A climate conversation brought to you by Ecomadres, Moms Clean Air Force, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Iowa Farmers Union.
Join Us! Sunday, January 19th @ 2:00 PM CST
Iowa Events Center at Hy Vee Hall, Room 312
Our Speakers:
Mustafa Santiago Ali, Vice President of Environmental Justice, Climate, and Community Revitalization for the National Wildlife Federation Dianne Dillon-Ridgely, Board Member for the National Wildlife Federation Karin Stein, Iowa state Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force Malik Russell, Director of Communications for The Climate Mobilization
From our ally “Gray is Green” : Public Opinions on Climate Change
A recent report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication confirms that the tide of public opinion on climate change has finally turned. Some findings:
About seven in ten Americans (72%) think global warming is happening.
About six in ten Americans (59%) understand that global warming is mostly human-caused.
More than four in ten Americans (45%) think people in the United States are being harmed by global warming “right now.”
This is good news, because another recent report looking at the accuracy of climate model predictions since the 1970s found that the models were mostly quite accurate, which confirms what has already become a global scientific consensus about human-caused climate change. Public understanding of what scientists already know is critical to meeting the challenge.
Changing Consumer Behavior
With the majority of Americans now at least somewhat concerned with global warming, encouraging changed behavior is more likely to be effective. The past decade has seen a rise in “nudging” toward climate-friendly behaviors: providing gentle coaxing in messaging instead of relying on individuals to be internally motivated. Hotels, for instance, provide notes that encourage customers to reuse their towels. Water bottle refill stations include a counter display to tell users how many plastic bottles have been taken out of the trash. Continued attention to such messaging in consumer settings will help swing the population’s behavior in the direction we need it to go.
New Carbon Neutral Certification
There’s a new way for consumers to make environmentally responsible buying choices from the nonprofit Climate Neutral: a certification for products that reduce carbon emissions throughout the entire production and distribution process. Companies can achieve this through a combination of measuring the carbon footprint of products, reducing that footprint, and offsetting emissions that cannot be neutralized through carbon offset investments. After that, a company is granted permission to display a carbon neutral label on its products. The nonprofit is invested in educating consumers about these certified options as well as supporting companies in meeting each step.
Institutional Responses to Climate Change
But as we know, effectively tackling climate change will take much more than individual action. Governments and big business need to implement significant large-scale changes. A new global climate advisory and investment firm, Pollination, is aiming to help that happen by “bringing together experts who can break down barriers to the transition to a clean future, and redirect capital that has been committed but not to climate solutions.” The firm’s goal is to help transform entire economies by supporting governments and corporations in making changes they know need to happen but don’t know how to do.
In another sector, a group of scientists and conservation professionals came together to identify the most significant threats and opportunities for biodiversity over the next year in a horizon scan of global biological conservation. Such research can help policy makers understand what issues—such as the decline of kelp forests, land-use change in response to production of cellulose from wood, and even the risk of losing net neutrality—need attention right now.
Documentaries for Environmental Education
For your own viewing pleasure, or if you need to offer education to climate change skeptics in your life, check out these must-see environmental documentaries from the past decade. They cover everything from natural disaster to sustainable agriculture to consumer choices to food waste. Some are feature-length films, while others, such as the Netflix’s docu-series Explained, offer pithier explanations of specific issues.
Saturday, Robert A Lee Community Center, Iowa City, 9 to 11:30 am
Happy plants: 100% local, 100% organic.
Get a jump on your plant shopping at the Backyard Abundance plant sale fundraiser.
• Vegetables, herbs, berries and pollinator-friendly plants.
• Experts carefully researched each variety.
• Purchases help fund environmental education events.
Sad note: No vermicomposting worms will be available this year.
MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNT AND EARLY ENTRY
Members of Backyard Abundance receive a 10% discount on all purchases and can enter the sale at 8:30 am to get first pick of plants.
Learn about membership: http://www.backyardabundance.org/HowtoHelp/Membership.aspx
EXPERT ADVICE
Got gardening questions? Green thumbs will help you…
• Select plants
• Understand how to establish your plants
• Provide advice on watering, care and harvest
EDIBLE PLANTS
Below are just a few of the edible plants that will be available.
Fruits
• Aronia berry
• Blackberry, Thornless
• Currant
• Elderberry
• Gooseberry
• Hardy fig
• Nanking cherry
• Pawpaw tree
• Peach tree
• Persimmon tree
• Plum tree
• Raspberry
• Strawberry
FLOWERS AND NATIVE PLANTS
Native prairie plants will also be available:
• Anise Hyssop
• Bee balm
• Bellflower
• Big bluestem
• Black eyed Susan
• Blue wild indigo
• Butterfly weed
• Cardinal flower
• Coneflower
• Marsh blazing star
• Milkweed
• Rattlesnake master
• Sunflower
• Wild ginger
• Yarrow
• Zinnia
GROWERS AND VENDORS
Local growers and vendors will be on-hand so you can ask questions about their wonderful plants and merchandise.
