Climate & Sustainability: The Defining Challenge of Our Century, Iowa City, Iowa, October 30, 2014

- [Janet Lyness] I want to acknowledge our university and community sponsors, the University of Iowa's International Programs and the University of Iowa's Honors Program. They contribute vital time, talent, logistics, and support to our organization. We also want to thank the Stanley-U of I Foundation Support Organization for their financial support. And today's financial sponsors include the Community Foundation of Johnson County. Our work is made possible through the efforts of our sponsors, our members, and all of our volunteers. Our format today is going to be the usual one. Our speaker will be introduced, and following his presentation at about 1 p.m. we will have a 15-minute question-and-answer period from the written questions that you will submit, and please look for the cards and the pencils on your table and you can work on those questions while you're listening. They'll be collected by volunteers at the end of the speaker's comments. Now I am very happy to introduce Senator Rob Hogg. Rob is a fourth-generation Iowan and a native of Iowa City. I didn't even realize that, and his grandfather actually, I found out this week, is Mason Ladd, longtime dean of the U of I Law School, pretty amazing. I just didn't even know that, so I'm glad to have made that connection finally. Rob has his undergraduate degree in history from the University of Iowa. - [Rob Hogg] Go Hawks. - [Janet Lyness] Yes, Go Hawks, yeah, good. He earned a master's degree in energy policy from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and his law degree from the University of Minnesota. He clerked at the United States Court of Appeals in St. Paul, and then for Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. He has practiced law in Cedar Rapids since 2000. He is currently serving his second term as state senator. And I also note that the Iowa Corrections Association awarded him Outstanding Public Servant in 2001, and last year an organization I'm involved with, the Iowa County Attorneys Association, awarded him the 2014 Iowa Justice Award for his legislative work. In 2013, Rob authored his first book, America's Climate Century. I'm very, very happy to have him, I think it's a topic that many of us are very interested in. If you are still looking for seating, there are still some seats around the edge. But we're very happy to have you all here today and please join me in welcoming Senator Rob Hogg. - [Rob Hogg] Well thank you so much Janet, and thank you for that kind introduction it is always great to be back in Iowa City, a place where I grew up and care very deeply about. I want to thank Senator Joe Bolkcom for being here and Supervisor Janelle Rettig for being here. Supervisor candidate Mike Carberry, I appreciate you for all being here and thank you Janet for the introduction. Today's topic is Climate and Sustainability, the Defining Challenge of Our Century, and I want to start by talking about yesterday. Yesterday was the second anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Sandy in New York City, New Jersey, and much of the east coast. For those of us who were not directly affected by that disaster, it kind of feels like a distant memory. But it was real. Real consequences and real costs for real people. Hurricane Sandy killed 117 Americans and cost us $70 billion as a country, more than $200 for each and every one of us in this room and each and every American. Hurricane Sandy was also a record setter, bringing a record storm surge of water into New York City, nearly 14 feet at Battery Park in Manhattan, nearly four feet higher than any previous storm. And as you know, New York City's got a very, very long weather record. The storm was so unprecedented that it destroyed over 208,000 motor vehicles. The last time I looked, people can move motor vehicles, and that kind of shows you how unprecedented Hurricane Sandy was. Why would you move it if, in your experience, hurricanes didn't flood that area? Well, in Cedar Rapids as you know, we experienced a little flood and I know Iowa City experienced a little flood in 2008. In Cedar Rapids the floodwaters were unprecedented, 10 feet higher than any previous flood. 5,000 homes were flooded, a thousand businesses, churches, non-profits, and virtually every major facility of city and county government. The jail, the courthouse, the county administration building, city hall, the police station, the fire station, the library, the workshop for people with developmental disabilities, and on and on and on. Huge disaster, but nobody died. Well this year, just five months ago now, four months ago, flash flooding in Cedar Rapids, perhaps the worst flash flooding in our city's history, killed one person, ruined dozens of homes, and hundreds of vehicles were destroyed. Eight inches of rain in five hours does that to a city that's not used to it. So after these experiences, I've been paying attention to disasters around the world. After our flood in 2008 it caught my attention when Typhoon Ketsana ripped through the Philippines, killing 500 and leaving 500,000 homeless. In Pakistan in July of 2010 there was big flooding. It killed 5,000 people and displaced 20 million, equivalent to the population of Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri combined. Can you imagine a disaster that would displace 20 million people? At the same time, that year in 2010 there was record heat and record drought in Moscow, another city with a very, very long weather record. It killed roughly 50,000 people in Moscow and made the Russian government turn the grain trains around. Russia is normally a grain exporting country, but not in 2010, they had to take care of their own