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AFBF exec criticizes climate change bill at Senate hearing
 

By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate environment and public works committee met last week to hold a hearing on cap-and-trade, or climate change, legislation.

The House of Representatives recently passed its version of the bill, HR2454, also called the Waxman-Markey bill. The legislation would create a carbon trading program that’s designed to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Some scientists believe these gases contribute to global warming, an unnatural greenhouse effect that slowly raises the Earth’s temperature.

Witnesses at the full committee hearing included Jeffrey Hopkins of Rio Tinto, a coal company, Bill Hohenstein of the USDA’s global climate change program, Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund and Bob Stallman of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF). Several senators also spoke at the hearing.

“The increased fuel, fertilizer and energy costs that will result from HR2454 will greatly impact the relationship of American producers with the rest of the world,” Stallman said in his opening remarks. “U.S. agriculture is an energy-intensive industry that relies to a large extent on international markets. These increased input costs will put our farmers and ranchers at a competitive disadvantage with producers in other countries that do not have similar GHG restrictions.”

The chair of the committee, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), expressed her support for the legislation many times during the hearing.

“Agricultural and forestry businesses have opportunities to play an important role in efforts to reduce global warming,” Boxer said in her opening remarks. “Changes in land use, reforestation efforts and other activities can make significant reductions in global warming pollution. For example, a farmer can capture the methane that is emitted by waste ponds, or change to no-till or low-till land management, or take other steps to increase the amount of carbon absorbed in soils and forests. Then that farmer can sell those documented reductions in emissions as an ‘offset’ on an open market, where it can be purchased by a regulated entity.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member on the committee and a longtime global warming skeptic, got right to the point in his opening remarks.

“Let’s face it: As anyone familiar with agriculture knows, farming is an energy-intensive business with high costs and low profit margins,” Inhofe said. “So when the price of diesel, electricity or natural gas goes up, farmers really feel the pinch. So it’s not surprising that a significant portion of the agricultural community opposes cap-and-trade, the purpose of which is to raise prices on the energy that farmers use.”

At one point Inhofe questioned Stallman, asking him if he agrees with an Ag Policy Research Institute report that claims the legislation would end up costing the average farmer in Missouri, with a 2,000 acre farm, $30,000. Stallman said he saw no reason to dispute it.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), an opponent of cap-and-trade pushing his own related legislation, at one point asked Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund how much the legislation would raise the price of gasoline. Krupp answered about 2 cents per gallon a year. Then Alexander asked him, incredulously, how such a small increase would change drivers’ habits. Krupp answered that people would buy more efficient vehicles and he said the legislation should be viewed in its entirety, not just as a question of gasoline prices.

Alexander, who would like to see many more nuclear power plants built in the country, sparred with Boxer over their competing visions of how best to combat climate change and the best energy policy for the country’s future.

“If you put in a low carbon fuel standard today on fuel, you deal with 30 percent of the carbon, without this whole contraption of taxes and mandates, and you gradually lower it and you shift people to what is probably lower fuel costs, which is electric cars or maybe biofuels,” Alexander said.

Boxer said she wondered how Alexander’s plan could be cheaper when his plan doesn’t include any subsidies for people who can’t afford the rate increases that would be levied to pay for the new power plants. Alexander said it’s cheaper because nuclear power is cheaper than windmills.

In another interesting exchange, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) asked Stallman, “Does the ag community think Washington is out of touch with what’s happening?”

Stallman answered, “I am hearing that concern, specifically about the Waxman-Markey bill, about the potential for cost without any return.”

Stallman went on to say that he’s in favor of a voluntary cap-and-trade system, which he described as truly market oriented rather than government mandated.

“We still have to worry about this international competitiveness issue with farmers and ranchers,” Stallman said. “(Waxman-Markey) puts us in an international competitiveness nightmare.”
Barrosso said that most land out west is federally-owned and is not eligible for carbon offset trading under the legislation and said that ranchers there are dependent on the use of federal land for grazing.

“I can’t see how the agricultural community in the inter-mountain west states could possibly survive under this bill,” Barrasso said.

7/22/2009