The Wonk Room

Global Boiling Declares War On Thanksgiving

Our increasingly extreme climate is devastating American agriculture. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, strengthened by global warming, caused $1.6 billion in agriculture damage in Louisiana alone. Now it appears that a Thanksgiving mainstay — pumpkin pie — is next on the global boiling hit list. On Tuesday, Nestle Baking, “which controls about 85% of the pumpkin crop for canning, issued a rare apology and said that rain appeared to have destroyed what remained of a small harvest this year and that it expected to stop shipping the holiday staple by Thanksgiving.” Paul Bakus, vice president and general manager of Nestle Baking, bemoaned the devastating rains that made it impossible to harvest the Morton, Illinois pumpkin crop used for Libby’s canned pumpkin:

If only we could have changed the weather. We hope Mother Nature is nicer to us next year, hopefully delivering less rain and more sunshine.

In addition, waffles are on the hit list, as supplies of Eggos are disappearing. “Heavy rains that soaked Atlanta last month knocked out Kellogg’s waffle operations,” ABC News reported on Tuesday. September’s epic flooding actually exacerbated a shutdown caused by an earlier virulent outbreak of the deadly bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. Kellogg’s initially only referred to the food poisoning threat as “equipment issues,” preferring to let global boiling take the blame.

Unfortunately, we have changed the weather.

“2009 continues to climb up the rainiest-years-ever chart” in Illinois. This year’s rainfall in Peoria of 49.34 inches — 50 percent above normal — has already exceeded the total of 2008, itself 25 percent above normal. With only six more inches of precipitation, 2009 will break the record rainfall set in 1990.

Similarly, the September 21st flood in Atlanta, Georgia “was worse than what’s statistically projected to happen once every 100 years — even worse than every 500 years.” It was “extremely rare”, “epic” and so “stunning”, the U.S. Geological Survey says the “flood has defied its attempts to define it.”

This kind of extreme precipitation is part of the changes to our climate wrought by global warming, which increases the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold and changes circulation patterns. As the U.S. Global Change Program reported in June, 2009 on the impacts of climate change in the Midwest and the Southeast:

– In the Midwest, both summer and winter precipitation have been above average for the last three decades, the wettest period in a century. The Midwest has experienced two record-breaking floods in the past 15 years.

– According to climate models, precipitation in the Midwest is projected to increase in winter and spring, and to become more intense throughout the year.

– In the Southeast, average autumn precipitation has increased by 30 percent for the region since 1901. There has been an increase in heavy downpours in many parts of the region.

Obama Plants Monsanto And CropLife Officials In Key Agriculture Posts

Our guest bloggers are Kathy Ozer, the executive director of the National Family Farm Coalition, and Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, the senior scientist at the Pesticide Action Network North America and a lead author on the UN-sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

Roger Beachy

Lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House,” President Obama assured us upon inauguration. And yet he just nominated to two key posts “Big Ag” industry power brokers, who come straight from the chemical pesticide and biotechnology sectors. While they may not be registered as lobbyists, both men come from organizations representing powerful agribusiness interests, which every year spend millions of dollars in lobbying to advance their companies’ chemical and transgenic products.

Obama has tapped Roger Beachy, long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto’s nonprofit arm) as chief of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Created by the 2008 Farm Bill, NIFA is the new means of awarding the USDA’s external research dollars. As the director of NIFA (a nomination that doesn’t require congressional approval), Beachy will oversee the distribution of nearly $500 million in grants and other research funding. Sustainable agriculture initiatives are likely to suffer, as research dollars are awarded to projects that promote Beachy’s vested interests in biotechnology.

Islam Siddiqui

Islam Siddiqui, currently the VP of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife USA, was nominated to the post of Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. Why the president would nominate someone from the group that infamously chided the First Lady for refusing to use pesticides on the White House garden is a bit of a mystery. This critical position is designed to use free trade agreements to open up foreign markets for U.S. agriculture goods — in the past, mostly to promote chemical-intensive, genetically modified products that undermine local food cultures in developing countries.