people. But that led, fairly directly, to a huge spike in food prices in places like Egypt. And what happened in Egypt? Well there was food rioting, and beginning in 2011 of that year, what we now call the Arab Spring, three years of terrible unrest in Egypt. I was talking about this event last year when I was in Montpelier, Vermont, and a hand in the audience went up. I always like it when hands in the audience go up while I'm in mid-sentence. And he says, the man says, "Have you looked at the roots of the Syria crisis?" Well, I had not. So I went home and I asked Mr. Google about Syria and I stumbled upon an August 16, 2012 article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists with the headline Climate Change and the Syrian Uprising. Between 2006 and 2010 Syria experienced the deepest and longest drought in its modern record, driving approximately half of the population off the land in rural Syria into urban areas, contributing to the civil war in that country which I might remind you was considered the most stable, although authoritarian, regime in the region. In October 2011 there was record flooding in Thailand and much of Southeast Asia, displacing over 10 million people, killing over 800, and disrupting the global economy if you'll recall because Thailand and Vietnam weren't able to manufacture the car parts and the computer parts that they normally manufacture because of the flooding. Two years later, October 2013, this is after my book has come out, there was a huge superstorm heading towards India called Cyclone Nargis. It killed 24 people and left a million people homeless. But because it didn't meet what people thought the standards were, the headline in the Washington Post was Major Catastrophe Averted. 24 people killed, a million left homeless. Then of course just the next month, Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, killed over 6,300 people and left nearly two million people homeless. On and on and on. This year, Typhoon Phanfone killed three U.S. military personnel in Okinawa. Cyclone Hudhud killed another 29 people in India and brought an unprecedented snowstorm that killed a bunch of mountain climbers in the area. Now, I'm not here to tell you that every one of these disasters was caused solely by climate change. Regardless of the cause, we need to do a much better job preparing for extreme storms. But climate change is a factor. The science tells us we are already experiencing the effects of climate change. The trend lines show more frequent and severe disasters. The American Red Cross, not a left-wing environmental organization, tells us that 243 million people every year now on average are being affected by climate-related disasters. Here's what makes it worse, the science tells us the severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially over the coming decades. By the way, that's a direct quote from the heads of 18 American professional scientific organizations in a letter to the United States Senate in October 2009. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades. It means more extreme storms, more floods, more droughts, more ecological disruptions, more wildfires, more ocean acidification, and more sea level rise. The reality is we already have too many greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, adding to the natural greenhouse effect that's been understood scientifically for nearly 200 years, already causing real consequences and real costs for real people, and it will get worse. The scientists don't say that the coming decades it's going to increase substantially just because they're guessing. They know it's going to get worse because of thermal lag, the balance of the heat between the oceans and the atmosphere. In my book I quote Susan Solomon from NOAA who says climate change and warming of the Earth is now irreversible for the next thousand years, even if we were to shut off all our emissions today. Well, we're not going to shut off all emissions today, that's not going to happen. The science tells us to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases at today's already elevated levels would require deep cuts in emissions and pollution of carbon dioxide, 80 to 90% globally. But we're not even slowing the growth of greenhouse gases. The rate of buildup of greenhouse gases globally is accelerating. We hit 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide earlier this year, 40% higher than the pre-industrial levels, and they are going up more than two parts per million per year. Next year it's going to be 402 parts per million. The year after that it's going to be 404. The year after that it's going to be 406. Another problem, Foreign Relations Council, the last time I looked, the world doesn't just organize itself overnight to deal with global problems. We've been working at it for over 20 years. Paris is coming up next year, the Paris Conference, where's the global plan? So this is the situation. Global climate change impacts today, worsening climate change impacts globally in the future, deep cuts in greenhouse gas pollution are required just to slow down and stop the buildup at today's already elevated levels, and at the same time we need to prepare for more events that will be more extreme than human civilization has ever experienced. And it's actually worse than that because combined with the climate issue we simultaneously face multiple other threats to sustainability around the world. You can think about them, water pollution, air pollution, land pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, invasive species, soil loss, resource depletion, public health threats, radioactive accidents, radioactive waste. It's a big deal. It is, in my view, the defining challenge of our times. There