EWG
We are going to get our Climate Bill from the US congress this year, but it's not going to be the one we want and they are trying to hide it from us. Yes, there is a secret Climate Bill stashed inside the 2012 Farm Bill which if passed as planned would be the equivalent of adding 2 million cars to our roads!
Climate Change activists should be concerned about proposed cuts to farm bill conservation programs, which would be the carbon emissions equivalent of adding 2 million cars a year to America’s roads.
As a possible 2012 farm bill looms, the ag committee leaders and their industrial agriculture lobby remoras are sorting through the smoking ruins of the 2011 secret farm bill process. They hope to come up with a unified position from which to begin deliberations on a new farm bill. Sadly, one thing they’ve all agreed to cut is 7 million acres from the Conservation Reserve Program. The CRP is administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and pays farmers to keep highly erodible land out of production.
While many recognize that putting land into conservation programs leads to cleaner water, healthier soil and robust wildlife habitat, few realize that CRP land also plays a major role in fighting climate change. According to the USDA(pdf), one acre of protected land sequesters 1.66 metric tons of carbon every year, carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. The 7 million acres about to be cut from the Conservation Reserve Program have been putting 11.6 million metric tons of carbon into the soil every year.
The main impetus for cutting conservation acres is the mad rush to plant every available inch of ground –whether it’s highly erodible land or a golf course – to capture high prices for corn propped up by Washington’s misguided corn ethanol mandate.
Speaking of corn ethanol, the industry and its lobbyists should be gravely concerned about the carbon emissions released by plowing under Conservation Reserve Program land. Political support for corn ethanol – which has been slipping – depends in part on whether it is better for the environment than gasoline. Most believe that corn ethanol currently is no better, emissions-wise, than gasoline.
Meanwhile, the US government is still paying hugely profitable mega-farms which have been responsible for our dangerously unhealthy food system. A food system which has caused a chronic disease crisis and is one of the principle causes of our climate change crisis(pdf).
We have to fight this with the same intensity we used to postpone the XL pipeline. Truly the future of our species is on the line.