Task force looking at climate change solutions

Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie says he feels a sense of relief on the heels of a report that details worsening climate change in Iowa and the nation.

The longtime environmental advocate, who will host President Barack Obama's Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience today and Wednesday in Des Moines, said he senses there's a broader understanding of the issues now.

Last week's National Climate Assessment and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are speaking with a clear voice, Cownie said: Humans are causing the planet to warm. And it's expected to continue without action.

"It's no longer, 'Maybe climate change is happening,' " Cownie said. "We have the science and data that prove climate change is happening. We know scientifically what the causes are. Now, we need to set about dealing with it."

The White House panel is a good start, Cownie said. The group — representing eight governors, 16 mayors and two tribal representatives — will make recommendations to the president on how to prepare for and reduce the impact of climate change.

"Now we're looking at solutions," said Cownie, whose love of nature began with his grandparents, farmers near Boone who talked with him about being good stewards of the land.

Cownie said addressing climate change will affect everything from the economy to how we power our homes and businesses to our health and how our farmers feed the world.

Climate change also creates challenges for cities like Des Moines as flooding and other extreme weather break up roads, bridges and buildings. Last week's climate report said the Midwest has seen a 37 percent increase in the number of heavy rain events over 50 years.

"It's not just what we build, but where we build it that we have to examine," he said.

Climate change "will cause us to rethink what our economy looks like, how we energize it, what our renewables look like," he said. "There will be a huge, huge push to get off the carbon sources of power and energy and get more renewable energy, like wind and solar and geothermal, that have a much smaller carbon footprint."

Cownie admits those shifts are complicated. For example, distributed energy generation such as building solar panels on homes could create reduced demand for utilities. Residents who want to add wind energy now run into restrictions in urban areas.

Finding real climate-change solutions is unlikely without cooperation between cities and their rural neighbors — a relationship that's often contentious.

For example, Bill Stowe, the Des Moines Water Works CEO, pushed for stronger regulations for large animal feeding operations in Iowa at a public hearing last week, saying that row-crop farming and animal confinements are degrading central Iowa's drinking water. Last year, the utility spent nearly $1 million removing nitrates from drinking water used by 500,000 customers.

The agency is considering legal action to force stricter state regulations of farm operations, Stowe said.

"When we look at our own resources in Iowa, we don't have to look too far to say we have water quality problems," Cownie said. "We need to address them.

"It's not just an urban problem. We have to figure out how to get urban, suburban and rural folks in Iowa to sit down and figure out how we deal with water flooding and the unfortunate" soil erosion occurring in the state, he said. "We can't just turn our backs on problems anymore."

The state has adopted a plan to reduce nitrates, phosphates and other nutrients entering rivers, streams and lakes. The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a voluntary effort, is part of a broader initiative to reduce the size of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It's sparked millions of dollars of investment in watershed improvements and conservation initiatives such as cover crops, among other efforts.

A recent estimate from Iowa State University agronomy professor Rick Cruse said Iowa is losing $1 billion in corn and soybean yield potential with soil erosion. Cownie said it benefits Iowa farmers to adopt conservation methods that retain topsoil and nutrients.

"Probably the most important asset in Iowa is our soil and our ability to raise crops on it," Cownie said. "We're losing soil productivity because our soil isn't what it was."

Both urban and rural Iowans need to reconsider how prairie grasses, trees, contour planting and other conservation efforts will protect the soil, result in better absorption of precipitation and capture nutrients, and lessen downstream flooding.

In "pre-settlement time," 85 percent of the moisture that fell in Iowa was absorbed on site, and 15 percent went into streams, Cownie said. "Today that's reversed," he said. "It's what we're planting as well as what we've removed."

"It's not enough just to maintain the quality of the ground. We have to improve it," Cownie said.

More on the meeting

University, state and local leaders will talk about climate change and its impact in Iowa today, beginning with registration at 7:30 a.m. at the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates, 100 Locust St., Des Moines. Presentations will last until 12:45 p.m. Wednesday's discussions are restricted to panel members.