Iowa
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The Midwest will suffer if we don’t change our approach to flood protection
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 wetlands, then watch those homes and businesses be overrun by flood water.
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As Midwest floods recede, what’s being washed into the groundwater?
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 […]
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An Iowa chef takes issue with Time’s Joel Stein
Regarding the article Tom mentioned yesterday, Joel Stein's Time article, "Extreme Eating": while Mr. Stein is of course free to eat whatever type of food he chooses, I must take exception to his contention that "Dodd was basically telling the Iowans that every night they should decide whether to accompany their pork with creamed corn, corn on the cob, corn fritters or corn bread. For dessert, they could have any flavor they wanted of fake ice cream made from soy, provided that flavor was corn."
I am forced to question whether Mr. Stein has actually been to Iowa (outside of a presidential candidate's rally). While there is indeed a large amount of corn, soy, and pork grown here (more than anywhere in the world in fact), to say that this is all we can eat when we choose to eat locally is blindly absurd and typical of a bicoastal mentality that considers America's great heartland to be little more than "flyover states."
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Will climate wash out as an issue or help the greener candidate?
If we end up with an Obama v. Romney/Giuliani/Thompson race, the green dynamic will be simple. The guy who wants to do something about global warming vs. the guy who prefers the energy status quo. But if, as I’m now (wildly and irresponsibly) predicting, it’s an Obama v. McCain race, the dynamic shifts in some […]
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The candidacy is Obama’s to lose
One hesitates to predict anything in a race this mercurial. But I think it’s Obama’s to lose at this point. Hillary’s pitch was always "experience" and (left unstated) inevitability. It was never the experience that made her inevitable, though. It was something more like Dem voters’ loss aversion. She has always been the Establishment Dem […]
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Huckabee and Obama have it
Sounds like they’ve called the Iowa caucuses. Huckabee’s the huge winner on the R side, with Romney an anemic second. Obama got a very narrow win on the D side (35%), with Edwards and Clinton effectively tied for second with 31%. Interestinger and interestinger. UPDATE: OK, the final looks like 37% Obama, 30% Edwards, and […]
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Two thirds of likely caucus voters in Iowa think conservation more important than coal
Iowa Interfaith Power & Light, the Iowa Farmers Union, and Plains Justice have just completed a survey (PDF) in advance of tomorrow's caucuses.
Short version: Iowans think that we've squandered chances to do something meaningful about energy, and that it's time we started to do so before building new coal plants.
The executive summary is below the fold, but it's worth having a look at the whole presentation.
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Avoid burgers in Texas, Hillary gets charred for CAFO ties, and more
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry. In a proper finale to an E. coli-tainted 2007, the USDA has issued a public-heath alert regarding 14,800 pounds of stolen hamburger meat down in Texas. Get this: the hot meat is “thought to be contaminated with E. coli bacteria.” By my […]