• The Millet Seed: Vegetables and herbs grown in an urban garden.
• Echollective Farm: Sign up for a CSA share while perusing herbs and veggies.
• Green Share LLC: Heirloom and organic vegetables, herbs and flowers.
• Beautiful Land Products: Native plants and organic potting mix.
• Plantchanters Garden & Yoga: Herbal care and wellness.
• Willow Sprite: Willow garden art made with love.
• Jon Lorence – Big Grove Basketry: Beautiful baskets.
INFORMATION
Thank you to organizations for providing their excellent information.
• Johnson County Master Gardeners of Iowa: Gardening publications.
• Johnson County Recycling and Compost: Information about compost and composting.
• Good Neighbor Iowa: Declare your pesticide-free landscape.
PAYMENT METHODS
We accept cash, checks and all major credit cards.
THANK YOU
Special thanks to…
• The many volunteers who cultivated plants, coordinated the event, and provided brilliant ideas.
• The Iowa City Parks and Recreation Department for their on-going sponsorship and support.
Bankers understand finance, money and good investments. So, when community banks step up to install solar energy panels on their buildings, that’s a strong signal that renewable energy is both good for business and good for the environment.
Solar energy is accelerating in the Midwest as the technology keeps improving, the economics get better and environmental quality benefits are valued.
Decorah Bank & Trust added its first solar panel in 2008 and has installed enough building rooftop and parking canopy solar arrays at its Decorah and Cresco banks to power almost 20 entire Iowa households.
Eight of Peoples Bank’s nine locations are likewise equipped with rooftop solar panels that provide 70% to 90% of the bank’s energy. The Clive, Waukee and Adel sites also have electric vehicle charging stations that are free for their customers and staff. That’s a smart marketing tool to attract customers with electric vehicles to come over to these banks to do business.
Peoples Bank has also invested in battery storage for backup reliability at its Clive bank in the event of an outage. As batteries gets more efficient and costs drop, they’re replacing bulky diesel generators.
Peoples Bank CEO John Rigler II explained: “Battery storage makes so much more sense. There are no moving parts whatsoever, they don’t wear out, they don’t make any noise. It’s good business practice.
It makes financial sense for us.”
Solar energy is most available on hot, sunny days when peak demand occurs as air conditioners’ load is high and commercial electricity rates spike. More businesses are now looking to install solar energy on their buildings both to avoid high utility rates and to advance environmental values.
Decorah Bank & Trust has designed loan programs that often cover 100% of small-business, residential and farm renewable energy projects.
The grants and tax credits available for Iowans installing solar support loan repayments, making this another example of how doing good can be good business.
“The climate crisis forces you to take some action and seize opportunities,” said Decorah Bank & Trust President and CEO Ben Grimstad. “In the case of the bank, the opportunity is to encourage people to develop renewable energy — and we’ll loan you the money to do it.”
These aren’t the only Iowa community banks helping grow renewable energy, as South Story Bank and Trust in Huxley and Iowa State Bank and Trust in Fairfield can attest.
These community bankers are savvy and sensible. They’re investing in solar energy generation that’s good for their banks’ bottom line, good for the environment and good for the community.
Leave it to bankers to recognize the economic benefits and customer service
Government leaders across the globe are reckoning with the climate crisis, and because of the efforts of a band of teenagers, so are leaders in Iowa City.
Taking a cue from international teenager climate activist Greta Thunberg, the Climate Strikers have held Friday strikes for months. Many of the protesters can’t drive yet, but, together with the help of community allies and parents who can drive them to protests, they have pressured local school administrators and politicians to do more to address our local carbon footprint.
Along the way, they enlisted the help of 16-year-old Thunberg, fresh off her scathing condemnation of world leaders at the United Nations.
The strikes have ranged in attendance, from one to thousands, but the common denominator has been City High student Massimo Paciotto-Biggers, 14.
Inspired by Thunberg, Paciotto-Biggers started the strikes with the help of friends last spring and is the Press-Citizen’s person of the year. Through the year, the teenager has worked with peers and community partners to apply a steady pressure on elected officials
“We kind of realized adults need to step up, and start acting, not talking,” Paciotto-Biggers said. “That still is our biggest demand. We need to start acting.”