It’s crucial that the Senate Finance Committee hears from public witnesses while investigating his past roles. At CropLife International, Siddiqui led an initiative to weaken restrictions against fertilizers and pesticides, as part of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations. He also served as the senior agricultural trade adviser during the Clinton administration, and pressed for getting genetically modified crops and seeds approved for commercial use in the United States.

Now the United States will continue its efforts to export the worst aspects of U.S. agriculture to other countries, many of which are deeply wary of genetically modified seeds and the impacts of toxic pesticides on their communities. Mirroring those concerns, a comprehensive United Nations and World Bank- sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has said that one of the best ways to feed the world is to increase investments in agro-ecological science and farming.

We don’t need more genetically modified seeds. What we need is enforcement of antitrust laws to break up monopoly control of the global food system, and fairer — not “freer” — trade arrangements to overcome poverty and hunger around the world.

The Obama administration has made tremendous strides towards encouraging the growth of the local food movement, and its connections to human health and ecological impacts. The White House organic garden and the farmers market spearheaded by Michelle Obama are important symbolic gestures, as is the USDA’s new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative.

However, these latest appointments of industry insiders to two of the most influential offices that will shape U.S. food and agricultural policy at home and abroad call into question just how committed the Obama administration is to promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing hunger in the developing world.

Cultivating A New Generation Of American Family Farmers »

Our guest blogger is Sheilah Goodman, co-founder of Cedarbrook Farms, a diversified organic farm located near Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Sheilah can be found every Thursday until the end of October 2009 at the Cedarbrook Farm stall at the FreshFarm Market near the White House, and on Sundays throughout the year in Dupont Circle.

Michael Pollan wrote “An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief” in October 2008 arguing that food policy will and must play a central role because it affects so many other national priorities: energy, health care, climate change, and even national security. Pollan advised the yet-to-be-elected president that one way to bring about the needed changes — local sustainable farming instead of subsidized agribusiness — would be to use the power of the White House as example. Pollan said the president would be wise to choose a White House chef who was “committed to cooking simply from fresh local ingredients”:

Besides feeding you and your family exceptionally well, such a chef would demonstrate how it is possible even in Washington to eat locally for much of the year, and that good food needn’t be fussy or complicated but does depend on good farming.

This week a new FreshFarm Market opened by the White House. Every Thursday afternoon through the end of October there will be 18 vendors just steps from the White House offering milk, cheese, flowers, meats, baked goods, and even yarn. As with all FreshFarm Markets, the vendors must produce what they are selling from the land that they farm and they must be local—no more than 150 miles from downtown Washington, D.C.

Our farm, Cedarbrook, is one of the vendors at the new market. Starting any new market is exciting, but this one is even more so. This market has a high profile, and it can help hasten the demise of the old model of conventional, subsidized industrialized food production by showcasing local, sustainable agriculture. Hopefully the market’s visibility will help create a new generation farmers. The challenges of operating a small sustainable farm are numerous, but a little creativity and perseverance will take them a long way. Here’s a primer to help them get started: More »« Less

Pollution-Powered Blanche Lincoln Takes Over Agriculture Committee

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an opponent of climate and clean energy action, is taking the helm of the key Senate Agriculture Committee. The current chair, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), is leaving his post to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) at the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. As all the Democrats senior to Lincoln currently chair other committees, she is now poised to become the first woman chair of the agriculture committee, where she has jurisdiction over major elements of energy reform and climate policy. In an committee hearing on carbon market regulation today, Lincoln said that she thinks “there are great opportunities here,” but took a sour view of any action this year:

Making sure as we do move forward, that we don’t do so putting a disproportionate burden on our hardworking farm families and our agriculture communities across this country. They do a tremendous job providing food and fiber for the world. While it isn’t necessarily my preference to move on cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate this year, the Senate is going to move on climate change legislation in the future.

Lincoln is violently opposed to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, calling the clean energy economic legislation supported by President Obama and passed by the House this June a “complete non-starter“:

The House’s Waxman-Markey bill picks winners and losers and places a disproportionate share of the economic burden on families and businesses in rural America. It is a deeply flawed bill. I will not support similar legislation in the Senate.

