Angry jamming on ag in the climate bill

The capacity of major stakeholders in important issues to be COMPLETELY WRONG is truly baffling and kind of agonizing. Annoying, but not as mind-bending, are the moments in which those stakeholders are plainly biased and/or "the party of no." For example, snippets from the testimony of the President of the American Farm Bureau Federation at the recent Senate Agriculture, Forestry and Nutrition Committee hearing on climate legislation:

"We also know, for instance, that the climate models that have gotten so much attention did not predict the cooling that has occurred over the last decade. We know that there have been times in the earth's (sic) history when carbon concentrations in the atmosphere were greater, when temperatures have been cooler or warmer - in short, there are any number of variables that probably affect the earth's climate in ways that we simply don't know and can't predict."

Okay, so for one, I don't think he's right on the first part; I think I've heard that recent models did predict that dip. I haven't looked into it extensively, though.

And then . . . from all those pretty graphs I've looked at, there's no time in the ice core record when the carbon dioxide concentrations were as high as they are presently. It's possible that means that he's totally wrong. It's also possible that, when concentrations got this high the last time around, all the ice melted and destroyed the record. Oops.

"India in fact has already said that if [Waxman-Markey] becomes law, it will file a WTO challenge. . . . Other trade measures in the bill (allowances for manufacturers impacted by international competition, cash rebates, etc.) are also at best murky when viewed against the whole set of trade rules. Any trade measures that will not comply with the WTO do not help us."

The WTO has made a number of gestures indicating that it would allow climate mitigation trade strategies to go through, and it has let far harsher sanctions against non-parties to environmental agreements go through in the past - forget not thy Montreal Protocol.

Also, if you're going to talk about stuff that violates international trade rules, can we bring up agricultural commodity subsidies? No? Oh.

"If you believe that anthropogenic carbon emissions are causing global warming, then recognize the simple fact that the only (emphasis in original) solution is an international agreement. Doing it unilaterally through legislation is a recipe for disaster for the American economy and for farmers and ranchers."

I know I should resist the urge to write snarky comments on the hard copy itself, in case someone else wants to see it, but I couldn't help it here: I wrote "I see you have a short institutional memory, sir," referring to the massive foreign policy faux pas perpetrated with regard to Kyoto. You can't sign a climate treaty that you don't know for sure you can ratify. It just isn't an option. That's why we're doing this Waxman-Markey stuff. Duh.

"We encourage all members to take a hard look at the evidence and the science before making up your mind on this issue. The ramifications are far too important for you to ignore the legitimate scientific evaluations that question alarmist scenarios."

Which legitimate scientific evaluations are those, now? I've heard that a few actual good ones exist, actually, but the only things I've seen with my own eyes have been written by right-leaning materials scientists and economists who don't actually know anything about climate science.

And when you show them to me, there had better be several thousand. There are several thousand on board with IPCC and "unequivocal" evidence of anthropogenic climate change.

Okay, this next one is the part that is so incredibly misled as to really, really distress me.

"Whatever bill is adopted must recognize what will happen when our nation starts starving itself of carbon-based energy forms. If the economy is starved for energy, then prices for energy are bound to increase. Don't let that happen. If you want coal and oil to play less and less a role in our energy mix, then figure out what will take their place - before (emphasis in original) you put our nation on a diet that is bound to result in lower economic activity and a depressed Gross Domestic Product."

That kind of thing goes on for another two or so paragraphs, segueing into why we need an "aggressive nuclear program" (yes, that is actually what he said) to fill the "hole" created by cap and trade.

It's clear that this organization completely and utterly misunderstands the premise of cap and trade, and in its misunderstanding has abandoned the conservative economic principles that you'd imagine the largely Midwestern ag bloc would securely espouse.

. . . well, okay, so they already did that when they fell into the habit of accepting permanent subsidies, but moving on.

Don't let the price go up? Have the government plan which energy types will sub in for coal and oil? Hello! That would be massively expensive and inefficient! It would be Soviet, for crying out loud! The whole point is to raise prices to create incentives so people will innovate and create the best, cheapest low-carbon technologies.

Ah, but I imagine part of AFBF's goal is just to delay the legislation's onset anyway, which creating and implementing a central plan would certainly do.

"In our view, it would be a fundamental mistake to rush to judgment on such sweeping legislation, based on a timetable that is decided upon because a particular meeting has been scheduled in Copenhagen later this year. We urge the Committee to analyze the issue closely, carefully and thoroughly. We would also recommend that you mark up the legislation so that it is as strong and effective as possible for agriculture."