is not a person in this room, not even Mike Carberry, who asked for this problem. There's not a person in this room who set out four decades ago to change the climate of this planet and to jeopardize sustainability of our environment. Just like prior generations of Americans didn't ask for the problems they faced, either. But like those prior generations, we need to face this problem. We have over seven billion people now. The stakes have never been higher. We are changing the climate in dangerous ways. So what are we going to do? Let me start with some good news. You know in my father's generation he got to serve in the United States Navy in World War II. Did he do that because he wanted to? No, he did it because his country needed him to, it was the right thing to do, and by the way if he didn't do it he was probably going to get drafted. But here's the good news on the climate issue. It doesn't require the greatest sacrifices in Americans' history, not even close. Now I love history, so I was rereading William Manchester, Alone, his second volume about Winston Churchill 1932 to 1940. The people who made the mistakes in the 1930s that allowed Germany to re-arm, the people who did not listen to Churchill, at least they had a pretty good excuse which was they did not want to return to the trenches of World War I, and they tried to do everything possible to avoid having to do that again. Historically, looking back, bad decision. Pretty hard to blame them. The great speech that Nile Kinnick gives. By the way that's after World War II has begun for those of you who have been at Kinnick Stadium and have seen that. That great speech, Nile Kinnick reflected Americans who wanted to do everything possible to stay out of those wars in Europe, right? I would much rather, much more, much rather grapple for the Heisman Award than for the Croix de Guerre. You've heard that, those few who are football fans. That's what we did to try to stay out of it. That was a good excuse. It wasn't right, but it was a good excuse. What's our excuse? Oh, I don't like the way those curlicue light bulbs look. I've heard it, I've heard that. I don't like the way the curlicue light bulbs look. Well too bad, so sad, suck it up, tough it out, and get over it, and besides that don't buy the curlicue light bulbs because now you want to buy the LED light bulbs that will save more energy, save more money, and last even longer. It's just not that tough. So this is not the greatest sacrifice that Americans ever made, and the reason for that is climate solutions work. They create jobs, they save consumers money, they improve our health, they improve the environment, they reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Those are all great things. I could go through all those solutions, I'm going to do a little bit of it, but think about it. Energy conservation saves you money, energy efficiency works, saves you money. Green buildings work, they're high-performance buildings, people like them. Renewable electricity works. There's a company based in Cedar Rapids called Van Meter Inc. that just opened a warehouse about three years ago in Iowa City because it's growing business, it provides electrical supplies and other supplies. They made a commitment as a company to sustainability. So they put solar on the top, geothermal for their heat, everything inside energy efficient. A LEAD platinum building, leadership in energy and environmental design building, LEAD platinum, highest rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. And in its first year of operation the total heat and electrical bill for that warehouse, $330. I've got constituents who have $330 bills for a single month in the summer from their electricity, why? Because they don't pay attention. It works. It saves money, creates jobs. Transportation solutions, they work. Fuel efficiency, electric vehicles, rail, walkable and bikeable communities, advanced biofuels. I get over 50 miles per gallon in my vehicle. Oh, it's such a sacrifice, except when I go fill up at the pump. Local healthy foods, they work. When it comes to food and sustainability it's a real simple lesson. For some of us, eat less, eat local, eat lower on the food chain, eat healthy. Hazard mitigation works. Better infrastructure, better water and watershed management, better natural resource management including reforestation and carbon sequestration. They all work. Better disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery, they all work. We do not need to fear the solutions. They work for our economy, for our health, for our security. Here's what's not working in our country. Our politics. As I say in my book, our climate foreign policy has so far been a failure. In this country, the growth of pollution in China and India which is a real problem and which makes the need for climate action even more urgent, has been used as an excuse for inaction. Instead of slowing greenhouse gas pollution, our policies have allowed global greenhouse gas pollution to increase. We are playing a global game of climate chicken or climate brinkmanship. We have too many climate defeatists among our political leaders. We hit 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide earlier this year, and if the United States led an urgent, all-out, global effort to slow down and stop the buildup of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere maybe we could stop it at less than 430 parts per million, maybe, and then begin the millennia-long decline back to 350 parts per million, a level that is considered the high end for the safe level of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. That's what we ought to be doing. But what's the state of our political dialogue about climate change in our country