The climate crisis is personally affecting all of us in Iowa. It's robbing us blind.
We Iowans, or at least some of us, like to think of ourselves as better educated and even smarter than the average American.
As it turns out, research by the U.S. Census Bureau disputes that we’re better educated, finding that Iowans are actually below average. But since there is no statistical data available for how smart we are, let’s assume for the moment that Iowans are, in fact, smarter. Which begs the question: If we are all that smart, how is it that so many of us can be utterly oblivious to being robbed blind?
In its most recent opinion survey on climate change, researchers at Yale University found that while most Iowans believe that humans are causing climate change, only 37% said climate change has affected them personally. This is where the being robbed blind comes in.
Take a look at these figures.
In the early 1990s, the annual federal budget to cover the cost of natural disasters was in the low single digits (in billions of dollars). Today, thanks to the ever-intensifying storms climate change has brought, that budget has ballooned to about $70 billion a year. That’s more than a tenfold increase. Who do 37% of Iowans think is paying for this, taxpayers from the other 49 states?
Then there’s the mushrooming cost of our Federal Crop Insurance Program, which, of course, is vital to Iowa’s economy. Since 2001, the program’s total payments have grown by over 630%, from about $3 billion a year to over $19 billion in 2022. Why? The increasingly severe droughts and floods that climate scientists have long predicted. Who do we imagine is footing the bill for these losses?
But wait. There’s more. In a Register opinion piece published last September, Jeff Menary, CEO of Iowa-based Grinnell Mutual, identified our climate’s “changing weather patterns” and “the more and more catastrophic weather events” it produces as a major reason for the swiftly rising cost of insuring our homes. In 2022 alone, US insurers paid out $99 billion in claims related to natural disasters, resulting in premiums increasing by an average of 21 percent in the following year.
Oh, and let’s not forget the Inflation Reduction Act’s $400 billion in climate mitigation, an expense brought to us courtesy of Big Oil and its 40-year effort to hide what its own scientists knew, that fossil fuels are rapidly and dangerously altering Earth’s climate.
Last but not least, climate change is a major factor driving our soaring food prices — by nearly 6% in 2023 alone.
So what’s the bottom line? Climate change already is costing Iowa families upwards of thousands of dollars a year.
How is it, then, in the face of these ever-worsening financial burdens, that a full 37% of folks in our state think climate change is not affecting them?
Of course, they, like all of us, are constantly being fed Big Oil’s Big Lies through politicians and media more committed to ideology than to us: lies like “Climate change is a hoax,” or “It’s unrelated to human activity,” or “It’s nothing we need to be concerned about.”
Meanwhile, the four biggest oil companies — Exxon Mobile, Shell, Chevron, and Total Energies — have made over $330 billion in profits in just the past three years.
Surely we Iowans are smart enough to connect the dots, aren’t we? I guess we’ll find out next November when we will either choose candidates who will take action to mitigate these climate change-driven expenses, and hold Big Oil accountable, or cast our votes for those who are content to see us continue to be robbed blind.
Jonas Magram lives in Fairfield and is a cofounder of Climate Action Iowa.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowans are being robbed blind with climate change costs
