Category: Environment

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Environment

Iowa Water Quality and Confirmation Bias

Grain Silos

Progressives, farmers and environmentalists heard there is movement in the Iowa legislature to fund water quality and ears perked up — a natural impulse to interpret new events as supporting something we already believe or are working on, also known as confirmation bias.

56 percent of Iowans support increasing the state sales tax three-eighths of a cent to pay for water quality projects and outdoor recreation, according to a Selzer and Company poll reported by the Des Moines Register on Feb 12.

On March 14, Rep. Bobby Kaufmann (R-Wilton) introduced such a bill: the WISE (Water, Infrastructure and Soil for our Economy) bill House File 597.

After a three year implementation the tax would generate $180 million to fund Iowa’s Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund, which was created by a 2010 amendment to Iowa’s constitution. It sounds pretty good. However, we shouldn’t let our confirmation bias help Republican efforts to tax the poor, cut the general fund, and support the failed Nutrient Reduction Strategy.

Rep. Chip Baltimore (R-Boone) had previously introduced a water quality bill (HSB 135) addressing structural issues related to the use of water quality funds. Baltimore favored spending funds on watershed programs such as the governor’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy. Kaufmann’s bill mandates 60 percent of funding be directed to “a research-based water quality initiative (that) includes but not limited to a practice described in the Iowa nutrient reduction strategy.”

When Governor Branstad created the Nutrient Reduction Strategy, in response to a federal requirement to address water quality, it was the least he could do. It was a way of tinkering around the edges of a water quality program, leveraging wide-spread concern about the need to act without changing the underlying structure of the system that creates excessive nitrate and phosphate loads in our water.

Branstad’s approach sucked up media attention and political will while doing little to address the root cause of the water quality problem.

“I welcome any legislative effort regardless of party that looks to protect the environment,” a progressive voter posted on Facebook. “While I agree that it is not fair that we have to take on the burden of trying to clean up after the farmers, I also know that they are a stubborn lot that hold great political power in Iowa. Therefore we need to be pragmatic and take whatever we can get while the Republicans are in charge.”

A lot of people would agree with this sentiment.

It’s clear solutions proposed in the Nutrient Reduction Strategy could work. They won’t work until either the strategy is compulsory, or there is funding to support broad participation.

“Republicans sometimes get accused of not being pro-environment, of not being pro-water quality,” Kaufmann said. “Well, this is our way of taking that bull by the horns and putting forth a good, tax-neutral water quality bill that puts guarantees in it that we can make sure dollars go to water quality.”

Despite Kaufmann’s work on the bill there are issues with the WISE approach to water quality.

Sales tax is regressive, which means it would be applied uniformly to all situations, regardless of the payer. Some might argue that everyone uses water so why shouldn’t everyone pay through sales tax? It is a straw man argument. A sales tax takes a larger percentage of income from low-income earners than from people causing this problem.

What’s worse than the regressive nature of sales tax is the Republican position any new tax must be revenue neutral. That means cutting the general fund budget. Where will the legislature find an additional $180 million in budget cuts after a year with three successive revenue shortfalls?

“Kaufmann admits there (are) still some questions about how the bill would affect other state programs,” Rob Swoboda reported in Wallaces Farmer. “But, he says, the only way the Republican-led legislature will pass a water-quality funding plan would be if the plan is revenue-neutral.”

Proposed budget cuts should be defined before advocating for the WISE bill.

There is no need to hold the agricultural community harmless in the pursuit of clean water. In 2013, when developing the Iowa Fertilizer Plant (a.k.a. Orascom) in Wever, Governor Branstad said, “the plant would create 2,500 temporary construction jobs and 165 permanent jobs and save farmers $740 million annually by cutting the price of fertilizer.” Whether or not there was a windfall in fertilizer savings farmers can afford to put skin in the water quality game.

“Where public money is needed (to fund water quality initiatives), consider an obvious source: the sale of farm fertilizer,” former state senator David Osterberg wrote in a May 25, 2016 column in the Des Moines Register. “If an urban person buys fertilizer for the lawn, there is a sales tax on the purchase. Farmers are exempt from the normal sales tax on fertilizer and a lot of other things. There is no reason for this exemption. Put the sales tax on fertilizer, earmark it to water-quality strategies and you have, conservatively, about $130 million a year to work with.”