today? Well, in the most important race, election in the country this year, the U.S. Senate race in Iowa, here is the debate. One candidate says, "I don't know the science "behind climate change. "I can't say one way or another what is "the direct impact from whether it's manmade or not." Well, in the old days a candidate could learn about an issue. Can you imagine? I know we've got some students in here. I'm old enough to remember the 1970s and 80s and the Cold War. Can you imagine a candidate for the United States Senate in hypothetically 1978 or 1980 saying this, "I don't know one way or the other about "the political conditions in the Soviet Union, "so I guess we don't really need to do anything about it." Can you imagine that? That person would have been run out of town as a climate defeatist, excuse me, a defeatist in the Cold War. Now, the other candidate in the debate, and this is a direct quote from the debate, says, "If you don't accept that this is a real problem, "which it sounds like my opponent doesn't, "many Iowa companies believe it strongly "and think that if we don't do something "it will harm our economy." Well that's better. Protecting businesses from climate disasters is a good idea. Promoting clean energy industries is a good idea. But is that really all the deeper we're going to go in the year 2014? Well, I'm going to give you some questions that we should have asked the candidates in 2014, and more importantly, here are some questions you can ask the candidates in the next 15 months as we get ready for the 2016 precinct caucuses. They're only 15 months away. Number one, if you don't know the science, how and when will you learn it? There are plenty of people willing to help explain it. Hypothetically, do you think Ronald Reagan knew the science of stratospheric ozone depletion when he signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987? If not, why do you think he signed it? Why did President Bush strengthen the Montreal Protocol in 1991? For you young people in the audience, that's the first President Bush, the first President Bush. Another question, how high are you willing to allow greenhouse gas concentrations to go? What is your goal for stopping the buildup of greenhouse gases? Is there a red line in the atmosphere beyond which the world should not go? I've just told you what I think the red line ought to be, 430 parts per million, why? Because that's the best we could do with an urgent, all-out global effort. Next question, how will you promote greenhouse gas pollution reductions, both at home and abroad? Do you support regulations, carbon pollution rules, or incentives like the Wind Energy Tax Credit, or pollution taxes to discourage greenhouse gas pollution, or all of the above? Do you have a solution? By the way, to you remember when people used to criticize the Kyoto Protocol, remember that, when the UN came up with the Kyoto Protocol? I always kept wanting to ask, what's your alternative? Oh, head in sand, ignore the problem. Another question, how will you promote technology development that will make it easier to reduce greenhouse gas pollution? And will you share it with other countries around the world? That's what President Reagan proposed to do with Star Wars, remember that? He was going to share it with the Soviet Union. Would you support international agreements to fight climate change? And if you want China and India more involved, don't just use them as an excuse for inaction, how would you get them more involved? How about the other major greenhouse gas polluters like Russia, Europe, Canada, Japan, OPEC, Brazil, Indonesia? What specific ways would you address disasters like the flood of 2008, Hurricane Sandy, and the drought in California? And even if you don't know the science behind climate change, how will you address the economic, humanitarian, and security consequences of disasters around the world like the drought in Syria or Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines? We got to up our game here. We need to get the dialogue going. We need to talk about this. This problem's just not going to go away by ignoring it. And I'm going to tell you, if the voters don't ask, and if the voters don't speak up, guess what? The candidates aren't going to address the issue. Candidates generally reflect what voters tell them they want. You know what Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister of England said in response to Churchill's criticisms in the House of Commons? He said, "Well the voters don't want us to re-arm." Right? That was his response. Voters need to speak up. More good news, there is growing momentum for climate action in this country, you see it all around us. Groups like Citizens Climate Lobby, Interfaith Power and Light, 350.org. I'm going to leave some out, now I'm in trouble. Lots of momentum. 400,000 people in New York City in September. There's momentum, there's momentum, there's momentum. But we still have a long way to go. It's up to us as citizens to get our political candidates and political leaders to address this issue. So, we need to do better, we're not getting the job done, we are failing our children and grandchildren, we are failing future generations, we are not acting sufficiently on climate change. None of us asked for this problem, but we've got to act, we've got to face it. So here's my urgent plea for the Foreign Relations Council and the other citizens who are here today. We need citizens who get more informed, more involved, do more, and speak up more. Being a citizen can be hard work, but again it's not the greatest sacrifice that Americans have ever made. By getting more involved, by speaking up more, we can take the climate action we so urgently need for today and future