How many summits can we climb?

Anyone feel like having a climate summit? Yes, say some Iowans:

Faith and environmental leaders in Iowa are calling on President Obama to convene a national summit on climate change in 2013. Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids and representatives of nine Iowa-based groups called on the president to “engage America's communities in crafting and implementing climate solutions” in the letter they released Tuesday. The signees said Iowa's recent floods and drought conditions are part of climate-related problems that are global in scope.

“The environmental, social and economic ramifications of these disasters are real to all of us and are directly related to climate change. We must take urgent action to mitigate climate change while we still have to capacity to do so,” the signees wrote.

Do I think another climate summit will make much difference? Nope, unfortunately. The people who need to show up won't show up. But I can't blame them for trying.

And summits are popular in Iowa. Maybe it's our lack of real mountains.

Gov. Terry Branstad had his high-profile education summit, which produced some of the education reform ideas that are now stuck down in the partisan muck at our Statehouse. The Governor's Bullying Prevention Summit yielded legislation that is unlikely to survive this week's funnel deadline. I'm sure other governors have had summits that led to legislative disappointment. The legislature disappoints all the time.

But setbacks are no reason to quit climbing toward the summit. We've got the Iowa Energy Summit, the Iowa Hunger Summit, Iowa Bicycle Summit, Iowa Trails Summit, Iowa Nonprofit Summit and the Iowa Creativity Summit. All fine summits, I'm sure. I'm getting light-headed.

And, according to the late William Safire, we have Winston Churchill to thank:

Winston Churchill was displeased in 1950 at what his friend Bernard Baruch called the Cold War (coinage claimed by Walter Lippmann but actually made by the Baruch speechwriter Herbert Bayard Swope). The British statesman recalled the cordial wartime meetings he had with Roosevelt and Stalin, and called for a ''parley at the summit.'' Such a top-level meeting of a few leaders, he said, would better bridge the international gap than a gathering of ''hordes of experts and officials drawn up in a vast cumbrous array.''

So started summit in diplolingo, followed in the late 1950's by summitry (on the analogy of telemetry) and summiteer (on the analogy of pamphleteer and profiteer). For more than a generation, this coinage and its derivatives held the definition to a meeting at the very top; with currency, however, the Churchillian coin has been debased.

I now call for convening the Iowa Summit on Summits, sponsored by

Summit Brewing.