Stallman on Climate Change

Stallman on Climate Change. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Climate change legislation is now in the Senate’s court.  Last week American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman testified before a Senate committee on the subject.  He had a message for the Senators. 

STALLMAN: The bill that came out of the house is still not acceptable and there are still some major changes that need to be made for the benefit of agriculture.

Stallman suggests the real goal of the bill is to lessen our use of fossil fuels, but it doesn’t address how to fill the energy void.  The resulting hike in energy costs would have catastrophic affect on U.S. agriculture.

STALLMAN: This legislation has the potential to greatly affect agriculture in a negative sense. Twenty-plus percent of our input costs in agriculture are energy related and this bill will clearly increase the cost of energy. Therefore there should be a mechanism to back off of the commitments under this bill if we cannot produce the energy supply that this country needs. 

Stallman says the senate will address the legislation’s shortcomings.

STALLMAN: It’s very important for the Senate to exercise their role as the other congressional body in trying to make this legislation less burdensome on American consumers, less burdensome for American agriculture and still figure out through a strong energy component a way that we can increase our domestic supplies of energy including renewable energy.

Stallman says the bill’s real goal is lessening our use of fossil fuels.

STALLMAN: We believe the focus of this legislation is to restrict the use of coal and oil in our energy supply.  Now we should work toward more renewable fuels, but the reality is we can’t replace coal and oil as rapidly as the projections indicate and the restrictions that are in the bill are mandatory, whereas the proposed benefits and the proposed expansion of renewable fuels is just speculative and that’s the problem we have with the bill. 

Stallman says new climate change legislation is more about burdens than benefits.

STALLMAN: Prior to Chairman Peterson’s great efforts to have agriculture included in the bill, the Waxman-Markey bill only provided the opportunity for agriculture to pay higher energy prices.  With Chairman Peterson’s provision, some of agriculture has a role to earn carbon offsets which could be sold to generate income to the farm.  However, we see no scenario in which that extra income stream will offset the extra energy costs that will burden agriculture. 

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.