generations. Thank you for being a great audience and I'd be happy to address any questions that you have. - [Janet Lyness] Our first question is, how can the United States take the lead in international agreements, especially Paris 2015? - [Rob Hogg] Well, the Untied States can take the lead by taking the lead. And that will happen if our leaders believe that's what the American people want. That's what we need, we need the American people to speak up, and have them want that because in general, political leaders don't lead, they follow. They can help educate, they can help try to move issues, but they need support from people across the country. Here's what I think is really, really important. An election's going to happen and be done by Tuesday at 9 p.m. okay? And all that noise. Ron Gonder used to say about the fieldhouse for basketball, "Man, it's like sticking your head inside a bell." That was Ron Gonder's line when he was calling basketball games at the fieldhouse. That's the way a lot of people feel about this election. But it is going to end, Tuesday at 9 p.m. It is really important that people get involved and organized and speak up coming out of that election. And let me say this, if you feel like an elected official hasn't cared about this issue in the past, you've got to give that person an opportunity to change his or her mind. People don't just always have the same position. I'll give you a couple historical examples. Who led the filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Robert Byrd of West Virginia. By the end of his political career, in the last decade of his career, he had a 100% positive NAACP voting record, he changed. I'll give you another example. What was the first thing that the Reagan administration said about stratospheric ozone depletion? Well first of all it was, there's not enough science on it. The second thing was well, Americans can wear more hats and more sunscreen. He signed the Montreal Protocol on September 16, 1987. People can change their views, so you've got to give them the chance to do that. And one of the things that changes, there are three things that change people's views. One is events, second is personal relationships, and the third is public opinion. You can think of other issues in 2014 that are in a much different position than they were in say 2004, I'll let you think about those, I'll let you think about those. But people can change, and if people speak up that gives the United States the ability to play a full leadership role for Paris 2015. I've got one more thing I have to say. It's like you put a quarter in and you just get too much. I will say one other thing. There are a lot of people in here, in this room who are probably bigger students of foreign policy than I am, I'll just go out on a limb and guess that that's true. You can have big United Nations agreements to address issues, you can also have bilateral or multilateral agreements between countries. If you took the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Europe, I think that's it, India, thank you. If you took those entities, that's 70% of the world's greenhouse gas pollution right there. So if those countries could forge an agreement, that's another path forward. It doesn't matter for all of you, necessarily, except when we get into these more intense discussions in the political process so you can be informed citizens, but what does matter is for our political leaders to hear that you want climate action. - [Janet Lyness] I'm going to combine quite a few of these questions. For many Americans ideology trumps science, evidence, and data. How can these individuals be convinced of the reality of climate change and its causes? And then there were several along the same lines. This one is, Republicans for the most part have systematically abused scientific authority by financing faux science studies like the tobacco maneuvers, what can be done? And how to persuade doubters. Basically, and more like that. - [Rob Hogg] Well, I started to address those a little bit in my answer to the last question by talking about how people can change. I don't think there is a Republican elected official in this country who shouldn't be hearing from dozens if not hundreds of constituents about number one, I want climate action, but number two, give them the Ronald Reagan story. I wasn't a big fan of Ronald Reagan when I was a student at the University of Iowa in the 1980s, I'll just tell you I wasn't. But he signed the Montreal Protocol. He took action. The first President Bush strengthened that agreement. They took action. Does Ted Cruz deny stratospheric ozone depletion? I don't know. Does he know that Ronald Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol and does he hear about it regularly from his constituents? Not nearly enough. One other thing. You know, I mentioned Nile Kinnick, right? Great Iowa football hero who said what he said, right? When he got his Heisman Trophy Award in November 1939 after World War II was underway. What'd he do? Well, when the United States got in World War II he signed up, he lost his life serving our country. People can change, people can change. In the book, this is the phrase I use. A doubting Thomas today can be a great leader for climate action tomorrow. And you know what? We're going to need them to be great leaders for climate action. We're all in this together, right? People can change, people can believe, people can act and that's the answer on persuading people. Make them hear from people, try to convince them, and give them the space to step forward on this issue. A lot of questions. - [Janet Lyness] Yes. The U.S. military's purpose is to protect national security. Burning fossil fuels, increasing CO2 produces climate change. Climate change threatens national security. The U.S. military is the largest producer of fossil fuels and producer of CO2, what should be done? - [Rob Hogg] The challenges of having a more sustainable military are critical. I will share this, there are people out there who know a lot more about this than I do, there are. But in the book I talk about climate patriots. I've had the chance to meet two, a retired admiral, Dennis McGinn, a retired Air Force general, Ronald Keys. Ronald Keys, retired Air Force general, was here in July for the ribbon cutting at Iowa's new largest solar array in that hotbed of liberal environmental radicalism, Kalona, Iowa, right? By the way, it's not going to be the largest solar array in Iowa for very long because a rural electric co-op in Howard County is building a larger array. General Keys was here because there are a lot of military leaders who strongly support renewable energy and the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and we need that. We need that support, we need people to identify themselves as climate patriots who want to act. I will also say this. I personally believe that if you could unite the world in action to address climate change and sustainability, you would get rid of a lot of the conflicts that exist in the world today. I actually think the United States, being a leader for climate action is something that gives us and opportunity to usher in a century of peace. We are just concluding a century of war, I hope, right? The Guns of August 1914, here we are a century later. Well, what could do that? What could usher in a century of peace? I think it's this recognition that fundamentally we're interconnected and we're dependent on each other. Carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it doesn't matter where you are in the world. Pollution knows no boundaries and we urgently need to act on this issue. It is something, when you look at an organization like 350.org, are people here familiar with 350.org? If you're not, go home to ask Mr. Google about 350.org, it will come up. One of the things that's really impressive about that organization is its global reach. It is uniting people around the planet in the fight against climate change, and I believe if our government helped with that effort, helped lead that effort, we could do even more to achieve that. - [Janet Lyness] I'm going to bring it back to Iowa and combine a couple of questions, too. One, do Iowa farming practices of tilling and wetland drainage contribute to downstream flooding in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids? And what role to Iowa farmers play in CO2 emissions? How can Iowa farmers help reduce CO2 emissions? - [Rob Hogg] There are a lot of ways that agriculture is involved in this issue. Remember back what I said about food solutions. Eat less, eat local, eat lower on the food chain, and eat healthy. Know your farmer. That's all good stuff. Agriculture contributes to climate change. It has greenhouse gas emissions that contribute. We need to recognize that. We need to deal with it, we need to address it. Whether it is nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilizers, methane from animal production, direct fossil fuel input into the agricultural system, we need to address that. Here's sort of my though though, a little note from history. My mom grew up in Iowa City, Dean Ladd's daughter, and it was during World War II. She would have graduated from high school in 1946 from U High. So she grew up during World War II, her dad was gone serving the country for much of that time, and she used to tell me stories that of course during World War II there was gas rationing, right? Gas rationing. She said some of my friends grew up on farms, and farmers, for obvious reasons, didn't have the same rationing laws that applied, right? Because of the primacy of food production. Here's the point. Don't make farmers, right? I told you, farmers produce greenhouse gases. There are water runoff issues that are related to farms. There are water quality issues related to farms. We've got to acknowledge that. Don't make farmers your enemy in the advocacy on this issue. Farmers play a very important function, I mean it's critical for Iowa's economy, for food security around the world. So I think we can work with the farm community. I think we can address these issues, I think we can do it. We may need to update some of the rules, right? Everybody in here a football fan? Okay, I'm kidding, I guess there's some of you who aren't. But football, concussions. What does the league do? The league updates the rules to try to reduce the risk of concussions. Now you might think it's not enough, but they've updated the rules. People get penalties for things they didn't get penalties for five years ago because of concussions. Just like the NFL updates its rules to protect players from concussions, we may need to update our rules to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. But that doesn't mean farmers are the enemy. We can work through that and we can meet the needs that we have for environmental protection and make it work for farmers. - [Janet Lyness] Okay, I have a couple of tough questions for you as a senator. - [Rob Hogg] Yeah. - [Janet Lyness] By how much did the Iowa Senate raise the gas tax last session, and why is the Iowa Senate considering a tax on hybrid cars? - [Rob Hogg] Well number one, the second one was easier. I'm not considering a tax on hybrid cars. But the State of Iowa has significant road infrastructure issues, right? So somebody looks at it and says well, if we tax hybrid and electric cars, maybe we can get some revenue that way. I think we've got to have a policy that says we also have other objectives that we're trying to achieve here, one of which is fuel efficiency not just to reduce emissions. Remember, there are all those benefits that go with reducing your consumption of oil, right? In 2011, Iowans spent over $13 billion for energy collectively, all of us together. That was up from $5 billion in 1998. It went from five billion to 13 billion. So there are lots of reasons why we want to encourage hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles, because we need to break our dependence on expensive and foreign oil, we need to do that. On the gas tax, that's a live issue. The Iowa Senate didn't do it last year because there was not the deeply and broadly bipartisan support that was required. Senator Bolkcom likes that, he's heard that before, deeply and broadly bipartisan support. There wasn't the deeply and broadly bipartisan support we needed to pass it. And I could go into more details with you but I'll save that for after the session. - [Janet Lyness] I'm going to put the next two together as well. Can you comment on water wars, because we're getting into a little bit different, and how are countries going to address the problem of overpopulation in the world? - [Rob Hogg] Okay. - [Janet Lyness] Easy ones. - [Rob Hogg] Those are two good questions. Let's talk about overpopulation first, okay? We've got 7.2 billion people. If I were to stand up here and tell you my solution to climate change is to reduce our population to one billion people, how many of you would stand up to volunteer to be one of the 6.2 billion people that went away? I appreciate that, I saw some hands, I thank you for your willingness to sacrifice. We have to deal with reality, and the reality is yes, we urgently need to do those things that work, that slow down population growth, and we know what those things are. It's largely empowering women around the world, education for women, economic opportunities for women, those are really, really important to slow down population growth. But I'm also not going to tell you up here and sit up here and say yeah, so that means somehow we're going to go from 7.2 billion down to one billion. That would be really, really ugly to have that happen. So you're at 7.2 billion, or maybe we're at 7.3 by now, right? I've been talking about an hour and a half. Well let's slow it down. Can we hold it under eight and a half? Get on a trajectory to stop the population growth. That's part of the answer. By the way, the less you do to reduce population growth, the more you need to do on everything else. I say in the book yeah, we could reduce our speed limit back to 55, right? How many hands are going up for that? Oh good, good. But if you don't like that, that just means we need to do more of something else. So I will give credit to the Iowa Catholic Conference. When we have renewable energy bills in the Iowa Senate, you know what one of the first organizations and perhaps the first organization to sign up to support those are, that bill? The Iowa Catholic Conference. They've been great advocates for renewable energy. So you know, maybe you want to do less on the population side and do more on the renewable energy side. Regardless of what combination of strategies you deploy, we can't cross the red line in the atmosphere. On the water war issue, water management is a major, major issue. How many of you know people in California who are dealing with the drought? It's an enormous issue, and we're in the richest country in the world, right? So what they do is they talk about well, we're going to drill deeper, we're going to build more pipelines for water, right? Well put yourself in a country that may not be as prosperous, that's dealing with severe water situations and will conflict result? Almost undoubtedly, that's another thing that General Keys and Admiral McGinn have talked about is the need to address climate change to help advance global security and reduce those types of conflicts. - [Janet Lyness] This one says local action, talk about distributed generation and state-based efforts. EPA and IUB are taking comments currently. - [Rob Hogg] What's Iowa's role in this? This is what I've talked about, this combination of problems confronting us today. I just want to really emphasize national and global, national and global, okay? So I know there are a lot of people who say oh, it just seems so hard to affect national and global policy. Well folks, we don't have a choice, we have to. We ultimately will prevail. All that happens, the longer we delay action, all that happens is the story just gets worse. That's all that happens, it just gets worse. There will never be a moment in any of your lives again where the need for climate action goes away. We're too late. Yeah, we're too late for lots of things but we're not too late to do a lot of things and we need to take action. Now, here's why local action matters. Because it shows that the solutions work. It shows that the solutions work. When Farmers Electric Co-op in Kalona builds the state's largest solar array and generates real electricity to run real homes and real industries in its service territory, it shows that it works. When you do something at your home to be more energy efficient, or you conserve, it works, right? It works for you, and then you can tell your elected officials about it. I like to tell people every time you do something in your personal life to try to improve the environment, tell an elected official about it because if they hear that, they'll react. Now at the state level, here's what we need to do. Iowa can demonstrate to the world that we can have a broadly prosperous society without fossil fuels. Iowa can demonstrate to the world that 100% renewable electricity, combined with energy efficiency, works. Leave the fossil fuels in the ground, we