While a majority of voters agree something must be done to improve water quality, political capital to act shouldn’t be diverted to supporting failed Republican policies just because they sound good or appear to support what we all believe.

Categories
Environment

Kansas Wildfires

Kansas Wildfire March 2017 Photo Credit: Travis Morisse/The Hutchinson News via AP

Yesterday I loaded pallets of fence posts, barbed wire and bottled water on a trailer pulled by two farmers in a pickup truck.

They were bound for Kansas where wildfires fed by wind gusting at 70 m.p.h. burned 650,000 acres and killed thousands of cattle during calving season.

Tens of thousands of miles of fence need to be replaced. The home, farm and auto supply store where I work donated the items for Kansas ranchers in the aftermath of this month’s record-setting wildfires.

Farmers and ranchers re-earned the state its motto, Ad Astra Per Aspera (To the Stars Through Difficulty).

“We had the perfect storm,” Todd Domer of the Kansas Livestock Association said to CNN. “We had a wet summer and then kind of a dry winter and then you get wind on top of that and then anything that’s flammable will spark.”

The Kansas plains had become a tinderbox.

“It looks like the moonscape,” Domer said. “It just looks like a big sand beach that’s endless.”

I hope our small Iowa contribution will help ranchers recover from the worst wildfires in Kansas history.

Categories
Environment

Erasing the White Board

To-do List
To-do List

Snow fell in darkness leaving a thin blanket of white.

The pin oak tree began shedding last year’s foliage indicating warm weather activated new leaf buds and pushed out the old.

Seems weird to rake leaves in February. More to the point, it’s not normal.

In a couple of hours I return for a fifth season at Local Harvest CSA. The main spring task is soil blocking 72 and 120 cell trays for seed starting in the germination house. Part of my arrangement is keeping some of my own seedlings there. When I’m finished with the farm’s trays, I’ll make one 72 and one 120 tray for myself and seed them with kale, celery and basil. I’m hopeful they will do better than in the south-facing window in our bedroom. Getting my hands dirty with soil is a great way to get ready for spring, three weeks away by the calendar.

Other chores on my white board include doing taxes, computer file backup, cleaning the car, preparing the garden for spring and Belgian lettuce planting this week (traditionally March 2). I made extra servings of spaghetti with tomato sauce for lunches and want to make a batch of taco filling for breakfast on work days at the home, farm and auto supply store. There’s also more writing projects.

During a Climate Reality Project conference call on Thursday, a friend from Waterloo and I decided to work on a project with other friends from Waterloo-Cedar Falls. I’ve done two presentations there and look forward to more meaningful work. We’re planning luncheon, maybe next weekend.

This last lap in the workingman’s race looks to be action packed with local food, environmental and cash producing projects coming into focus.

Night’s snowfall melting in the sun makes way for budding plants in a grey and brown landscape. It is almost time to wipe the whiteboard clean and begin anew.

Categories
Environment Writing

Spring Pilgrimage

“Lordynges,” quod he, “in chirches whan I preche,
I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche,
And rynge it out as round as gooth a belle,
For I kan al by rote that I telle.
My theme is alwey oon, and evere was
Radix malorum est Cupiditas.

~ Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue

From the Ellesmere Manuscript
Chaucer’s Pardoner

Outrage at Iowa Republicans serves no useful purpose. Organize your family and friends, or your neighborhood or your social groups.

Resist.

In our house such endeavors begin by getting to work. Making contact with potential fellow travelers is part of it. So is rejuvenating our spirits. Most important before departing on a pilgrimage, we must question assumptions that led us here, those that lead us on. To flesh out faulty timbers of a political view rendered obsolete by the recent election will take effort. The same indulgences, relics and stones will not serve. Soon work will consume us. Before it does, check the compass and kit bag.

Spring will be here soon and winter’s work is not finished. Begin  there. Today. Head outside with broom in hand and breathe the crisp air of our future… and organize.

Categories
Environment

Letter to the Solon Economist

Woman Writing Letter
Woman Writing Letter

Rain is the best natural resource left in Iowa, helping us grow crops without irrigation because of its abundance.

