Climate champions deserve praise and support

David E. Drake | Special to the Register

Iowa has no shortage of groups working to slow down and prevent further climate change. They include groups such as Bold Iowa, Indigenous Iowa, Sierra Club Iowa, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Sage sisters of Solidarity, 100 Grannies, Iowa Environmental Council, Iowa Interfaith Power and Light, Interfaith Green Coalition, Iowa Citizens Climate Lobby, Iowa 350.org and Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility. Members of these groups are committed, persuasive and active at grass roots, state and national levels.

Living in two states can lend a perspective on where I just was. I recently received a text from our son in nearby Durango, Colo. — "The mornings have been so weird here, this past week. It smells like a camp fire outside. Can’t have windows open.” While our daughter from Atlanta was visiting me in nearby Pagosa Springs, her eyes were irritated while a smoky haze obliterated usually spacious views of the San Juan Mountains.

On a recent morning, a fire burned on the east side of Pagosa Springs, where I live when not in Des Moines. Weeks earlier the 416 fire burned 90 minutes west of here — leading to formation of "pyrocumulus" clouds, which form from heated air above fires. Meanwhile in Iowa, many are still recovering from severe rains and flooding. I experienced the difficulty of having so many friends and connections in Iowa and not being there to assist.

The California Carr fire is now the largest in that state's history. Worldwide fires, droughts and floods have led to lost homes, starvation, massive immigration and civil unrest. Iowa deals with agricultural runoff and its contribution to the dead zone in the Gulf Coast.

An Iowa friend asked, “Where do we think we will live when the air is unbreathable, every remaining place is a desert and the only water is sea water, which is undrinkable?"

Many conclude there is no safe place from climate change. In both places where I live — in Iowa and in the Colorado mountains — you can "pick" dry and fires or wet and flooding. The same is true throughout our fragile earth.

To the many individuals and groups who work in Iowa and beyond, you are truly climate champions. Iowa solutions put forward by these groups include clean, safe, renewable energy. When people ask “What can I do?” I suggest we thank and support these groups with our money and time. We have nothing to lose — save for the planet we so love.

David E. Drake, D.O., is an Iowa resident, a Colorado psychiatrist and a national board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility.