This is the second “500-year-flood” in 15 years. Now, I can’t claim any significant scientific understanding of how these floods happened, but that raises my suspicions that climate change (or, as my friend calls it, “Global Weirding”) had something to do with it. This is a good time for us to start discussing adaptation strategies for future floods and demonstrate an understanding that our climate is going to be less predictable than ever before. Given that Iowa has (deservedly) received a lot of press with the storms, we could use that attention to show that we understand that even the Midwest is feeling, and will continue to feel, the effects of climate change.

I’ll be going back to help out in a couple of weeks and I look forward to continuing this conversation in the streets…