Climate activism is also familiar in Paciotto-Biggers’ family. The teen’s dad, Jeff Biggers, is an author and climate activist, who around the time the protests started, penned a column calling for Mayor Jim Throgmorton to bolster the city’s climate goals or resign.
The climate strikes have seen results, though protesters have not gotten everything they asked for.
The strikes started with a handful of students walking out of classes to downtown Iowa City in April of 2019, but soon moved to the hill outside the ICCSD administration building. The group demanded solar panels at every campus and that environmental sustainability lessons are built into the curriculum.
At Iowa City school board meetings, they stressed state and international indicators of climate change: Flooding in Iowa, news of worsening heatwaves, a UN report of unprecedented extinctions and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s reports of carbon dioxide levels reaching an 800,000-year high.
Paciotto-Biggers told board members he was frustrated administrators did not meet with students on the hill, despite media coverage and declarations of climate emergencies across the nation.
“You have three choices tonight: You can do nothing and dismiss us as if we don’t matter, you can do something symbolic that doesn’t really amount to much,” said a nervous Paciotto-Biggers at a May school board meeting, nine weeks into the weekly protests. “Or you can make a climate resolution that really means something, that is something that will last.”
Former Hawkeye, NFL and City High star Tim Dwight speaks to students during a weekly walkout demanding solar panels on school buildings, Friday, April 19, 2019, outside the Iowa City Community School District offices along North Dodge Street in Iowa City, Iowa. Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen
Alex Howe, a South East Junior High eight-grader, speaks during a weekly walkout demanding solar panels on school buildings, Friday, April 19, 2019, outside the Iowa City Community School District offices along North Dodge Street in Iowa City, Iowa. Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen
The school board acted — though not quite meeting the group’s ask. The board agreed to create more curriculum around climate change and to increase recycling efforts, but it did not agree to the group’s target for reducing district greenhouse gas emissions to that of the rates that are forecast to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC estimates human-caused carbon dioxide emissions need to drop by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and drop to net zero by 2050. This goal has become a standard for the Climate Strikers.
But where the strikers called for a 45% reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, the school board resolved to only hire a consultant to calculate current carbon dioxide emissions and work to reduce emissions.
Around this time, the protesters started striking at the City of Iowa City offices. They met with city officials, traded a testy Twitter interaction with mayor Jim Throgmorton and on Aug. 6, the council declared a climate emergency.
With the declaration, the city council amended the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan passed less than a year ago. Prior to the changes, the city’s plan called for the city to reduce carbon dioxide emission by 26% to 28% by 2025 and by 80% by 2050.
Now the city aims to reduce emissions in line with the IPCC’s reduction levels. This December, the City of Iowa City released its plan to reach this new accelerated goal.
City officials tasked with meeting the new goals say doing so will require the city to garner community buy-in and to incentivize carbon emission reductions.
Strikers have since then turned their sights to the University of Iowa, which, along with MidAmerican Energy, accounts for 57% of carbon emissions in Iowa City, according to the city.
Fresh off August’s global Climate Strike, which garnered hundreds of participants in Iowa City, the student climate strikers posted an open letter to UI President Bruce Harreld in September.
In it, the group called for UI to immediately stop burning coal and to commit to 100% renewable energy sources by 2030. 100 Grannies, State Sen. Joe Bolkcom and a dozen former UI students signed onto the open letter, which also criticized UI’s impending public-private partnership to run utilities.
Greta Thunberg comes to Iowa City
The group’s biggest validation came from Greta Thunberg’s visit to Iowa City to strike with students. Paciotto-Biggers recalls the shock of seeing on Twitter that Thunberg would be joining their strike the Tuesday before the Friday strike.
“It was insane. It was crazy. We never thought she would actually come,” Paciotto-Biggers said. “I was really just blown away, it was like ‘wow, we’re really being listened to by the rest of the world.’”
Also, recognized by Rod Sullivan in his Salvo Salutes for 2019:
IC Climate Strikers: When it comes to the most critical issue of our time, high school students have led the charge. The Iowa City Climate Strikers have made real change in their community. There is much work left to do – and I like our chances, given the presence of the IC Climate Strikers!
Congratulations to our member Lynn Gallagher for being chosen as one of Rod Sullivan’s annual “Salvos Salutes”
From Rod’s Salvos newsletter: “Activists, regardless of the topic about which they are passionate, should follow the lead of Lynn Gallagher of rural Solon. Lynn is a vegan, and staunchly opposes any mistreatment of animals. To Lynn, this includes farming animals for meat and milk. Lynn’s activism is often met with anger and bullying, but she is undeterred. I don’t know any activists who are better prepared and have studied the issues more carefully. Just as importantly, Lynn always follows every rule to a T, and is unfailingly polite.”