If other parts of North America can more deserving be called America’s breadbasket — Central Valley, Imperial Valley and Salinas Valley in California particularly — Iowa is due for resurgence because of abundant precipitation combined with California droughts.

Water shortages in California have reached crisis level and despite government actions may not be resolved. If Iowa farmers were to diversify we could overtake California as America’s breadbasket. Now I’m dreaming.

Rain has been a blessing to Iowa and is expected to be our future.

Beginning in 1832, after the Black Hawk War, the landscape of Iowa was transformed from a natural place to a grid of farm fields, cities and towns. Enhanced by global warming, and changes in the polar vortex and prevailing winds, it rains in Iowa — sometimes too much. Rain is all that’s left of what was once a natural world. I’d go so far as to say there is no nature, only sentient beings struggling to survive in this built environment.

No one begrudges Anthony Sells’ saw mill for processing the trees that gave a name to Big Grove Township where I live. There’s plenty of blame for the built environment to go around. It matters little how we got here. What matters more is answering the question what will we do next?

For me that means collecting rain in our yard and preventing erosion. Some rain will be stored in plant life, some in vegetables and fruit. Some will make it to the ditch and the nearby lake. Take what rain we need and release the rest into the Mississippi basin and beyond. Have faith in rain.

What’s here is rain. Rain remains, it’s covalently bonded electrons exemplary of our being. Let it rain.

~ Published in the Jan. 19, 2017 edition of the Solon Economist/North Liberty Leader.

Categories
Environment

Rain Remains

Raindrops
Raindrops

Rain is the best natural resource left in Iowa, helping us grow crops without irrigation because of its abundance.

Rain has been a blessing and is expected to be our future.

Beginning in 1832, after the Black Hawk War, the landscape of Iowa was transformed from a natural place to a grid of farm fields, cities and towns. Enhanced by global warming, and changes in the polar vortex and prevailing winds, it rains in Iowa — sometimes too much. Rain is all that’s left of what was once a natural world. I’d go so far as to say there is no nature, only sentient beings struggling to survive in this built environment.

No one begrudges Sell’s sawmill on Old Mill Creek for processing the logs that gave a name to our township. There’s plenty of blame for the built environment to go around. It matters little how we got here. What matters more is answering the question what will we do next?

For us that means collecting rain in our yard and preventing erosion. Some rain will be stored in plant life, some in vegetables and fruit. Some will make it to the ditch and the nearby lake — a lot less than did when we moved here.

It’s important to consider rain and leverage its abundance. Take what we need and release the rest into the Mississippi basin and beyond. Have faith in rain.

If other parts of North America can more deserving be called America’s breadbasket — Central Valley, Imperial Valley and Salinas Valley in California particularly — Iowa is due for resurgence because of abundant precipitation combined with California droughts. Water shortages in California have reached crisis level and despite government actions may not be resolved. If Iowa farmers were to diversify we could overtake California as America’s breadbasket. Now I’m dreaming.

What’s here is rain. Rain remains, it’s covalently bonded electrons exemplary of our being. We consider the built environment and let it rain.

Categories
Environment

Making Climate Change Personal

Animal Tracks
Animal Tracks

“We could use some of that global warming,” a truck driver told me.

It was a joke. The ambient temperature was in the low teens and we both work outside as part of our jobs. If the weather were warmer our jobs would be easier. I thought it was funny.

“I don’t really believe in global warming,” he said after a pause.

“It doesn’t really matter if you do,” I replied. “Like it or not our climate is changing because of man-made global warming. It affects us even when it is cold.”

He seemed skeptical. Given a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal I should have expected his response.

Our perception of climate change and willingness to accept scientific evidence about it is shaped by what we experience, according to Scott Waldman, writing in Scientific American.

That means if one lives where weather is cooler than average, he is more likely to be a climate change skeptic, deferring to personal experience as a guide. If one lives where it is warmer than average, she is more likely to accept the science of climate change, also deferring to personal experience as a guide.

“When personal experience and expert opinion don’t align on a topic that’s not critical to an individual’s well-being, they’re going to go with their gut rather than what the expert tells them,” Robert Kaufmann, the study’s lead author said.

The article’s title is a mouthful — “Spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism.” Here’s the crux:

Kaufmann said it’s human nature to trust one’s own experience over scientific evidence or political wisdom.

