Columns
Friday, April 22, 2005
earth day 2005
As Iowans look back 35 years to the first Earth Day, held April 22, 1970, they remember a nationwide grassroots demonstration by 20 million Americans demanding a cleaner, healthier environment.
Earth Day helped catapult concerns about cleaner air and water, and conserving resources, to the forefront of our nation's consciousness. That led to countless individual and community actions to improve the environment across our country. It also led to landmark federal legislation, including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.
The pioneering organizer of Earth Day was a fellow Midwesterner, Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. That Midwestern commonsense commitment to a better environment is certainly alive and well in Iowa, where we have long treasured our beautiful land.
We have made a lot of progress in cleaning up our air and water, and saving our soil, wildlife and other resources. However, many challenges remain.
One of our greatest environmental threats lies in our heavy dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. These limited resources will one day run out. They are increasingly costly and imported from foreign countries. And our reliance on fossil fuels makes the United States the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, a chief cause of global climate change.
Iowans are making great strides in using renewable energy from the American Midwest in place of oil from the Middle East. Producing and using more biodiesel and ethanol in this country is the right place to start. That is exactly what we would do under legislation I recently authored and introduced with the bipartisan backing of 20 other senators. Our Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) bill would increase the use of ethanol and biodiesel each year, reaching at least eight billion gallons annually by 2012.
Our state of Iowa is also blessed with other large renewable energy sources, such as wind power and biomass, and we are pushing forward to develop them. I'm working with a number of my colleagues to strengthen and extend tax incentives to help energy companies, communities, businesses and individuals to produce their own electricity, for instance by erecting a wind turbine, and then sell any extra electricity back to the local power company.
For generations, Iowa's farmers, landowners and other citizens have been balancing our state's great agricultural productivity with conserving our natural resources and protecting the environment. With our close connection to the land, Iowans are working hard to do more: to conserve soil, enhance water and air quality, increase wildlife habitat, and preserve unique natural areas for future generations.
To help the voluntary conservation efforts of farmers and landowners in Iowa and nationwide, we wrote the strongest conservation title ever into the 2002 farm bill. A major new feature is the Conservation Security Program, which I authored to provide financial incentives to farmers who maintain or adopt sound conservation on land in agricultural production. Many more Iowans seek to enroll in these farm bill conservation programs than their funding allows - yet, inexplicably, conservation is high on the list of proposed budget cuts in Washington today.
Using more biobased and biodegradable products made from crops grown in Iowa's fields will also help our environment. Examples range from plastics to lubricants to a variety of chemicals. To help drive this market, we wrote in the farm bill a requirement for the federal government to purchase biobased products whenever possible. I'm continuing to push USDA to finish its work so all federal agencies "buy bio".
We have come a long way in the 35 years since the first Earth Day, and Iowans are pushing to do much more. On Friday, April 22, I encourage everyone to reflect on our environment and to recommit ourselves to honoring the ideals of Earth Day throughout the year.
