ELEMENT:
This element focuses on resource conservation and clean energy utilization. Action steps are meant to improve energy efficiency and reduce waste, with the overall goal of creating a healthier environment in which to live.
Developing a Community Climate Action Plan & Greenhouse Gas Inventory
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ccording to the Iowa Flood Center’s (IFC) Update 2020 report, Iowa’s wettest two-year period on record wasn’t decades upon decades ago. It was last year and the year prior. From January 2018 through December 2019, communities across the Midwest experienced unprecedented flooding. IFC was created during the recovery and aftermath of the record-setting 2008 flood. The flood devastated downtown Cedar Rapids and communities throughout Eastern Iowa. Data from the National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service website show an increased frequency and severity of flood events in Cedar Rapids over time. As described in the Iowa Policy Project’s 2019 report on Climate Change and Flooding, an understanding of past and future climate events is based in the fundamental physics that define Earth’s atmosphere. Since the mid-1800s, scientists have studied the robust connections between natural and human-induced climate change. The prevailing knowledge has been since proven by thousands of scientists worldwide, with the aid of
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today’s powerful computing. We now know that the composition of earth’s atmosphere determines how much of the sun’s energy is stored as heat and how much escapes back into space. Small changes in this balance can dramatically shift global temperature, cloud formation, and precipitation. In 2015, the City of Cedar Rapids’ Comprehensive Plan, EnvisionCR, charted a new roadmap for the community’s future. Under the strategic plan, City Council called for the preparation of a Community-wide Climate Action Plan (CCAP), meant to address greenhouse gas emissions from land use, transportation, street lights, water consumption, waste generation, and building energy. In January, the iGreenCR Action Plan formally launched the CCAP planning process. Then in February, Cedar Rapids City Council passed a resolution further
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AUGUST 2020
recognizing the urgency for community climate action. Consequently, City staff will develop a community-wide greenhouse gas inventory to inform development of the CCAP. Efforts to mitigate greenhouse gases will include carbon, methane, black carbon, and coal reduction as well as an increased use of renewable resources. In Midwestern states, as heavy rain events, river flooding, and major heat events increase, communities can choose to build resilience to these events and work to reduce greenhouse gases which contribute, or they can bear the economic and societal costs associated with inaction. For Cedar Rapids, our strategy is a proactive one of studying the sources of greenhouse gases in our community, increasing use of green energy, lining our streets with trees, and building infrastructure that increases resource-efficient mobility options. These are hallmarks of great