“Unless it really affects my everyday life, I’m not going to spend time studying this issue, and I’m not necessarily going to believe scientists either, especially now that experts are held in such ill repute, but I’m going to make up my mind based on how I can see and feel climate change,” he said. “For many people, that is record-high and record-low temperatures.”

Such attitudes notwithstanding almost two-thirds of voters across all parties want the Trump administration and the Congress to do more to address global warming, according to Kaufmann.

I appreciate a good climate change joke in the middle of winter because it presents an opportunity to address the fact climate is changing because of human-made global warming, and there is scientific evidence to support it. The conversation is something we should have more often, yet people avoid talking about climate change.

“Most Americans say global warming is personally important to them, but don’t talk or hear about it much,” Edward Maibach and others from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication wrote.

In “Is there a Climate ‘Spiral of Silence’ in America?” the authors found “more than half of those who are interested in global warming or think the issue is important “rarely” or “never” talk about it with family and friends (57 percent and 54 percent respectively).” Fewer than half of Americans say they hear about global warming in the media monthly or more, and only one in five Americans hear people they know talk about global warming at least once a month according to the article.

It’s pretty quiet out there regarding discussion of global warming and climate change.

“The future of the planetary conditions on which human civilization depends are reliant now more than ever upon scientists and innovators, businesses and civil society, and our collective efforts to accelerate the implementation of the solutions to the climate crisis that are already available and cost-effective,” former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore wrote in Scientific American.

If that’s the case, and no one is talking about climate change, how can we create meaningful action to mitigate the effects global warming is having on us?

The good news is technological solutions to the problem are working as the price of renewable energy approaches parity with fossil fuels. In some markets, solar generation of electricity is cheaper than with fossil fuels. If technology will lead the business community to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global warming, we are part of the way there. Technology alone won’t drive the change we need. To find political will for action, every voter should engage in the issues. What can we do?

For my part I’m going appreciate the value of a good climate change joke, and use them to break the ice on conversations about the need to act on climate. People may agree or disagree, but talking about global warming and climate change, and the science behind them, is as important as laughter on a chilly day, or a cold drink during a drought.

Categories
Environment Kitchen Garden Sustainability Work Life Writing

On Our Own into 2017

Western Sky at Sunrise
Western Sky at Sunrise

In this final 2016 post it was easier than last year to outline my writing plans.

The work I do to pay bills and support my writing has been tough mentally and physically. To cope with an aging frame and occasionally distracted mind I have had to focus. That meant planning, and then with discipline, working the plan. 2016 was a mixed bag and I expect to do better in 2017.

I seldom post about my personal life and family — at least directly. That leaves issues I confront every day as grist for the keyboard.

There are four broad, intersecting topics about which I’ll write during the coming year.

Low Wage Work and Working Poor

Not only do I earn low wages in all of my jobs, I meet a lot of people who do too. During the last four years I developed a framework for viewing how people sustain their lives without a big job or high salary. A focus on raising the minimum wage, wage theft or immigration status may be timely but most of what I read misses the mark. Stories fail to recognize the complexity with which low wage workers piece together a life. This subject needs more exposition and readers can expect it here.

Food Cultivation, Processing and Cooking

Living on low wages includes knowledge of how to grow, process and prepare some of our own food. My frequent posts on this topic have been intended to tell a story about how the work gets done. I plan to grow another big garden in 2017 and perform the same seasonal farm work. I sent off a membership form to Practical Farmers of Iowa this morning and expect my experience with that group to contribute to food related writing.

Nuclear Abolition

I renewed my membership in Physicians for Social Responsibility. We have a global footprint and as a member I have access to almost everything going on world-wide to abolish one of the gravest threats to human life. The president elect made some startling statements about nuclear weapons this month. The subject should hold interest and perhaps offer an opportunity to get something done toward abolition. The United Nations voted to work toward a new treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. They did so without the support of the United States or any of the other nuclear armed states. In that tension alone there should be a number of posts.

