Climate Change and Ag

 Now that health care passed in congress, what’s next for big brother to impose on us. Well it might not be toooo bad and it looks like the big shots in Washington may have ag’s better interests in mind. I’m David Sparks. That comes up next. Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are working on new climate change legislation.  They ran a rough draft by representatives of different sectors of the economy to get some reaction.  American Farm Bureau climate specialist Paul Schlegel was one of them.

 “What we know so far is that they want to put a fee on motor fuels.  They want to cap emissions in the utility sector and then they also want to put emission limits in the manufacturing sector.  We know there will be agricultural provisions.  A lot of this is going to have to be evaluated once we get details which we currently don’t have.”

Schlegel says he thinks the senators really want to address farmers’ and ranchers’ concerns, but any plan that puts a price tag on carbon gas emissions is a concern.

“We appreciate the outreach.  We appreciate the opportunity to get out concerns in there. We are going to continue to cooperate and make suggestions where we can and then we’re going to evaluate it when we get the language. But when you price carbon, you’re doing a couple of things.  Number one, you’re raising energy costs.  That will have a negative impact on agriculture and when you have a trading program and you’re creating a commodity which is going to be carbon which will have a value, if we are creating values for people to plant trees, that could cause the loss of up to 50 to 70 million acres of productive ag land. Those are two very big concerns we have.”