Lincoln continually makes the false argument that taking action for clean energy and fighting climate change is more dangerous than the status quo, worrying that the ACES Act “could lead to really high, higher food prices in these economic times.” In reality, global warming has already damaged crop yields, and unchecked warming will devastate them. Unprecedented, multi-year droughts even now are destroying the top agricultural states in the country — California and Texas. Furthermore, the unregulated and fickle oil and coal markets have led to energy price shocks that drove food prices wild. Again, inaction will only make the unsustainable status quo even worse — for Arkansans and all of America.

Lincoln is filbustering America’s future, powered by hundreds of thousands of dollars of polluter cash. This year alone, Lincoln has taken in $156,350 from electric utilities, making her the fourth-most utility-dependent Democrat in the Senate. Worse, among the $163,250 in oil and gas contributions received, Lincoln has taken $10,000 from Koch Industries, the extremist right-wing pollution company behind the Astroturf organizations demonizing Obama and his efforts for energy and health reform.

The U.S. agricultural sector is responsible for 6 to 8 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions, but has the opportunity to sequester at least ten percent of all emissions through afforestation and carbon-friendly crop practices. The Agriculture Committee has jurisdiction over any such agricultural offsets programs — which may have a value of tens of billions of dollars each year — that are managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Much more money is at stake with the broader carbon cap-and-trade market which the American Clean Energy and Security Act would establish — hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The legislation would also add new regulations to the even larger energy derivative markets, restoring accountability and reducing volatility to energy prices. The Agriculture Committee oversees the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which has become the primary regulatory agency for derivatives. In fact, Agriculture Committee members now receive the bulk of their campaign contributions from the financial sector instead of the diminished agriculture sector.

Collin Peterson Apes Sensenbrenner, Fears ‘Catalytic Converter’ For Cows

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) has wielded his power as the chair of the House Agriculture Committee to shape clean energy legislation on behalf of industrial agriculture interests. Peterson’s efforts to limit environmental regulation of industrial farmers in the American Clean Energy and Security Act may have been motivated by the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has received from agribusiness. Yesterday, Peterson appeared at a town hall meeting in Colorado with Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO), and explained that his actions are also shaped by anti-science ideology:

Many of my people think global warming is a hoax, and I’m a little skeptical myself. But it’s going on all over the world, and it’s not good to put all that carbon in the atmosphere.

After winning concessions so that “the EPA will not run the program for agriculture, the department of agriculture will,” Peterson voted in favor of the ACES Act, which creates a carbon market but limits traditional Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollutants. Peterson told the town hall audience that if the legislation isn’t passed and EPA regulates carbon pollution on its own, “you’ll have to get a catalytic converter for all your cows.”

Extremist climate denier Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is responsible for the bizarre canard that regulation of global warming pollution requires bovine catalytic converters. Sensenbrenner has been making this absurd claim since 2007, and this June embarrassed Fox News interviewer Megyn Kelly in June with a rant about “cow farts” and “a catalytic converter on each end of the cow.”

In reality, traditional regulation of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases — including performance standards and construction permitting — would powerfully complement a carbon cap-and-trade system to build a clean-energy economy. As the USDA has found, the economic opportunity for farmers and ranchers far outweighs any costs of compliance. In a side note, catalytic converters actually generate carbon dioxide by breaking down carbon monoxide. So the doomsday Peterson and Sensenbrenner imagine is not only a fantasyland cartoon, it doesn’t even make sense.

