You can’t outrun or outsmart Nature

Come home, all you expatriated Iowans in Los Angeles before the wildfire consumes you! Flee to safety!

Get real: Iowa is not that safe anymore.

Check your home insurance bill, and wince again. Now, the policy only covers the shingles that are damaged by the derecho, not the whole roof. Losses forced Grinnell Mutual to seek conversion to a stock company. Farmers Mutual quit reinsuring Iowa county mutuals.

Derecho, tornado, flooding and hail. The straight winds of 2020 that ripped up Cedar Rapids caused $13 billion in damage. Afterwards, our Cedar Rapids-based property insurer canceled the policy on our newspaper office (we found another insurer). Home insurance is costlier in Storm Lake, Iowa, than the Indiana exurbs of Chicago (where something modest runs at $800,000).

It’s the weather, stupid!

Much of Northwest Iowa remains in drought. When it rains, it floods even places like Spencer. The Great Plains are approaching a water crisis after decades of drought made worse by climate change. We choked last summer under red skies from Western wildfires.

Msgr. Cleo Ivis warned us school children about this in 1967. All those Okies and Iowans should just come back home from Out West and lay in a few goats because it would all go to pot out there, he said. No epiphanies involved, just enough common sense that you cannot put that many people in the desert. The country cousins out in Long Beach appeared no worse for leaving but did miss a White Christmas. A half-century later, what sounded goofy still sounds goofy but prescient.

California is frightfully expensive but worth it if you were at Malibu, which was burnt to a crisp as the waves lapped the shore. Insurance will not get cheaper or easier to buy. If you were looking for friendlier confines, the climate-smart place might be Des Moines. Unfortunately, it’s not Hollywood Hills, clean water access is a problem, and the weather is consistently extreme.

So let’s look at the list of “climate-safe” cities. High up was Asheville, North Carolina, until it got whisked away by a hurricane in the hills. Duluth and Buffalo are said to be cities of the future for their access to water. Sometimes, the only way you can get around Duluth is by snowmobile. Really. When the gales of November turn gloomy, Lake Gitche Gomee is not that hospitable, Gordon Lightfoot sang for good reason.

Where can you run and hide from the extremities?

Nowhere.

In Hawaii, people had to jump in the ocean to avoid the fire. It was the only place to go.

That’s why Elon Musk is preparing a nest on Mars, or why Greenland might look attractive to a real estate developer. Yes, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are tackling the incineration of humankind by renaming the Gulf of Mexico and mulling the annexation of Canada.

Canadians love being the 51st state, Mar A Lago will be under water, and Saskatoon might look fetching in the three-season room. That might be an option if they have wifi and four-lane highways.

The best option probably would be to stay put and get smart.

Like Babcock Ranch, Florida. The town was built in 2018 to withstand hurricanes and is solar-powered with buried cables. When nearby Fort Myers was knocked out by Hurricane Milton, Babcock Ranch (pop. 15,000) had the lights on and was able to take in evacuees.

In Iowa, there is talk about burning more coal to accommodate data centers that gobble up energy to keep cryptocurrency and AI cranking. Algona announced plans to power a cryptocurrency data center. One of the few comely qualities of Iowa in the post-reality era is relatively cheap electric rates. Our water rates are eclipsing our ability to pay, and energy rates will follow. It is the law of supply and demand.

Pacific Palisades looks like bombed-out Gaza or Odessa. Not far off shore, oil derricks pumped in the Pacific Ocean while Santa Monica shuddered in fear. The derricks provide fuel for the fire, along with the coal.

There is no place to hide from ourselves. Not even in Greenland. So scratch that idea about coming home from California, dear former homies. Msgr. Ivis didn’t realize then that Iowa would be a burgeoning center for climate catastrophe. It is getting a lot worse. The actuaries tells us that it is. Eventually you must listen to the actuaries.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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