don't need them. We literally do not need them. I served on the state's Climate Change Advisory Council that was chaired by a University of Iowa professor who's probably spoken to this group, Jerry Schnoor. Using existing technologies, Jerry Schnoor and the council put together a strategy to cut Iowa's greenhouse gas emissions, if I recall correctly, by 90%, at not a much bigger cost than we currently pay for energy. There were some things we could do that would save us money, there were some things that were going to stretch us a little bit. Well whoop-de-do, it's the future of the planet, I'll throw in an extra 10 bucks, 20 bucks a month. I already do that through Alliant Energy, I'm a 100% second nature customer, their renewable electricity thing. We can do this, it works. So that's what Iowa can do. Now how Iowa does that, there are lots of details with it. That's where I need to tell you to avert your eyes because the legislative process is like making sausage. That's how it was that the chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, Joe Bolkcom, combined the state's first-ever solar tax credits with sales tax clarifications for the car wash industry. Talk about clean power. But he did that because that was legislative 101, how do you pass a bill? He wanted the tax credits passed. He found out what the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee wanted, and they logrolled them together and passed them. So there are lots of ways forward. I believe in distributed generation, I believe in utility scale renewable electricity, why? Because we need them both, we need them both. One of the dumbest things, maybe the dumbest thing that Iowa's utilities have done is resisted solar power. If your customers want solar power, provide solar power. But instead they've resisted it and resisted it and resisted it, now they're in danger of losing a substantial fraction of their customer base. Well, that's 'cause they blew it. They might find a way to provide those services yet, and they should. That Farmer's Electric Co-op, showing the way. So remember, we got a problem, we need to solve it. There are things the State of Iowa can do to address the problem and show to the world that we can achieve 100% renewable electricity. Do we have time for one more? - [Janet Lyness] One more? - [Rob Hogg] One more? - [Janet Lyness] Okay, we'll make it swift. All the actions you ask to take are excellent, but they are insufficient to meet the challenge, likewise technology, so what do you propose? Do you recommend a different paradigm of governance than we now have, and if so what is it? Another easy one. - [Audience Member] 30 seconds. - [Rob Hogg] Well I see the time has expired. We're not to that point yet. We can make this system work. The United States of America is the greatest country in the world. It is a democracy, we have our voices. Our votes matter more than the millions of dollars that other people spend. We can address this issue. Here's how I would do it. We try, we're going at it, and sure we're going to learn on the way. To me this is not about, remove your deeper ideological thoughts, remove them. This is a real problem for real people that we need to address. I sometimes hear from a climate change skeptic blah, blah, blah, and I say well okay, that's fine, what have you done to help the victims of Typhoon Haiyan, the mudslide in Washington, the wildfires out west, the tornado in Illinois, the tornado in Arkansas, the flooding in Cedar Rapids? There is something for everybody to do on this issue. This is practical, it's not ideological. We didn't get into World War II because Franklin Roosevelt had some ideology, it was the real practical problem of England might lose and fortress America might not fare so well. It wasn't ideological. So what we need is people to engage in this issue and if, in the process, we're going through it and we say you know what? The United Nations is not the vehicle that's going to work, we need a new vehicle, well then at that time we'll create the new vehicle. But we've got to deal with the problem. We've got to slow down and stop and reverse the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and we need to prepare people for a century of extreme weather that will be unprecedented in human history. That's the challenge. I want to thank you very much and for anybody who would like to visit individually, I'll be available. - [Janet Lyness] Unfortunately the time has come to conclude today's program, and on behalf of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council I thank Senator Rob Hogg for his presentation on climate change. I also thank our sponsors, the University of Iowa International Programs, the University of Iowa's Honors Program, and the Stanley-U of I Foundation Support Organization for their generous support. And again today thank our financial sponsor the Community Foundation of Johnson County. Rob, as a small token of our appreciation we present you with the extremely coveted Iowa City Foreign Relations Council mug so you can always remember us and put it up in the senate chamber, so thank you very much. - [Rob Hogg] Thank you. - [Janet Lyness] A reminder, if you wish to renew your membership you may still do so, or to purchase a new prepaid meal plan at the back table, or you can write or call us at the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, 1120 University Capitol Centre, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242. And I'll also put in another plug for Rob Hogg's book which will also be for purchase at the back table. So thank you again for joining us and we are adjourned. - [Announcer] You're watching City Channel 4 on TV, online, on demand, on Facebook, and now on the go on your mobile device.