"This election will test how long this farm state is willing to tolerate elected leaders who deny one of the greatest risks to the farming industry."
"Democrat J.D. Scholten makes his pitch to the voters of Iowa's 4th Congressional District in ads with wind farms and cornfields as the backdrop.
The message—that climate action and farming go hand-in-hand—is even more explicit in Scholten's campaign platform. The fifth-generation Iowan says Congress should be encouraging soil management practices that make fields more resilient while absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. But the district's incumbent congressman, Republican Steve King, doesn't believe climate change is real. "This kind of ignorant denial is harmful not only to the people of this district, but for future generations of people all over the planet," Scholten says on his website.
Scholten faces probably the most difficult challenge in the battle now underway to unseat all three of Iowa's climate science-denying GOP House incumbents. King, best known for his inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric, is in his eighth consecutive term representing Iowa's most rural and most Republican electorate—a district President Donald Trump won by 27 points."
Marianne Lavelle reports for InsideClimate News November 1, 2018.
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