Analyzing Climate Change

Analyzing Climate Change.  I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

A lot of people are on the fence when it comes to climate change legislation. Is it good? Is it bad? Read Smith with 25 x ’25 says they wanted to get to the bottom of the issue and have been working with the University of Tennessee to hopefully provide some analysis of climate change policies on ag and forestry.

SMITH: Following passage of Waxman-Markey in the House there was a lot and remains a lot of controversy around the net impact to agriculture and forestry on any ultimate legislation that’s going to pass along the lines of what the House passed and you see a real confused agriculture, a little bit of folks taking sides, Farm Bureau was very cautious and was against any cap & trade legislation.

And yes, there have been some reports already issued but those have only served to muddy the issue.

SMITH: And then some of these reports started coming out about the net impacts and the University of Iowa did one, USDA did one, there was another one done by FAPRI that had a range of impact all over the place which really did not help the ag industries calculate whether or not it was going to be a net gain or a net loss.

Those things and more prompted them to contact U of T and ask for some help in clarifying the issue.

SMITH: What we decided since 25 x ’25 is not, quote, supporting cap & trade legislation, what we are doing is trying to keep agriculture and forestry informed as to what’s going on and to give them as much information so they can make up their own minds.

Smith says that there is some preliminary data available that looks promising but they are still waiting for the full report.

SMITH: We worked real hard to round up some funds to have the University of Tennessee do an in-depth study of the net economic impacts to agriculture with the cap & trade legislation and the only thing we could assume was that it’s going to be something like the House passed. We know it isn’t going to be exactly but we had to have something to look at.

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

www.harvestcleanenergy.org