March to ReEnergize Iowa Ends with Rally on Sunday

The March to ReEnergize Iowa ended on Sunday with a rally in Des Moines. NASA's Chief Climatologist, James Hansen spoke to the crowd at Nollen Plaza.

From the Des Moines Register...

On Sunday afternoon, under a blistering hot sun and a heat index in the low 90s, James Hansen, a Denison native and outspoken global warming expert, called for a moratorium on coal-fueled power plants in the United States and the creation of a federal carbon czar to monitor taxes levied on businesses for carbon emissions.

"The science is clear. If we do not reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, climate extremes will increase and we will exterminate many of the species on the planet," Hansen said to roughly 250 people during the ReEnergize Iowa rally at Nollen Plaza in downtown Des Moines.

The rally capped a four-day march from Ames to Des Moines organized by the Sierra Student Coalition and other environmental advocates, students and labor leaders.

"The public must demand that political leaders give greater priority to the planet that we leave for our children and grandchildren," Hansen said. "Our children deserve higher priority than the special interests who have wielded so much power in Washington."

Hansen then went on to called for a moratorium on the building of new coal-fired power plants...

"Until there is technology to make them truly clean, there needs to be a moratorium," Hansen said. "There are claims that some of the new plants will be clean, but they don't really mean that in the sense of capturing carbon dioxide and sequestering it."

Pressure is building on Gov. Culver to take action about the two coal-fired power plants that are proposed in Waterloo and Marshalltown.