Agriculture Hold Up To Climate Bill

So, the agriculture committee, and the industrial food interests they represent, still want the EPA to stop doing its job and they aren't happy at all with the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

These are their beefs, as laid out in the New York Times:

... Democrats and Republicans on the Agriculture Committee have a long list of grievances against the bill, and leaders of the panel are looking for ways to alter the legislation or slow it down before a full House vote. They want to see more offsets for farmers, a greater role for the Agriculture Department and changes in the bill's requirements for renewable fuels. ...

Translation: They would like an industry that's a net emitter of carbon to, without having to do anything differently, get credits for being a net carbon sink. Also, they would like to get paid for biofuels without their production of them having to be regulated.

Shorter translation: Where's our bribe?

As Tom Philpott gleaned recently, House Ag Chair, Rep. Collin Peterson, wants full veto power over the climate bill, particularly if this bill which was never intended to regulate their industry doesn't turn into a new revenue stream for subsidizing corn.

I have, as you might imagine, a lot of problems with bribing industrial agriculture for the sake of getting an already watered-down climate bill through Congress. But all things are relative.

For example, the bill is already loaded down with bribes to the coal industry, fossil energy producers and major polluters in general. As loathsome as Big Corn may be, it's not more loathsome in my estimation than Big Coal, and is probably, on net, slightly less bad.

(Though one of these days, maybe the agriculture industry will realize that climate change is a serious threat to their livelihoods and start acting like it instead of mouthing platitudes about it. It's crazy talk, I know, I'm funny like that.)

For everyone who wants a piece of this without providing some real climate benefit or actually new, actually sustainable job opportunities, the amount that goes to beneficial activities is diminished. I don't like that at all, but it's how business is done and I suppose the hope is that sustainable businesses will still be able to take off in spite of the overwhelming force of their more heavily subsidized opposition.

That's the hope, anyway. Shorter me: if there's a straw that breaks my back for support of Waxman-Markey (1Sky), a compromise with the notoriously retrograde House agriculture committee probably won't be it.

(Photo credit: twoblueday on Flickr.)