaning about this work. To see plants grow from seeds to seedlings to rows and then harvest is a connection with life itself. As the Nepalese student asked questions, I felt connected in a way that is hard to describe. Part of a sustainable and hopefully endless cycle of life on earth.
ELY— Two vendors braved threatening rain to set up tables at the Ely farmers market yesterday. I didn’t stop. Our refrigerator is full of leafy green vegetables from our garden and the CSA. This vegetable season will produce an abundance of variety and quantity. Already I have begun putting things up: freezing rhubarb and canning soup stock. We should support our local growers; however, there is a limit to how much one consumer can help. What’s needed is a movement supporting locally grown food. There wasn’t a lot of traffic at the market, indicating local movement in other directions.
It is still spring despite passing two unofficial starts of summer: Memorial Day weekend, and the release of children from school. What that means is the ravages of insects has not begun, and the leaves on the trees maintain their fresh wholeness. It won’t belong before the bugs begin to find the delicate food— there is a sliver of springtime to be enjoyed before summer starts.
I would make a list of all the garden produce and its progress, but that seems too Edmund Spenser or Walt Whitman. English majors take note that every list or inventory is not a good one, and how many times can a person write about the progress of apples in the garden and make it interesting? There is a big difference between spending time in the garden and writing about it, although one should really be an extension of the other. Suffice it to compromise by posting a photo of developing apples.
The pressing needs of the garden are to prepare another plot for planting and to weed, weed, weed. The first four plots are growing well, and number five has three bur oak tree saplings, the remains of the garlic and bulbs of iris to be removed. It will be a relatively big project to return that space to production. It was also the first one dug and planted when we moved to Big Grove almost 20 years ago. Did I mention the garden needs weeding?
Pursuit of new nuclear power in Iowa was a bad idea when then governor Tom Vilsack began promoting it, and remains so. MidAmerican Energy’s announcement in the Des Moines Register today, that the utility “has scrapped plans for Iowa’s second nuclear plant and will refund $8.8 million ratepayers paid for a now-finished feasibility study,” was welcomed by people throughout the state. In the end, talk about nuclear power was a weird combination of the vaporous breath of politicians combined with a financially stable and well capitalized public utility owned by one of the richest men on the planet. The discussion Vilsack started is over for now.
In an email to members, Dianne Glenney, co-founder and communications contact for the grassroots organization S.A.F.E. (Saving America’s Farmland and Environment) wrote, “we have learned more about the dangers of nuclear energy than we ever wanted to know. But, we are much better informed now and an informed citizenry is primed to be a watchdog for future happenings, to report issues when they happen, and to take action.” While S.A.F.E. came into being only after the utility’s planned sites for a new nuclear power plant were recently announced in Muscatine and Fremont counties, Glenney’s words summed up the four-year process that stopped MidAmerican’s nuclear ambitions. Knowledge is power, and by 2013, the Iowa electorate had been educated about nuclear power.
As always, there is more to the story.
The idea that there was a nuclear renaissance in the United States was a product of the imagination of politicians, the nuclear industry, corporate media and the richest Americans. The nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan on March 11, 2011 brought the risks of nuclear power to the public’s attention. Shortly after the earthquake and tsunami that caused the failures, MidAmerican Energy’s Bill Fehrman asserted in an Iowa Senate Commerce Committee meeting that small modular reactors would solve some of the problems of Fukushima. The public wasn’t buying it, at least to the extent that they would support the legislation Fehrman said was necessary for the utility to get the financial backing of Wall Street to build a new nuclear power generating station. In today’s announcement, MidAmerican conceded that lack of an approved plan for a small modular reactor was problematic, citing as one of the reasons for pulling the plug, “there is no approved design for the modular nuclear plant it envisioned.”
A final decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny a license to the Calvert Cliffs III nuclear reactor, slated for southern Maryland, is evidence that if there was a nuclear renaissance, it may be over from an NRC perspective.
Another part of the story is the abundance of natural gas resulting from increased exploration and discover using the hydraulic fracturing process. With the cost of natural gas going down, interest in more expensive nuclear power is waning. It is important that MidAmerican Energy noted the potential regulation of carbon as an impediment to building a natural gas power generating station, something that did not stop Alliant Energy from seeking approval for such a plant in Marshalltown.
The current solution to the radioactive nuclear waste produced by nuclear power generating stations is no solution at all. The plan is to store it on sites where it is generated until the federal government figures out what to do with it. Reasonable people can’t seriously consider adding new nuclear power capacity until this long standing deficiency is addressed.
Dianne Glenney of S.A.F.E. wrote last night, “no one should have to live under the strain of a potential nuclear power plant in their neighborhood, community, state and/or country. Someone is always downwind of every nuclear plant.” Now enough Iowans know this. Let’s hope we don’t forget.