Global Boiling: Filibustering Our Farmers’ Future

U.S. Senators are attacking the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act as threatening farmers even though America is suffering from the ravages of a climate out of control — heat waves, floods, storms, droughts, and seasonal shifts. Scientific studies show global warming has already hurt American agriculture, and that the damages will grow catastrophic if action is not taken. In a new video, the Center for American Progress Action Fund argues that passage of a strong climate bill is imperative, and senators should stop filibustering our farmers’ future. Watch it:

The rising tide of climate change — the catastrophic droughts in Texas and California, the heat waves in Louisiana and Nebraska, the storms across the High Plains and the Midwest, the floods in North Dakota and Minnesota — require action. Instead, both Democratic and Republican senators are arguing that a limit on carbon pollution would be too costly for farmers:

Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): “No farmers will escape the effect of this bill.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

Jim Inhofe (R-OK): “I had the opportunity of going and talking to the national farm co-ops the other day and addressed to them if we were to pass the cap-and-trade system what that would do to my folks in Oklahoma and all of America . . . It would be disastrous for our farmers in America.” [Senate floor, 7/15/09]

Mike Johanns (R-NE): “The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would have a significant if not severe impact on agriculture. . . . Different studies come up with varied numbers but they all paint the same picture: agriculture loses.” [Senate floor, 7/20/09]

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR): “I just worry if you’ve taken the kind of look at USDA at the potential impact of the house legislation on the food processing industry and the disproportionate costs on that industry that could lead to really high, higher food prices in these difficult economic times.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

Ben Nelson (D-NE): “I’m concerned that if this is going to be the approach that is taken, that it be the most benign approach to balancing the economy and the environment. It’s not just agriculture, it’s people turning on their lights and businesses as well.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

John Thune (R-SD): “They’re worried about the EPA regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and what that would mean for the future of the production of agriculture.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

The effort to filibuster clean energy legislation means that a minority of senators can block the effort to preserve the livelihood of farmers in America. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) have committed to cloture — standing against the filibuster. The rest of the senators need to join them.

New USDA Analysis: Economic Benefits Of Waxman-Markey For Farmers ‘Easily Trump’ The Costs

In testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack will debunk conservative fearmongering of the cost of cap-and-trade legislation on American farmers. Right-wing organizations from the Heritage Foundation to the American Farm Bureau have presented flawed analyses of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) to claim that a cap on global warming pollution would lead to a “permanent drought season” for the agricultural sector. At the request of Republican Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted their own analysis of the clean energy legislation. As Vilsack will testify, the USDA found that “the economic benefits to agriculture from cap and trade legislation will likely outweigh the costs”:

HR 2454’s creation of an offset market will create opportunities for the agricultural sector. In particular, our analysis indicates that annual net returns to farmers range from about $1 billion per year in 2015-20 to almost $15-20 billion in 2040-50, not accounting for the costs of implementing offset practices.

So, let me be clear about the implications of this analysis. In the short term, the economic benefits to agriculture from cap and trade legislation will likely outweigh the costs. In the long term, the economic benefits from offsets markets easily trump increased input costs from cap and trade legislation. Let me also note that we believe these figures are conservative because we aren’t able to model the types of technological change that are very likely to help farmers produce more crops and livestock with fewer inputs.

This analysis comports with the findings of the Brookings Institution, which found that a cap-and-trade system without an offset program would have little economic impact on the agricultural sector. Furthermore, not only does the USDA analysis not take into account the rewards of technology innovation, demand for biofuels, or opportunities for wind farms, it fails to account for the costs of inaction. Global warming has already hit American farmers hard, leading to reduced crop yields from droughts, floods, extreme storms, heat waves, seasonal shifts, and increased pestilence. In coming years, these disasters for farmers are expected to increase dramatically if no action is taken to address global warming.

The reality is that Waxman-Markey is both necessary for the survival of American farmers and an economic boon. The real debate Washington should be having is whether the concessions made on behalf of existing industrial agricultural giants weaken that opportunity — not only for the American public at large, but for the farmers themselves.

Farm Bureau Chief Bob Stallman Believes In Global Cooling

The head of the largest farming lobbyist group believes that the earth is cooling. Bob Stallman, American Farm Bureau Federation, testified today before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the science of man-made climate change isn’t “the whole story,” citing several canards promoted by extremist global warming deniers. Stallman even claimed that “climate models that have gotten so much attention did not predict the cooling that has occurred over the last decade”:

As we have looked at this issue, we have tried to stay grounded in facts, and as someone once said, facts are stubborn things. We also believe very strongly that this issue, like others, ought to be grounded in sound science.

