Climate change is real. Iowa shouldn’t pretend otherwise. | Opinion

Every delay in taking action is a capitulation to a future of increased warming-fueled hardship. Leaders should promote conversations about climate change.

• The Trump White House is pretending climate change doesn’t exist, and Iowa policymakers are taking a similar approach.
• The main climate change bill still alive in the Legislature orders regulators to ignore it and removes the idea from state law.
• The Department of Education is debating science education standards that, earlier, omitted the words “climate change.”
• People know climate change is hurting people; Iowa shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

The attitude toward climate change in Iowa state government over the past decade or so might best be summarized as blissful ignorance.

Evidence about human activity’s contribution to increasing global temperatures keeps piling up, prompting aggressive mitigation proposals from scientists and officials in other states and jurisdictions. It’s all been of little apparent concern to Iowa’s top policymakers. No matter that one of the state’s prominent industries, crop agriculture, is particularly sensitive to climate shifts. Leaders have been fretting about ballooning costs for property insurance, but they mostly refrain from acknowledging the connection to predictions of increasingly severe disasters.

In this environment, it’s no surprise that the first major deadline for the 2025 Iowa Legislature has passed with no legislation to address climate change surviving. What is new this year, though, is outright antagonism at various levels of government toward even acknowledging climate change. It wasn’t enough, it seems, to simply ignore regulators, researchers, educators and all manner of other experts. For at least some policymakers, suppression is next.

It’s the wrong direction. Our ability to mitigate the most severe effects of climate change is constantly diminishing. That means every delay in taking action is a capitulation to a future of increased warming-fueled hardship. Leaders should promote conversations about climate change and enact policies that bring about sustainability.

More: Editorial: Iowa should dedicate a state office to leadership on climate change mitigation and adaptation

Legislature moves toward scratching ‘climate’ out of the law

The word “climate” appears in just a handful of hundreds of bills introduced in the Iowa Legislature this year. One has met the criteria to still be considered. House File 302 would remove 1990s language from Iowa Code expressing Iowa’s intent “to reduce the state’s dependency upon petroleum products; to reduce atmospheric contamination of this state’s environment from the combustion of fossil fuels.” And it would tell the Iowa Utilities Commission that it “shall not consider climate change when determining whether to grant a permit” for a hazardous liquid pipeline, like the carbon dioxide conduits companies want to crisscross the state. Reducing ethanol plant emissions that contribute to warming is one of proponents’ arguments for the pipelines.  

Much of the opposition to the pipelines has been on grounds unrelated to climate change. Formally disavowing the reality of climate change is a shortsighted way to pursue that opposition.

Iowans scold Department of Education over science-standard wording

Elsewhere in the Capitol complex, Iowa educators last week reviewed public feedback about proposed updates to the state’s 250-plus standards for science education for kindergarten through 12th grade. The months-long process attracted unusual attention earlier this year when a different group of educators that helped write the revised standards noticed that some language sent out for public feedback was different than what they remembered working on. Specifically, the words “evolution” and “climate change” were often replaced with “biological change over time” and “climate trends.”

Iowa Department of Education officials said they received over 5,000 written comments about the standards and that over 200 people attended four public forums. One teacher charged with reviewing the public feedback – which included many comments about restoring “evolution” and “climate change” – asked who had made the intervening changes. “That’s just always been part of our process,” responded Chris Like, science consultant for the department. Like declined to be interviewed.

The extensive public involvement in the standards-revision process is commendable and could result in the state Board of Education approving the correct scientific terminology this spring. But it’s alarming that somebody with influence thought that muddying these waters was worth considering.

Trump’s rejection of climate science threatens all Americans

No current discussion of climate change policy could be complete without summarizing the sea change in the federal government under President Donald Trump. A far-from-comprehensive look:

• Trump is unabashedly pursuing the repeal of regulations related to climate mitigation and environmental protection, and stopping any progress achieved through President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
• His gutting of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association threatens to destroy research on climate effects, to say nothing of the prospect of setting weather forecasting back by decades.
• Trump’s peculiar antipathy toward renewable energy in general and wind turbines in particular is well known.
• On Wednesday, Aaron Szabo, Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change office, told senators that U.S. policy should be about only adapting to higher temperatures, not trying to stop them from happening, the Hill reported.

The country will suffer for Trump’s dismissal of climate science.

For now, more people are understanding climate-change harms

A new survey of over 1,000 adults by Yale and George Mason University researchers found that 39% of Americans believe global warming is significantly harming the health of Americans, up from 31% in 2014. Could climate denial at all levels of government reverse that awareness?

Officials in Iowa have the opportunity to lead. They can continue to at least acknowledge harmful emissions in state law and move from there to taking real steps to reduce them. They can ensure that children receive accurate information about the world they are growing up in. They can take any step in their purview, such as restoring the city of Des Moines’ sustainability office, to show the seriousness of the issue.

Give Iowans the truth.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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