What Happened to Global Warming & Concerns Over Trade

What Happened to Global Warming & Concerns Over Trade. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The U.S. is getting left behind in the global trade arena by not moving forward with pending Free Trade Agreements with Columbia, Panama and Korea. That’s the assessment of former USTR Agriculture Ambassador Allen Johnson. He says he’s encouraged - however - about advancing trade - including the FTAs - after the President’s State of the Union Address.

JOHNSON: We have three free trade agreements sitting on the table ready to be considered today that would be huge opportunities for U.S. agriculture that he seemed to imply he wanted to move forward with too so those are some positive signs but you have to see where the rubber meets the road and we actually submit those agreements to Congress and Congress passes them. I frankly think the votes are there to pass them it’s just that so far the Democratic leadership and the Congress have not wanted to take it up.

As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region get ready to dig themselves out of the third major storm of the season, they may stop to wonder what happened to climate change. After all, it stands to reason that if the world is getting warmer - and the past decade was the hottest on record - major snowstorms should become a thing of the past. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm. Weather statistics are showing that as the number of storms decrease the intensity has increased. Hoo, boy.

Now here’s today’s Washington Grange Report.

(GRANGE)

That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.