What do the facts and the science tell us about climate change? Number one, data seems clearly to indicate an identifiable warming trend. The data also shows that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing and that man-made emissions have increased for a number of decades.

But those aren’t the only facts, and they don’t tell the whole story. We also know, for instance, that the climate models that have gotten so much attention did not predict the cooling that has occurred over the last decade. We know that there have been times in the earth’s history when carbon concentrations in the atmosphere were greater, when temperatures have been cooler or warmer – in short, there are any number of variables that probably affect the earth’s climate in ways that we simply don’t know. We know that reputable scientists have raised questions about the computer models that are being used.

By denying the very troubling facts about global warming, Stallman is putting the 6 million members of the American Farm Bureau Federation at great risk. In reality, there’s no “cooling trend,” and there is no ambiguity about the role of man-made greenhouse gases. 2005 is the warmest year on record, according to NASA (although 1998 and 2007 were within the margin of error). More importantly, the last ten years have been the warmest decade by far — significantly warmer than the previous decade of 1989-1998, which had been the warmest, itself significantly warmer than 1979-1988, then the warmest decade in the last 150 years:

As the head of the World Meteorological Organization had to explain, after the Washington Post published George Will’s global cooling lies:

Data collected over the past 150 years by the 188 members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through observing networks of tens of thousands of stations on land, at sea, in the air and from constellations of weather and climate satellites lead to an unequivocal conclusion: The observed increase in global surface temperatures is a manifestation of global warming. Warming has accelerated particularly in the past 20 years.

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.

Global Boiling Means More Billion-Dollar Droughts For Farmers

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Farmers and those in the agriculture economy have a lot to lose if the trends in billion-dollar weather disasters continue — particularly when it comes to drought and water shortages, as recent news indicates. “Central and South Texas are in the midst of an epic drought that has sapped soils of their moisture, dried up stock ponds and turned cornfields from green to beige.” California’s “Central Valley farmers will receive an additional 100,000 acre-feet as part of a water loan to deal with the three-year drought plaguing the state.” As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee begins hearing testimony this week on climate change legislation, “Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters” — a catalog of 90 costly weather-related disasters dating back to 1980 assembled by the National Climatic Data Center — is a good place to start when considering the costs of inaction on global warming:

– In 2007, a severe drought with extreme heat across the Great Plains and the East brought some $5 billion in damages and costs. Wildfires in the West that same year cost more than $1 billion.

– In 2006, widespread drought affected the Great Plains, the south, and the far west, costing about $6 billion.

– In 2002, a broad drought cost $10 billion, affecting large parts of 30 states from the West to the Great Plains and much of the East. Western wildfires associated with the drought cost $2 billion.

– In 2000, a drought and heat wave centered on the south central and southeastern United States caused 140 deaths and cost $4 billion.

– In 1999, An eastern drought and heat wave brought “extensive agricultural losses” of more than $1 billion and cost 502 lives.

– In 1998, “Very severe losses to agriculture and related industries” accompanied a drought affecting the central and eastern U.S. with estimated costs of $40 billion and 5,000 to 10,000 deaths.

The House’s narrow approval of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 on June 26 came only after House leaders satisfied some of the concerns of farm state lawmakers. Senators, too, will be sensitive to those interests, so it is critical they understand some of the stakes for agriculture if Congress fails to pass comprehensive clean-energy jobs and climate legislation.

Drought and changes in water supply will be one of the main challenges. Over the last half century, the recently released government report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” says, droughts associated with rising temperatures have become more frequent in much of the Southeast and Western regions of the country. That trend is expected to continue. “In the future, droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe,” particularly in the Southwest, according to the report.

Water shortages will likely affect a whole range of critical economic sectors, from limiting electricity production by nuclear and coal-fired power plants that have high water demands to increasing shipping costs on the Great Lakes and Mississippi River — as happened in 1988 when a drought stranded 4,000 barges on America’s most important commercial waterway. Drier conditions in the West will also increase the extent and cost of wildfires, which have already soared in the last decade.

These events and their impacts are not abstractions. They are costly, disruptive, and affect millions of Americans, including many who make their living raising food and livestock. Few lobbyists for these interests will mention these costly impacts to our already challenged rural economies.

