03/25/08 Policy Side of Global Warming

The Policy Side of Global Warming. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Elin Miller, EPA's Region 10's Administrator has gone past the debate as to whether or not we have an issue with global warming. Her science background shows her too much evidence to the contrary. But the interesting thing is what we are doing about it. The EPA has a number of programs in place to help businesses towards energy savings. MILLER: Just some of those smart things to do. The "make sense" things to do that can not only help the environment but also help that business bottom line. In addition to various programs there have been some policy decisions made but what about a hard line approach to making things like compact fluorescents and those kinds of easy things mandatory? MILLER: It's hard to predict what is going to happen in Congress but let me also kind of go up a little higher level, at an international level. We have to do things from a U.S. standpoint but we also have to full recognize that there are developing countries, particularly in Asia that if they don't get on the bandwagon too could really dwarf what we might do or what might happen even if Europe and the U.S. work on things. So this has to be a global solution because it is a global problem. It seems that the global issue is really starting to get some peoples attention and indeed the U.S. has taken a positive, pro-active posture. MILLER: So whatever we can do in our diplomatic negotiations and discussions. At the same time Congress acted in the energy bill that passed last December and many even 6 months earlier would have said that never would have happened. And that was definitely a focus in a ratcheting down. Miller says that CO2 emissions are something that is being looked at under a microscope right now. MILLER: One little known thing is in the budget bill that passed Congress in December of 2007, EPA is mandated and we're working very hard on it right now to establish mandatory inventory reporting for CO2 emissions nationally. There's about 10 states who have been working on it but Congress has said look, we need to have a system to count the CO2 that everyone can feel comfortable to rely on. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.