Senate GOP Plan To Fearmonger About Cost Of Clean Energy For Food
Senate GOP Plan To Fearmonger About Cost Of Clean Energy For Food
The Wonk Room has learned that the Senate Republicans intend to claim clean energy reform will make food prices skyrocket. The Senate Agriculture Committee Minority staff are working on an economic study that will purport to demonstrate the increased cost to food items from the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
The Senate Republican report will use Department of Agriculture models to calculate “increased costs to farmers” and the “potential cost increases for items like a loaf of bread.”
This is yet another iteration of the false concept that reducing pollution hurts the economy. Unfortunately for the Republicans but fortunately for America, this campaign is doomed to be junk economics. The Republicans will likely base their food-and-farm fearmongering on the junk analyses of the ExxonMobil-funded Heritage Foundation. Arguing that “for farmers, cap and trade is a permanent drought season,” Heritage claimed farm income would drop “over $50 billion in 2035.”
When one looks at the actual numbers of Heritage’s model, it turns out that farm construction costs and transportation equipment costs actually decline for the first decade of implementation. After 2020, their economic model projects those costs increasing by about 10 percent over the baseline by 2030.
But the Heritage analysis doesn’t actually model the American Clean Energy and Security Act, and assumes the value of the carbon market created by the bill simply disappears from the national economy. These and other basic flaws lead to outsized results that aren’t replicated by any nonpartisan analyses of the actual bill.
A more sober analysis of cap and trade by the Brookings Institution found no impact on agricultural sector costs, even though, like Heritage, their analysis also ignored complementary provisions of the actual legislation. As the Pew Center for Climate Change explains, agriculture has “much to gain from a comprehensive climate policy.”
The benefits for agriculture are consistent with non-partisan analyses of the actual legislation:
The Environmental Protection Agency found that the clean energy and global warming standards in the bill will lower electricity bills.
The Congressional Budget Office found minimal effects on both electricity and fuel prices, well below the increases of recent years caused by Bush-Cheney policies.
Both these analyses make conservative assumptions about the benefits of energy efficiency, the reduced demand for foreign oil and dirty coal, and wholly ignore the costs of inaction. By reducing our use of dirty fossil fuels, rewarding sustainable farming practices, and reducing the damages of global warming, clean energy policy will give American consumers a more secure and sustainable food supply as well.
6 Responses to “Senate GOP Plan To Fearmonger About Cost Of Clean Energy For Food”
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The Repugnant Fanatics or Fanatic Repugnants (take your pick) can use such analysis for fear mongering, and I am glad that such thinking is occurring. It would be fallacious to think that all consequences of a shift to clean energy have been thought out.
Paying more for Twinkies v. destroying the life on the planet as we know it. Whoa! Tough choice.
July 11th, 2009 at 9:39 amInteresting… I’m not surprised as I’d been hearing a lot of talk trying to link the ag. sector and climate change…. Maybe they saw the strong opposition from rural law makers over ACES. You can bet a PR team is at RNC headquarters crafting some talking points on the climate change fight and its negative impact on agriculture production!
July 11th, 2009 at 11:45 amWell considering the Democrat drafting called for $175 per head of Beefer and $85 per milk producing cow and the costs to be peddled off to the consumer….Kinda hard to say it wouldn’t hurt the Ag sector or the working class and welfare population. Then again, if your vegan or Lactose intolerant then it only matters to milk/dairy product consumers and nasty old meat eaters.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pmTake into consideration that global warming/cooling ( oops…climate changiness) is just a method of contolling the citizenry, then it all washes out the same regardless, the end always justify the means, ask Lord Gore.
Oh, and for more fun: Climate change is causing a breed of wild sheep in Scotland to shrink, according to research.
Science Mag has descended into buffoonery. http://westinstenv.org/news/2009/07/02/climate-change-is-shrinking-sheep/
Hmmm and when water is in short supply due to drought caused by global warming, that’s going to agriculture a lot of good.
Even if converting to green energy did cost a lot in the short term, we’d need to do it anyway.
July 12th, 2009 at 12:17 amFood prices in the country are kept artificially high by the government. There is no reason that the food prices couldn’t be finagled lower by the government too.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:07 pmAre you people really this stupid? There is no global warming because of us. It has been getting warmer since the last ice age. We are in a cooling trend for 8 years. Do you not read. Twits you are what is wrong with this country.
July 13th, 2009 at 8:47 pm