| Translation: Big Ag doesn't want to pay for any of its carbon emissions, but they want to be damn sure that they are compensated for every single carbon atom they manage to sequester.
As Philpott points out, the House Ag Committee chair Collin "Organics are Dumb" Peterson went on my favorite radio show, Agritalk, this week (mp3). Peterson had a chat with "Hannity of Agriculture" (as I nicknamed the show's host) where he says that the bill "mix[es] up energy independent and climate change... and that's kind of a dangerous combination." Peterson denies that anything we're doing in agriculture has any impact on South American rainforests, and he doesn't want the fate of the rainforests to factor into our policies.
Peterson mentions that Europe is looking at second generation biofuels and they are more concerned about sustainability than economic viability, and he opposes that approach. Fortunately, he notes that the parts of the bill he dislikes the most (which I interpret to mean "parts of the bill that actually help deal with global warming") are NOT in his committee's jurisdiction. His issue, then, is how he can leverage his authority as the Ag Committee Chair to get the Energy & Commerce Committee to change the parts of the bill he doesn't like.
According to Philpott:
The current version of Waxman-Markey contains almost no language on agriculture. (As I've written before, agriculture is exempt from any cap on greenhouse-gas emissions.) But farming projects would still be eligible for offsets through an offsets-review board that the legislation would set up within the EPA. Big Ag isn't content with that arrangement. In the coming days, the game will be to insert specific language around ag offsets into the legislation-and promote a certification process developed by Big Ag itself.
Peterson's supposed to pass the bill through his committee by June 19 and says he doubts that will happen. He also says he doubts the House has the votes to pass the bill at this time. Translation: Unless the bill gets gutted even more than it has been already, it won't pass. |