Senators have a responsibility to protect farmers from more and worse droughts even if the farmers’ hired guns won’t.

Read more at the Center for American Progress, and view a map of past and projected droughts at Science Progress.

Norm Dicks Is Considering Outlawing Science On Behalf Of Big Ag

E&E News reports that Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) will offer an amendment to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appropriations bill on Thursday “that would bar the agency from considering the effects of ‘indirect’ land-use changes when calculating the carbon footprint of biofuels.” Emerson’s plan to outlaw climate science for agribusiness is no surprise — she has received $952,084 from the sector, far more than any other, and has attacked the regulation of greenhouse gases before. However, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), the powerful chair of the Appropriations Interior and Environment subcommittee, is merely “leaning against” the amendment:

We think that they ought to at least be able to evaluate indirect land use, but I’m still thinking about this one,” he said, noting he had just learned about it.

This is the same biofuel-industry loophole for which Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has been holding up comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. By replacing petroleum, biofuels have the potential to dramatically reduce global warming pollution. But scientists have found biofuels can also worsen global warming by encouraging farmers to cut down the diversity-rich tropical forests that soak up carbon dioxide. It is critical that the federal government’s mandate for billions of gallons of ethanol production be coupled with regulations that take into account the science of indirect land use change.

Dicks, an environmental champion, should know this.

Peterson Denies Global Warming Hurts Agriculture: ‘My Farmers Are Going To Say That’s A Good Thing’ »

House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN), who has been blocking the passage of comprehensive climate legislation, dismissed a White House report on the damaging effect of global warming on U.S. agriculture. Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the chief of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association and one of the top scientists in the Obama administration, called the climate impacts report released yesterday a “clarion call for action” for a problem that “is happening now, and in our own backyards.” However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Peterson, “when asked by reporters Tuesday about the report’s findings, said they run counter to what many in his region are experiencing“:

We’ve just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we’ve ever had. They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn.

It is not apparent what farmers Peterson is talking about. As the report explains in its section on the agricultural impacts of climate change, global warming brings not only warmer temperatures but also heavier floods. Despite the relatively cold winter of 2008, over the past thirty years winter temperatures in Peterson’s Minnesota have risen more than 7°F. In fact, floods and higher temperatures associated with global warming have already damaged America’s corn crops, with worse to come:

Analysis of crop responses suggests that even moderate increases in temperature will decrease yields of corn, wheat, sorghum, bean, rice, cotton, and peanut crops.

Responding to Peterson’s argument on a telephone briefing organized by the Center for American Progress, USDA Global Change Program director Bill Hohenstein explained that scientists have estimated that “the effects on the corn yield in the Midwest” from observed changes in temperature and carbon dioxide levels “are a decrease of about 3 percent, not accounting for changes in water availability.” Hohenstein was citing an earlier U.S. Global Change Program report, The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States:

More »« Less

Collin Peterson: ‘Mixing Climate Change Together With Energy Independence’ Is Dumb

In an agricultural hearing Thursday, committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) offered a withering critique of the comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation under consideration by the House of Representatives. Peterson, a conservative Blue Dog Democrat, attacked the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) for including both clean energy and global warming pollution standards:

My big problem is that they are mixing climate change together with energy independence. I don’t think that is smart.

In fact, it is Peterson, like other skeptics of action on climate change, who is not being “smart.” Reforming our broken energy policy requires recognition that the entire lifecycle of energy use matters. As Vice President Al Gore has explained, our energy and climate crises are “linked by a common thread – our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels.”

Closely aligned with the interests of his corporate agriculture contributors, Peterson is attempting to subvert Waxman-Markey, to replace our policy of fossil fuel subsidies without regulation with one of agriculture subsidies without regulation.