Or, in other words, "for Chrissakes, don't do this crazy thing the House did, but if you have to, put it off as long as possible, and make sure you give us lots of goodies!"

Ugh. It strikes me as so wrong that this sector can make money doing what other sectors have to pay for under this bill. But even so - even as I complain - I'm not complaining. It's okay. It's politically feasible, it's a beginning, and some of the offset programs really do look good.

Let me add another caveat here. It's true that, in the short run, any actualized climate legislation will hurt economically. It's a fact. But this isn't just about economics and it isn't just about the short run.

I also kind of like the AFBF's idea of putting an "off-ramp" into the bill to sunset the legislation if other countries take no action within a certain time period; I don't know a lot about that kind of provision, and should probably look into it more, but it feels like it should let other countries know that we mean business and that we're not necessarily going to take the leap alone. I imagine, though, it'd really weaken the signal to industry and thereby compromise the material effectiveness, if not the diplomatic effectiveness, of the law.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to working on work. But this is what work is, too - this is what I would like work to be, sort of, telling people about these issues instead of just circulating internal memos.

Life Inside the Beltway

Route 495 surrounds the District of Columbia, and is a fairly hellish yet entertaining road on which to drive. It curves in interesting ways, has too many lanes in places, and, of course, is chock full of excellent (har har) Washington drivers. Folks call it the beltway. Baltimore has one too, but District residents don't call it "the Washington beltway." Just the beltway.

I should mention that I have a car problem - that is to say, my car, given the rest of me, is problematic. I was raised to feel very sentimental about great big American clunkers, specifically Cadillac sedans. So I have a '96 STS that my father fixed up for me. The way I drive it, it gets about 20 MPG. It is a miserable attachment for an environmentalist, but I love that car.

In any case: they ("they" being, in this case, Eric Roston at Grist) say that "inside the beltway" is a metal state, not a geographic one. I understand what that means now. One who lives "inside the beltway" follows Capitol Hill beyond the nightly news. Here, in this mindscape of our nation's capital, people understand that a few ordinary human beings in expensive clothes wield immense power over the world's future. We follow their movements. Most of all, we follow the composition and rearrangement of the future under the fingertips of their staffs. We wait to see if the bill is sufficient, if it is plausible - and these two things spin into and out of each other's paths, clattering off course, causing the collective heart of the District to shutter and tense.

Before I got here, I knew only that climate change legislation needed to get through Congress before December, before Copenhagen, and to get through Congress as strong as possible, so whatever occurs at Copenhagen will be as good as it can be. "Waxman-Markey" was not in my vocabulary. Now, I'm hardly well-versed on the bill, but I understand the challenges it's facing - and I understand that the some of those challenges are not, themselves, unreasonable.

But let me tell you, I went to the House Agriculture Committee's hearing on the bill, and that was . . . new. It did not surprise me, exactly. To use a favorite illustrative device of environmentalists - although, as a commenter pointed out, a very unscientific one - the great figurative frog is not surprised to be boiled alive in slowly-warming water. It just dies at some point, and perhaps its froggy soul, somewhere, goes "huh. How'd that happen?"

I sat on the floor of the first overflow room. The hearing was long - three and a half hours on the first panel alone - and the Congresspeople ran back and forth to the House floor, voting, so a few central questions were asked a great many times. Especially "how much will this actually drive costs up for farmers?" Secretary Vilsack did not have an answer, but he did have extraordinary patience.

And I, sitting there, felt a little boiled. So this is what it's like. So this is my country, after all.

By the time I read the news the next day, further negotiations between particularly important ag committee members and Speaker Pelosi had already happened, and the landscape was already changing. Life inside the beltway is fast-paced. I'm not certain I'm cut out for it, on the one hand, but on the other, if I can get used to it, I know it's the right place to be.

Briefly, from work:

"From work" means "from the office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Washington, D.C." It's easy to forget how exciting it is to be here, though that sounds strange - here, on the third floor of an innocuous office building near Dupont Circle, so much passes, so much thinking is done. And I am here, passing, thinking.

A lot happened to me, environmentally speaking, over this past year. My focus widened, my frameworks grew feedbacks. I'm still on about ag, especially in America, and all those other sustainability issues that are so American in their high-income focus, but there is quite a lot more to all this. There is a world of hurt and a world of potential.

You'll hear about that in time. For now: thanks for being here. I hope you're keeping up on Waxman-Markey. I know we all are.