Comments on: Breaking: Rangel agrees to June 19 deadline for climate bill from House Ways and Means, Ag Chair Peterson says “We’re not trying to stop this bill.”

By: Farmer Joe

Farmer Joe — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:04:28 +0000

With 1% of the population farming and feeding the other 99% who think they know how farming should be conducted is scary. Yes, we farmers can use less carbon producing means. We can go back to drying grain on the roads as they do in third world countries where hunger is a hourly concern. We can park our tractors and use a hoe. We will eat but you may not. We can not use petroleum based herbicides but that hoe of ours will only chop so many weeds in a growing season and not much will be produced beyond feeding our family not yours.
There will be no need to use all the energy to transport food as there won’t be much. Large canneries and frozen food processers will not be consuming energy and no carbon cap will be involved. Think of all the gas that will be saved when people won’t have a reason to go to the grocery or resturants. Isn’t life going to be grand?

By: crf

crf — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:20:43 +0000

Load it up with agriculture pork, and biofuel subsidies, if that is what is needed to pass it.

Trading deficit (in the form of more biofuel and agriculture subsidies) for carbon dioxide reductions seems to be a no brainer.

What government needs to really worry about is the talk about carbon tariffs on Chinese trade. While that would be “fair” (potentially), it would be dangerous given the debt China is buying. But the trade argument, because it has some logic behind it, could easily find expression in this bill, particularly as a big stick Republican wreckers may wield against weak Democrats.

It would be better to not initially worry about “carbon dumping”, for several reasons. It is something that can be negotiated over time. The small reductions that will occur at first in the US will not heavily disadvantage domestic industry. Also the fraction of domestically produced goods and services is much larger than that for imports from China.

Carbon tariffs will be necessary, eventually, but should be negotiated world-wide, and should be accompanied with plenty of carrots for newly industrialized countries like China.

By: no name

no name — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:54:30 +0000

“Big-agriculture”

most ag seems to pollute a lot.

By: James Newberry

James Newberry — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:39:08 +0000

Big-agriculture creates a long list of environmental and social problems. For example, the data I’ve seen reports that of all anthropogenic global warming gasses emitted in the US, our food system contributes 30%, almost one third. 17% is associated with meat products and 13% for non-meat. These figures include energy for such factors as factories, refrigeration and transportation. Big-ag is, of course, heavily subsidized by the US taxpayer.

By: no name

no name — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:34:33 +0000

I read that the ag industry is one of the most polluting industries left. don’t we have to at some point target the pollution generated by farms? I thought I read there was not much regulation on farms polluting?