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 Stories About: climate AND climate change impacts AND Iowa AND severe weather
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Author |
Published |
Section |
There will be flood
The Midwest will suffer if we don't change our approach to flood protection |
Guest author |
23 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| This is a guest essay by Mary Kelly, the head of Environmental Defense Fund's rivers and deltas program. ----- We've heard a lot this week about how the floods in the Midwest might be an act of humans -- or an act of City Council, as one Iowan leader put it. We can start the futile cycle of fighting Mother Nature again if we want to: spend billions of dollars on levees and flood control infrastructure, encouraging development of river floodplains and low-lying wet ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, Iowa, severe weather (all these topics) |
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After the deluge
As Midwest floods recede, what's being washed into the groundwater? |
Tom Philpott |
16 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Flooded road in eastern Iowa. Photo: Dan Patterson Things are grim in Iowa, arguably the epicenter of global industrial food production. If Iowa were a nation, it would be the globe's second-largest corn producer, behind only China. The state leads the U.S. [PDF] in the production of corn, hogs, and eggs, and ranks number two in soybeans.In short, it's a rotten place for a massive, flood-inducing early-summer deluge. Of the state's 99 counties, 24 have been ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, climate change impacts, health, industrial ag, Iowa, severe weather (all these topics) |
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©2008. Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Gloom and doom with a sense of humor®.