Record Floods, A Shattering Derecho, And IA Could Still Vote For Climate Liar Joni Ernst
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Both candidates grew up on farms. Both back the policies that undergird the state's economically and politically vital corn and soybean industries. Both support the state's growing renewable energy economy. But in the six years since Ernst was elected, the landscape in Iowa has changed. The Covid-19 pandemic shut down slaughterhouses. The already slumping farm economy has been badly bruised by President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war with China.
And the weather. The state has been battered by a succession of droughts, floods and heatwaves in recent years. Then in August, a freakish series of hurricane-force "derecho" storms swept across the central part of the state, decimating 10 million acres of crops, or about 40 percent of the state's output.
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At the Republican National Convention in August, Ernst talked about historic flooding and the devastating derecho storms that recently struck the state. She thanked Trump for issuing an emergency declaration. But there or elsewhere, she has not embraced the facts of human-caused climate change. After the latest National Climate Assessment was released in 2018, Ernst told CNN our "climate always changes and we see those ebb and flows through time."
Ernst has a 1 percent lifetime score on the National Environmental Scorecard record from the League of Conservation Voters; she has supported and celebrated the rollback of a major Obama-era water pollution rule, and she has called the Green New Deal "socialist fantasy." Ernst told the Omaha World Herald that she supported Trump's decision to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, saying it would "subject Americans to stringent regulations that put our country—including American families and businesses—at an economic disadvantage." Her job approval rating among voters in the state has declined recently, possibly because of her alliance with Trump, whose approval numbers have also been sliding in Iowa, despite a resounding win in 2016. Another hurdle for voters may be Ernst's relationship with Big Oil, which has been a significant donor, with big-name backers, including the Koch brothers.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09092020/senate-2020-iowa-agriculture-farmers-extreme-weather-joni-ernst-theresa-greenfield