Global Warming and Climate Change

My framework has been membership in the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Like with Physicians for Social Responsibility we have a global footprint with thousands of Climate Leaders. We have access to the latest information about climate change and its solutions. The key dynamic, however, is how work toward accepting the reality of climate change occurs on a local level. What researchers are finding is skepticism about the science of climate change originates in the personal experience of people where they live. If the weather is very hot and dry they tend to believe in climate change. If it is cold, they tend not to believe. Thing is, climate change and human contributions to it are not a belief system as much as they are facts. Global warming and climate change already affect us whether we believe or doubt.

So that’s the plan. While you are here, click on the tag cloud to find something else to read. I hope you will return to read more in 2017.

Categories
Environment

Letter to the Solon Economist

the-climate-reality-project-logoSome of us aren’t doing any soul searching after the 2016 general election.

Democrats lost, and as a Democrat that means something to me personally. Yet I know what I stand for and so do my friends and family.

Nothing about our beliefs was changed by the election of Donald Trump. If anything, we plan to work harder to advocate for what we believe is just.

Last week the president-elect and his daughter met with former Vice President Al Gore. Gore’s statement after the meeting was important as it pertains to mitigating the negative impact of man-made global warming and climate change on humans. It also applies more generally.

“Despair is just another form of denial. There is no time to despair. We don’t have time to lick our wounds, to hope for a different election outcome,” Gore wrote. “We have to win this struggle and we will win it; the only question is how fast we win.”

I share Gore’s optimism and so should people who care about leaving a better world for our descendants.

Categories
Environment

24 Hours of Reality — 2016 Edition


Who knows what President Trump’s impact on the environment will be?

To hold ground environmental advocates have claimed since the Nixon administration, we can’t ignore the renewed challenges presented by the mogul’s rise to power.

We don’t know what Trump will do, however, environmental advocates have been stroking against the current all along. The stakes are too high to give up now, nor will we.

We are stronger together so I plan to join with my colleagues at The Climate Reality Project for mutual support and direction. A perfectly timed kickoff is the 24 Hours of Reality webcast scheduled Dec. 5 and 6. I will tune in for at least part of it and encourage readers to do likewise.

Here’s what our chairman had to say after the election:

In every great struggle humanity has undertaken, the march towards progress has included both successes and setbacks. And the struggle to protect and save the Earth’s ecological system is no exception.

Today, I am as optimistic and resolved as ever that we will solve the climate crisis. Our collective efforts are dependent not on politics or ideology — or elections — but on our commitment to each other, to the health of our planet and to a sustainable future for all.
We must — and will — continue to find hope and joy in our work that will define humanity for generations.

Last night President-elect Trump said he wanted to be a president for all Americans. In that spirit, I hope that he will work with the overwhelming majority of us who believe that the climate crisis is the greatest threat we face as a nation.

I wish him well in these efforts and intend to do everything I can to work with him and his administration to ensure that our nation remains a leader in the global effort to meet this challenge. Moreover, there is reason to believe that it is not naive or Pollyannaish to hope for more than what we fear.

We have already made great strides to solve the climate crisis all around the world. The work that has been done by civil society, businesses, investors, and governments at all levels will continue to be driven by the fact that solutions to the climate crisis are not just vital to our planet, but are vital to our economy. The market forces driving the transition to a sustainable economy simply will not be slowed.

Less than a year ago, when the historic Paris Agreement was reached, we knew that our journey was only beginning. We knew this work would not be easy – indeed, more would be required. Now we know that our work must be redoubled.

Today, without regard to last night’s outcome, we must turn our focus to making the promises of the Paris Agreement a reality by embracing the forces that are already working to grow our economy and transform our energy future.

A sustainable future is in sight – but we cannot take it for granted. We must fight for the future we all believe in. Now, more than ever, our planet needs us – and I’m inspired by the knowledge that we’ll take the path forward together.

Al Gore
Founder and Chairman
The Climate Reality Project

Closer to home, I’ve long followed State Senator Rob Hogg who is an advocate for protecting the environment and a member of The Climate Reality Project. Recently elected minority leader in the Iowa Senate, Hogg offered this advice:

Continue to speak up with elected officials. A Doubting Thomas today can be a leader for climate action tomorrow. Remind Republicans of their successes including the Clean Air Act, the Montreal Protocol, and solar energy investment tax credits. Do not let them off the hook by ignoring them.

Midway through my seventh decade of life it is time to get more active. I am ready for what lies ahead and the road forward.