Like other attempts to outlaw science, Peterson wants to forbid the federal government from even recognizing agricultural pollution. By replacing petroleum, biofuels have the potential to dramatically reduce global warming pollution. But scientists have found biofuels can also worsen global warming by encouraging farmers to cut down the diversity-rich tropical forests that soak up carbon dioxide. Similarly, farmers may be able to trap more carbon in soil and plants through changes in agricultural practices, allowing them to sell billions of dollars of “offsets” in a carbon cap-and-trade market. But poorly regulated offsets are little more than worthless subsidies.

Following the law, the Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to consider the global warming consequences of biofuel production as it develops new renewable fuels standards. Similarly, Waxman-Markey would put the EPA Administrator and an independent scientific board in charge of devising the rules for agricultural offsets to maintain their integrity. Peterson’s response? Forbid the government from using science to guide its green-farm policy:

A lot of us on the Committee do not want the EPA near our farms. And, I don’t think you are going to get any type of a bill through Congress, whatever the administration wants, that is going to have that system, for whatever it is worth.

At Grist, Tom Philpott debunks Peterson’s apologia for Big Ag:

The current version of Waxman-Markey contains almost no language on agriculture. (As I’ve written before, agriculture is exempt from any cap on greenhouse-gas emissions.) But farming projects would still be eligible for offsets through an offsets-review board that the legislation would set up within the EPA. Big Ag isn’t content with that arrangement. In the coming days, the game will be to insert specific language around ag offsets into the legislation –and promote a certification process developed by Big Ag itself.

In short, Peterson is playing a high-stakes game of chicken with our planet and farmers’s own livelihoods in order to force Congressional leadership to allow agricultural giants like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland to rewrite this critical climate and clean energy legislation to their benefit. For weeks, Peterson has threatened to block Waxman-Markey if his demands on behalf of industrial agriculture are not met. And right now it looks like he’s going to win.

Brookings: Fears That Cap And Trade Will Hurt Farmers Are Baseless

A new economic study reveals that concerns a cap on global warming pollution could hurt American agriculture are unfounded. As the Waxman-Markey green economy legislation (H.R. 2454) moves toward passage in the House of Representatives, the farm lobby and rural officials have questioned the bill’s costs to farmers. Last week, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), the ranking member of the House Committee on Agriculture, cried that farmers are “a prime target for a national energy tax“:

From higher energy costs to lost jobs to higher food prices, cap-and-trade promises to cap our incomes, our livelihoods, and our standard of living, while it trades away American jobs and opportunities. . . . Whether it’s the fuel in the tractor, the fertilizer for the crops or the delivery of food to the grocery store, agriculture uses a great deal of energy throughout production. On average, 65 percent of farmers’ variable input costs are fuel, electricity, fertilizer, and chemicals. Even a small increase in the operating costs for our producers will hurt American agriculture.

Yesterday, the Brookings Institute released the topline results of an economic analysis of cap-and-trade systems, with sectoral impacts. This study models the worst-case economic scenario for cap-and-trade programs, modeling the impact of an inflexible system that does not include offsets, incentives for renewable energy development, or other cost-control measures. Even without the inclusion of an offset program to allow the agriculture sector to benefit from carbon market, their analysis found the impact on agriculture to be minimal:

Chart compiled by the Wonk Room from Brookings Institute data. The “Obama” and “Waxman-Markey” models do not include banking and borrowing of pollution allowances, unlike the actual Waxman-Markey legislation. The “hotelling” models include banking and borrowing, but no models include agricultural offsets.

Not only will the transition to a green economy not hurt America’s farmers, but it will save their livelihoods from the increasing threat of climate disruption, which impact the Brookings study did not model. In reality, the only sectors that face measurable pressure from a cap on carbon pollution are the coal and oil industries, who have enjoyed extreme profits at the expense of the rest of the economy — and yet have failed to make any real investments in clean energy.

Global Boiling: A Stormy Forecast For Agriculture

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

A yield loss of three percent of the U.S. corn crop due to a rise in temperature of 2 degrees F totals $1.4 billion. Environment America, April 2009.

Farm-belt lawmakers are posing a challenge to passage of clean-energy legislation in Congress, but torpedoing the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) would hurt farmers because harms linked to global warming — including drought, flooding, and other crop damage — would continue unabated. House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has threatened to bring down the entire green economy legislation if he doesn’t get his way on the renewable fuel standards and jurisdiction in the agriculture committee:

If they don’t want to change it, they’ll have to find the votes some other place. In my district a “no” vote would be a good vote.