LAKE MACBRIDE— 52 days of work for a nearby logistics company was an eye opener. In a world of constant electronic contact with smartphones and computers— via social media applications, on-line corporate media outlets and Internet discussion groups— our perceptions of society lean toward generalities and abstraction. Progressive commentary, about increasing the minimum wage and union organizing, seems disconnected when one works with others for low wages. As a worker, it is obvious there are inequalities in pay for work, and that the disparity between the richest Americans and the majority is widening. Yet people need an income, so they give up part of their freedom to toil in the fields of corporate masters, voluntarily.
In my short span as a warehouse worker, an endless river of people flowed through the building, each finding value, at least enough to attract them to the work, in the manual labor. Whether it was the prestige of having a job, working with friends, or socializing with new people, the monetary compensation was inadequate to have made it the main attraction. Some said they worked there to pay bills, but the compensation alone could not sustain the simplest of lives on the Iowa prairie.
The payday for low paying work is building a social network to help meet basic economic needs— one based in direct human contact, unfiltered by electronic media. A host of services was available because of the work relationship. A tattoo artist offered his ink, people of means offered loans, and gardeners offered to exchange vegetables and baked goods. There was ride-sharing, child care and a network of discovery of ways to escape low paying work for something better. Human society in places like this is like a living coral reef, where everyone’s needs can be met at a certain level.
Part of the learning was that such jobs are available, there is an ample supply of labor to fill them, physical stamina is required to perform the work, and a steady paycheck can play a role in a broader life. When we consider our choices in life— health care, a place to live, food to eat, taxes, loan interest and insurance— sustaining basic living can be problematic at $9.25 per hour without benefits. There is no simple resolution to this deficiency in pay for work.
Two progressive nostrums offer no help: organizing a union and increasing the minimum wage.
When I met Andy Stern, then president of Service Employees International Union, we talked about organizing logistics workers. Stern agreed labor unions lost the battle of maintaining union drivers and dock workers after the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 deregulated trucking. He suggested there was a new organizing possibility in the logistics workers who are the next layer of employees in a global supply chain. He felt it fit well with what his union was doing organizing janitorial and health services workers. Having worked a career for a company that made the transition from all union to non-union as deregulation rolled out, I was skeptical.
After my experience at the warehouse, Stern’s hope to organize logistics workers seems unrealistic. Not only is the corporation that was the ultimate customer for our work removed from employees, there were multiple layers of removal. A lengthy probationary period working for a temporary employment service distanced beginning workers from the company. Multiple temporary employment companies were used. Likewise, the logistics company to whom we were leased from the temp agency was a subcontractor for the company, working on successive three-year contracts. Colleagues often did not know for whom they would be working if they successfully made it through the temporary employment agency to the logistics company as employees. On a given day, people doing the same work received paychecks from at least three different entities. When combined with high employee turnover, union organizing would be nearly impossible in such an environment.
The progressive talk about raising the minimum wage is a case of barking up the wrong tree. At two dollars an hour above minimum wage, the warehouse work attracted former box store employees, fast food restaurant employees and other minimum wage earners. The earnings alone were not enough to live, even modestly.
When I heard former labor secretary Robert Reich speak in Iowa City, one topic was the widening inequality in society and concentration of wealth among the richest one percent of the population. He pointed out that the minimum wage was not the correct measure of how wage earners were doing. What matters more is that the median wage keeps up with the overall economy, something it has not done. He recently wrote, “the problem is we haven’t been living nearly as well as our growing economy should have allowed us to live,” and that if wages tracked the economy, the median wage would be over $90,000 per year today ($43.27 per hour for a 40 hour work week). Progressives may feel good about advocating for an increase in the minimum wage, however, an increase would not address the fundamental problem wage earners face on a daily basis. A substantial portion of their economic survival depends on social networking rather than their rate of pay from a single job.
The eye opener for me while working at the warehouse was that in a workplace where no one had ever heard of me, my work was accepted by management and by my colleagues without question. People find value in working a job at any rate of pay because the real value is in the social networking it enables. One doesn’t hear that in the social or corporate media, but maybe we should.
BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP— When we were children, our parents used to take us out for a Sunday afternoon drive. A typical trip might include visiting Weed Park in Muscatine, friends of my parents in Blue Grass, or to the Niabi Zoo near Coal Valley, Ill. Today’s Sunday afternoon drive was not as much fun. I drove to 140th Street NE near Ely Road to see the progress of the flooding.
That is, not as much fun unless one is a fisher. When I arrived at the edge of the water, about half a dozen motor boats were out. Click on the thumbnail above, and the boats can be seen as small specks toward where the road rises out of the water. Word is out that striped bass, catfish and carp are biting. The reason I know is a neighbor mentioned it while I was working in the ditch in the front yard after the drive.
140th Street, May 31
The water has risen about four feet since Friday. Compare the two photos to see how the building is being submerged. If you would like, take a look. For me, I would not like. It is wearying to deal with the consequences of climate that changed when we should be advocating to change how society interacts with so-called nature turned into an owned and built environment.
