The City of Iowa City is heating up to host the fifth annual Climate Fest, a yearly, week-long event addressing climate change.
Following two years of virtual and hybrid Climate Fests due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was held fully in person for the first time in 2022, Iowa City Climate Action Engagement Specialist Megan Hill said.
“We try to do something different every year,” Hill said.
This year, Big Grove Brewery and Taproom, which has been involved with Climate Fest since the beginning, is helping host the Fare Free Celebration, which commemorates one year of the city implementing no fares for all 13 of its bus lines.
The Fare Free Celebration will take place from 5-8 p.m. on Tuesday at Big Grove. The event will include transit trivia and opportunities for attendees to offer comments on the program.
Also new this year is the Nonprofit Nerd Out, taking place from 2-4 p.m. on Friday in the Iowa City Senior Center Assembly Room.
Climate Fest has held some sort of tabling event for local nonprofits every year, Hill said, but the organizers were inspired to do something new this year.
Instead of a normal tabling event, participating nonprofits will give a brief five-minute presentation about their organization and what they “nerd out” about, with a normal tabling event to follow.
“People can ask their questions and interact with the organizations that way, and they can learn more about opportunities to volunteer, what they do, all of that,” Hill said. “So, it’s kind of a different spin on regular tabling.”
Deb Schoelerman, a member of the nonprofit 100Grannies, is excited for the organization to make an appearance at the Nonprofit Nerdout. They have participated in all tabling events hosted by Climate Fest.
100Grannies started 12 years ago when a group of women got together after expressing concern regarding the world they were leaving for their grandchildren, Schoelerman said.
The organization’s presentation is titled “Plastic is the New Coal” and informs people of the dangers of plastic and what it’s doing to our world.
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“What the Climate Action Week has done — it helps,” Schoelerman said. “It gives us another avenue to share our messages, and I think Iowa City has done a good job over the years to get the word out with it.”
Jamie Gade, a climate action commission member and Johnson County Public Health public systems analyst, shared about the impact of climate change on public health.
“A lot of my work in public health deals with all the sorts of health impacts or environmental impacts on health. So definitely, climate change is impacting health, and it will be to come,” Gade said.
Gade said vector-borne diseases such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus cases are increasing, and both are examples of how climate change has impacted public health.
In 2022, Gade was part of a team at Johnson County Public Health that composed a heat vulnerability report, findings from which have helped Gade generate ideas for the Climate Action and Outreach Department and served as an inspiration for participation in Climate Fest.
In the first year, when Climate Fest was held virtually, the resulting videos reached 24,000 people, Hill said. In 2022, the event’s first fully in-person year, 1,300 people tuned into a Climate Fest live stream, and 1,500 people attended in-person over the course of the week.
2023 saw similar numbers to the previous year, with 1,500 people in attendance.
A full schedule of events can be found on the City of Iowa City’s website.