Thursday, November 05, 2009

Down on the Farm   [William Tucker]

To get an idea of the tomfoolery that lies ahead with Waxman-Markey/Kerry Boxer climate-change legislation, take a look at the “agricultural title” now being crafted by Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow. 

“Stabenow has been working for about 18 months on a farms and forests bill,” reports CQ Today. “It will probably be merged with broader climate change legislation that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and establish a market for trading government-issued pollution allowances.”

Cap-and-trade in Europe has foundered since the trading of dubious “emissions credits” has eclipsed any serious effort in reducing carbon emissions. Western European countries have earned “credits” from closing antiquated industries in Eastern European or planting trees in Rwanda. There are even stories about factories built in China solely for the purpose of closing them down and selling the “emissions credits” to European nations.

We may be about to see worse. 

Stabenow’s idea is to marry the interests of two of her constituents — limping Rust Belt industries and ailing farmers — into one big subsidy package. The farmers will earn emissions credits by not cutting down trees, not planting crops and maybe diapering cows. There is even talk of urban farming: “We have a lot of excess land in Detroit and Flint,” Stabenow told CQ Today. “We could develop farms and forestation that would be positive for the city.” 

“Stabenow envisions Michigan cashing in on an offset program,” says the report — and who wouldn’t? “Depending upon how the program is structured, it could be cheaper for industrial polluters to purchase offsets than the government-issued emissions allowances.”  With various government programs encouraging farmers both to grow and not grow crops and with climate legislation rewarding them for putting more land under cultivation and then taking it out again, the whole thing could turn into one vast pipeline of federal subsidies to Michigan and every other agricultural state. No wonder even skeptics such as Montana Democrat Max Baucus are starting to come around:

Baucus said that developing a farm title with generous offset provisions for farmers may not, on its own, be enough to win his support for the bill. “But it’s important,” he said.  “Everything helps.”

So here’s a better idea. Why don’t we reward farmers not to produce the ethanol that now consumes 30 percent of the nation’s corn crop? Ethanol is doing absolutely nothing to reduce oil imports, probably loses energy as far as anyone can tell, drives up food prices, and actually increases carbon emissions by throwing millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere that otherwise would have remained in the soil or the food chain for years or decades. 

So now we’d have a program that would pay farmers to stop causing environmental damage by allowing industries to escape carbon caps by encouraging farmers to put more land under cultivation where they would be paid not grow crops . . . well, we’ll let Senator Stabenow figure it all out.

11/05 11:00 AMShare