Like this flooding, changing climate is hitting us where we live. In the water we use, the air we breathe, and the weather we experience. This weekend politicians sought photo opportunities to post on social media: of them helping sandbag buildings to protect them; of them inspecting the damage. What they should be doing is actual networking with their colleagues in government to find common ground and take concrete action to solve the climate crisis.
Some may not notice the climate crisis because they are so busy cleaning up in its wake, or in this case, trying to catch the limit of striped bass. Maybe they are taking a much needed Sunday afternoon nap. Eventually the frequency of these hundred year floods, at a rate of three in 20 years, will be noticed. It is not too late to solve the climate crisis, but we don’t know for how long.
LAKE MACBRIDE— These are the best days. Partly cloudy, temperatures around 70, low humidity and plenty of outside work. We enjoy them when we can.
It’s not to say there is complete escape from the troubles of the world. Yet, for a few moments, beneath the cloudy heavens, it is possible to forget— a reason to anticipate such times with great fervor.
Today was what local food is. There were major farmers markets in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. Between the CSA and my garden, we have most of what we need for the week, so I passed. After an hour at the newspaper, I did go to the grocery store to buy provisions: dairy, out of season vegetables and a few special items— popcorn, chocolate, snack crackers. The bill was much lower than usual as a result of growing so much of our own food, combined with working down the pantry.
When I arrived home, the rest of the morning was yard work, pruning the pin oak tree and repairing the erosion near the ditch with bagged soil and grass seed. The majority of the afternoon was harvesting, planting and processing vegetables: radishes, lettuce, turnip greens and oregano.
I picked the rest of the first row of radishes and put them in a bucket. Next, I harvested all of the first planting of lettuce. This cleared a space to till the soil and re-plant two rows of radishes and the rest of the first crop of lettuce seedlings. My garden mentor said one of the biggest mistakes home gardeners make is failing to plant in succession. There will be more plantings of lettuce and radishes.
Near the herb garden I cut a gallon bucket full of oregano from the volunteer plant. Finally, I picked most of the turnip leaves, leaving only those plants that looked like the root would fill out. The turnips grow too tall, too fast, and block out the nearby spinach. I have been thinking about the turnip greens since winter.
At the end of the harvest, I had a bushel of lettuce, five gallons of turnip greens, and regular one gallon buckets of oregano and radishes. A gardener has to keep the produce moving to make optimal use of it. I spent the rest of the day processing the harvest.
The radishes were easy. I trimmed them and placed them in a glass of water. They won’t last long. The oregano was also easy. Since two plants wintered (I only had one last year), the plan is to dry the leaves and make a jar of oregano flakes for cooking. I washed the leaves on the stem, placed them on clean towels on the front step, let the sun dry them and put them on the shelves of the dehydrator to finish drying. I don’t turn the dehydrator on. The temperature is too hot for herbs.
The bigger processing projects were picking through the lettuce to find the best leaves— cleaning, cleaning drying and bagging it; and making a large pot of turnip leaf soup stock for canning. Turnips make the best base for vegetarian soup stock, although leeks, if I have them, are good too.
As the day ended, I turned off the soup, left it on the stove and went to bed. Sunday will be back to the realities of finding suitable paying work, putting up the soup stock in jars, and weeding the garden.
ATHERTON WETLAND— The flooding continues here. It has not reached the level of either 1993 or 2008— yet.
As I write, the county has issued mandatory evacuation orders for people who live in low lying areas. What used to be a 100 year flood needs a new name, as this spring brought the third major flooding in 20 years. One has to believe that a cause of the frequent and extreme weather is our changing climate, wrought by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity. The flooding is a reminder of the importance of working toward a solution to the climate crisis.
A proximate cause of the flooding is the rain. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported record rainfall,
swinging from drought concerns to flooding worries within weeks, Iowa has set two precipitation record highs in 2013: the statewide average precipitation for March, April and May collectively at 16.65 inches; and a year-to-date precipitation total of 18.92 inches. These are highs among 141 years of records.
What to do but adapt?
If the reader clicks on the photo, there is a building on the left side of the image. During June 2008, the flood waters reached the eaves of this building. In 1993, the building did not exist.
We live near Lake Macbride and in 2008, the trail next to the lake was covered in water. It would take a lot more water to fill the watershed enough to reach our home, so were never in danger of a wet basement.
We’ll see how the flood of 2013 plays out, but based on the reports on social media, it may fall somewhere between 1993 and 2008 levels. Iowans are getting used to frequent flooding, indicating advanced stages of adaptation to changing climate.
In America’s Climate Century, Iowa State Senator Rob Hogg asserts, “climate change is the defining historical issue of the 21st century.” If it is, one wouldn’t know it from listening to people, and that seems the point of the book: to educate citizens of the potential negative effects of human-caused global warming, to persuade about the immediacy of the problem, and to outline ways for citizens to engage in solutions.
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