Without congressional action on climate change legislation, global greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise and the impacts on agriculture would grow. The link between global warming and extreme weather events is evident, and research predicts that the trend will intensify in coming decades:

Heatwaves, Extreme Storms, And Droughts Will Increase In Frequency And Intensity. Changes in extreme weather are “among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate,” a 2008 federal report indicated. In the future, the report predicts, “With continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity.” [U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 2008]

Climate Disasters Have Increased Sixfold Since The 1950s. An insurance company database showed that weather-related disasters have increased sixfold since the 1950s, compared to only a slight increase in non-weather disasters. At a meeting of climate and insurance experts in 2006, “delegates reached a cautious consensus: Climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.” A Government Accountability Office investigation in 2007 found that private and government insurers including the federal crop and flood insurance programs paid out more than $320 billion for weather-related losses between 1980 and 2005. [Nature, 6/2006; GAO, 5/3/2007]

The 1988 And 1993 Midwest Climate Disasters Caused $79 Billion In Damages Alone. Not only are the costs of climate disasters high, they come in the form of unpredictably catastrophic events. A report in 2000 by Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment found that extreme weather events have “caused severe crop damage and have exacted a significant economic toll for U.S. farmers over the past 20 years” and “could rise significantly due to greater climate variability, and to increases in insects, weeds, and plant diseases.” Total damages — including agricultural losses — from the 1988 drought and 1993 Midwest floods were $79 billion. In the future, “variability of precipitation — in time, space, and intensity — will make U.S. agriculture increasingly unstable and make it more difficult for U.S. farmers to plan what crops to plan and when.” [Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, 5/2000]

Crop Losses To Rise To Billions A Year, Doubling By The 2030s. Crop losses insured by the federal government have also risen substantially in the past two decades, due to higher participation by farmers, rising crop prices, and big loss years like 2008, when the federal program paid out nearly $8.6 billion, much of it because of flooding in the Midwest. Looking just at increased soil moisture that comes with higher precipitation driven by climate change, authors of a study published in 2002 by Global Environmental Change estimated that the roughly $1.5 billion per year in crop damage could double by the 2030s. And an April report by Environment America found that U.S. corn growers could face annual losses of $1.4 billion due to future climate change, looking just how higher temperatures reduce yields. [USDA Risk Management Agency; Global Environmental Change, 11/15/2002; Environment America, 4/2009]

Return Of The Dust Bowl? A 2007 report cites a potential agricultural loss of as much as $10 billion by 2090 in the Edwards Aquifer region of Texas, and productivity losses exceeding 50 percent for wheat and soybeans in the southern and Great Plains regions. Other research predicts that the American Southwest will by mid-century face extremely difficult choices between supplying water for agriculture and the region’s booming cities. A study reported in Science in April 2007 said that a drought similar to conditions during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s could become the norm in the Southwest by 2050. [Center for Integrative Environment Research at the University of Maryland, 10/2007; Science, 4/2007]

In 2007, the Center for Integrative Environment Research at the University of Maryland report, “The U.S. Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Costs of Inaction,” included a review of previous studies on climate change impacts on agriculture and water for various regions of the United States:

The uneven nature of climate change impacts throughout the country makes the net impacts of global warming on the agricultural sector uncertain . . . Some northern regions are likely to experience fleeting economic benefits with more profitable crops migrating there (as the climate becomes hospitable to those crops.) As climate conditions continue to change, however, those temporary benefits may be lost. Other regions, such as the Southeast, West, and southern Great Plains may face challenges from increased temperatures, water stress, saltwater intrusion, and the potential increase in invasive species and pests — the impacts of which may cause costs to outweigh benefits.

American farmers, like all of us, have a huge stake in the fight to stem global climate change. To hold their future hostage to a rulemaking battle over ethanol would be a grave, shortsighted disservice.

Read an extended version of this post at the Center for American Progress website.